A boy named Moses

The trip from Accra to Kete-Krachi was an adventure in itself – 15 hours, about half of which were on some of the worst dirt roads I've ever been on. George Achibra, who is leading the effort to rescue the kids off of Lake Volta, greeted us in Kete-Krachi. To date, between the work he is doing with Touch A Life and other groups, he has rescued over 150 children.

After resting for a while, George took us down for our first glance at Lake Volta. We would head out early the next morning for a long day on the lake, but he wanted us to get a feel for it before we went.

As we pulled up and got out we saw a mixture of beauty and business. The sun was getting low in the sky, so the lake was alive with color and because Kete-Krachi is gathering point for many of the remote villages, there was a beehive of activity as people loaded canoes to go home for the day.

Yet in all of this activity it was easy to spot the fishing boats, usually with three or four shadows slowly paddling or bringing in their nets.

One such boat came up to shore and we could see that two of the three occupants were young boys. George slowly walked over to talk to them while we at first kept our distance. After a few minutes of conversation George waved us over and introduced us to Moses and Kwasi – two boys who had been sold by their families. Kwasi, now around 12 years old was sold several years back for a "she cow." For that cow Kwasee must now get up at 2 am every morning and go out onto the lake to fish. After about five hours of first setting out and then gathering their nets, they would come back to the village to mend and prepare their nets so that they can repeat the process in the late afternoon and early evening.

Kwasi and Moses likely get one or possibly two meals a day, but these meals are mainly carbohydrates, which the master knows will give them the energy they will need to paddle all day.


Moses broke our hearts. As you can see from the picture above he obviously had something going on in his stomach – possibly a hernia. If it were a hernia, it really wouldn't surprise me because his young 8 or 9-year-old body surely wasn't meant to do the work it is having to do.

George told us that it is not unusual for these kids to die from this work. Some die when they are forced to go down to the bottom of the lake to untangle the net and get caught up in it themselves. More likely, though, they die from injuries and diseases that simply go untreated, such as parasites, malaria, and infections.

After about forty-five minutes of talking with the boys George had everything he needed to go visit their master the next day. We said our goodbyes and watched them push off to go finish their night's work.

We went back to George's house to get some sleep, but sleep was hard to find that night as I thought about these two boys. Instead of sleeping in a warm bed they were probably sleeping out under the stars on the bare ground, soon to be woken up to start a new day on the lake.