被奴役的非洲男孩 / 四六文摘

Dawn breaks over the water.

水上黎明破晓。

Adam leads a column of five other boys through the high, golden grass to the softly lapping edge of Lake Volta in Ghana’s central region.

亚当带领着另外五名男孩穿过高高的金色草地，来到加纳中部地区水波轻轻拍打着的伏尔特湖畔。

The group of boys will spend the better part of the day fishing under a hot equatorial sun.

这群男孩将在赤道炎热的太阳下度过一天中大部分的时光。

They’ve come from different towns, at different times, but they all have one thing in common.

他们来自不同的城镇，和不同的时间，但他们都有一个共同点。

Each one of them was bought by the same fisherman to come and work as his slave.

他们每个人都被同一个渔夫买去当他的奴隶。

“Every morning we wake up and we go to the lake, we paddle, remove the nets,” says Adam.

亚当说:“每天早上我们醒来后，就去湖边，我们会划船过去，把渔网捞起来。”

“Then we come back, remove the fish, prepare the nets for the next casting and around 4pm, we go back to cast the net.”

“然后我们回来，把鱼捞出来，准备下次撒网。大约下午4点，我们又回去撒网。”

Adam doesn’t know his own age, but appears to be about 12-years-old. He estimates he’s worked for Samuel, the man he calls “master,” for around three years.

亚当不知道自己的年龄，但看起来大约12岁，他估计自己已经为被他称为“主人”的塞缪尔工作了大约三年。

“I don’t want to be here,” says Adam.

“我不想在这儿待的，”亚当说道。

“I want to go to school, but I’m forced to be here.”

“我想上学，但我被迫得来这里。”

Adam is just one of 20,000 children on Lake Volta who the International Labour Organization reports are working for slave masters.

据国际劳工组织报道，沃尔塔湖上有2万名儿童为奴隶主工作，亚当只是其中之一。

Most of the children come to the lake from hundreds of miles away.

大多数孩子是从几百英里外来到这个湖。

They are sold by their desperately poor parents to human traffickers, sometimes for as little as $250, which in this area, is what it would cost to purchase a cow.

它们被极度贫困的父母卖给人贩子，有时只卖250美元，在这个地区，这相当于买一头牛的成本。

We joined Adam and five other enslaved children working for Samuel, to witness what a typical day on the lake looks like for them.

我们和亚当以及其他五个为赛缪尔工作的被奴役的孩子一起见证了他们在湖上度过的日常一天。

It started in the pre-dawn hours.

工作从黎明前就开始了。

The young crew loaded the gear onto a wooden boat and pushed off into the water.

年轻的船员们把装备装上一艘木船，然后下水。

By 9am, they had spent several hours on the boat.

到早上九点时，他们已经在船上待了几个小时了。

At one point, there was a shout from Samuel.

有一次，塞缪尔大喊了一声。

Adam’s head lowered.

亚当低下了头。

He took off his shirt and swung his legs over the gunwale of the boat, disappearing under the surface of the dark brown, murky water.

他脱下衬衫，两腿在船舷上荡来荡去，然后消失在深棕色、浑浊的水面下。

“When he says you should dive, you have no option. The fearful part is that you might not come back,” Adam says.

“当他说你应该跳水时，你别无选择。最可怕的是你可能再也回不来了，”亚当说。

“That’s what I fear most. You can be stuck down there and never come up. That’s why I’m so scared and don’t want to work on the lake anymore.”

“这是我最害怕的。你可能被困在那里，永远不会上来。所以我很害怕，不想再在湖上工作了。”

For children like Adam, diving under the water to untangle fishing nets caught on submerged tree branches is incredibly dangerous.

对于像亚当这样的孩子来说，潜入水中解开挂在水下树枝上的渔网是极其危险的。

And it’s one of the reasons adults use children on the lake.

这也是成年人在湖上使用儿童的原因之一。

Their smaller frames and nimble fingers allow them to free the nets more easily.

他们较小的骨架和灵活的手指使他们更容易取脱渔网。

Of course, there are other reasons as well: since they are smaller than adults, they take up less room on the boats and can be dominated physically by their masters.

当然，还有其他原因:因为它们比成年人小，所以在船上占的空间更小，而且在身体上可以被主人控制。

This in turn, means there isn’t much of a fight when they don’t get paid for their work, which is always.

这反过来又意味着，当他们的工作得不到报酬时，就不会有太多的争吵，这是常有的事。