I spent the better part of 4 days on the back of a dump truck in the Sahara with a couple of slaves. Real eye opener for me - poor guys had been taken from their mothers at birth, raised communally in a slave camp deep in the desert, and lived in the back of this dump truck that made a trade run between the only two cities of note in Mauritania. At night, they curled up in one of the spare tires, since they didnt even have a blanket, even though it got down to the 30s at night. A couple of us tried to give them our sleeping bags, but their owners freaked out and threatened to kick us off the truck (this is 200 miles or so of open desert away from the nearest city). They said they wanted them to stay tough. Funnily enough, both of the slaves spoke passable English, since they did have access to western satellite TV in the slave camp and taught themselves from watching MTV and 80s soap opera reruns. Thinking about those poor SOBs always haunts me - sucks there was nothing I could do without ending up in a Mauritanian jail where I wouldnt last 24 hours. Also, Mauritania officially banned slavery in 1980, IIRC, but they made a point to only put the declaration in writing, and never bothered to tell any of the illiterate slaves. slaveryfootprint.org
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 22:52:34 +0000