Fatima is one of the lucky ones. Every day since she could walk, without exception, she has worked from before sunrise until long after sunset. She has never been allowed to eat, get married or have sex with her husband without someone else’s permission. She doesn’t understand the concept of money because she has never had any. Fatima is 53 years old.
Fatima lives in Niger, a landlocked West African state that was, until famine thrust it to international attention in 2005, one of the least-known countries on Earth. But even in good years, Niger stands on the brink of perpetual emergency, a sand-scoured country whose only natural resource—uranium—is a dirty word on international markets. Green is a colour you rarely see here—hardly surprising given that just three per cent of the country’s land is suitable for agriculture. That three per cent, huddled into the extreme south-west of the country, will soon be engulfed by the Sahara Desert in its southward march.
Niger’s human landscape is no less grim. According to the United Nations, it is the worst place in the world in which to live. The average Nigerien earns less than a dollar a day and 85 per cent of the adult population can neither read nor write. One out of every three Nigeriens is malnourished.
If Niger is, among nations, the poorest of the poor, then people like Fatima are truly the wretched of the Earth.
Until recently, Fatima was a slave, a forgotten vestige of an institution that continues to stalk Africa like a dark spectre of the continent’s past. But even though Fatima spent all but the last few months of her life—more than five decades—in captivity, she is lucky. She managed to escape.
Now she must, like a child, learn what it means to live in freedom. When asked her plans for the future, her answer is simple: ‘I shall try to live by watching what other people do.’ And then she smiles.
Asibit, another former slave in her 50s who managed to escape and whose parents were slaves before her, already knows how to live in freedom. ‘I have never known happiness until this month of freedom,’ she says. ‘Now I can go to bed when I want. No one insults me. Now that I am free I can do as I please.’
In Niger, a staggering eight per cent of the population—870,363 people—are slaves, according to an authoritative report by Timidria,