Sayana’s Story: Bonded Labour
In this episode, Fuzz Kitto unpacks Sayana’s Story of bonded labour and generational slavery. It may seem unbelievable that a whole generation of family could be in bonded labour for a mere US$800 but Fuzz unpacks the vulnerability, psychology and the deceptive nature of slavery in this episode. As he says, “no-one chooses slavery”.
Sayana’s full story with pictures can be view on our page here.
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Welcome to the Podcast Slavery Unravelled conversations about being modern slavery free by Be Slavery Free a charity working together to prevent, disrupt and abolish modern slavery globally. And welcome to Slavery Unravelled. I'm fuzz kitto, the Co-Director of Be Slavery Free. And what we're doing in these podcasts is trying to help you to understand something of the nature of slavery, why it happens, where it happens, and what happens because of slavery. It is so important for us to become aware and for it to come into our consciousness, so that when we go to buy goods, when we go to deal and work with companies, and maybe our work situation, maybe our leisure situation or the communities we're involved in, we have a way of talking about slavery and a way of understanding and a way to share, also what we've learned with other people as well, when we're having a cup of coffee or tea together, when we're having a meal together when we gather as families and when we gather for the great celebrations with others, and it comes to that point of actually starting to get into that deeper conversation, be able to know how to talk about it and have information to share with others becomes a key part of how we're going to raise the awareness and do something that leads to actions. And that's why in this podcast, we always finish off with something that you can do about this. It is not just about hearing about it, it is also doing something about it.
Matt Friedman, who one of our good friends and partners, heads up the Mekong Club, says that there's a point that we have got to bring people to, which not just tells them stories, where they become aware of it. But it comes to that point where they go, I've got to do something about this, it hits them. It is an aha moment. And that's what we're trying to do during this podcast is to help give you some of these aha moments where you believe that you need to take action, where you really want to take action. And when you do take action, it gives you incredible meaning and incredible depth of well being because you're doing something about the life of another human being to make it better.
And so tonight, we're going to be today we're going to be listening to a story. It's a story that Matt picked up and didn't in his research when he was developing stories. He's a journalist he's been based in, in Southeast Asia now for over 12, 13 years. And he has come to understand what it's about. And if you've listened to some of the previous podcasts, you'll hear in the interview I did with him how he came to understand that I've got to do something about this, he's had that aha moment, where he actually then believe that he was going to change from a sports journalist into a journalist. And he went on to work with Reuters in a project they had where they had about 34 journalists around the world reporting on slavery and what was happening on the ground in countries in in different regions.
So, people get caught so often if you've would have heard me say if you've been listening to previous podcasts, that's so often about poverty. But it's not just about the lack of money, it's often why they have a lack of money. And then that vulnerability is played upon for the gain of another. And that's a part of the definition of slavery is that people are caught in a situation they are either coerced or they are tricked, or they are played upon, their vulnerabilities played upon and they get trapped and they can't get out of it. The identity papers are taken away. They are not just tied up or physically restrained. Most times they are emotionally restrained. And that comes out in the story that we're going to be hearing today as well. And the form of slavery here is what we what is known as debt bondage. debt bondage happens, as you'll hear in the story, because something happens, disaster happens, a situation happens where they gotta get money, and then they have struggles to pay it back. So often, in developing countries in the Global South, in poorer countries or poorer communities in countries, it's, it's around the health issue. And sometimes in the West. Some of us may take for granted that we can go see a doctor or we can get support in getting medications. But that's certainly not the case and a lot of countries and a lot of communities. And that's the setting that we are going to hear about in the story today. But it's also something that's important to know that people fall into this because they have a family member, they have a parent or a child, it might be someone that is in their extended family, and sometimes a whole household or extended family has got to go into debt, to pay off the medications or to pay off the treatment that that member has got to engage in because of their health issues. So in the story, I hope you're going to hear this and it comes from a real situation with a real person, and you'll hear about it as it comes to this story. And it's read by one of our good friends and former colleagues. And Mitch produced this for us just before he went on to his new position. Have a listen to this.
Sayana’s Story
As a child, Sayana never knew much other than stacking bricks. No school, no holidays, no cartoons, and rarely a ball, a toy, or a teddy, or much time to play with them. When she was eight, she moved with her older sister and parents to the brick yard, where they lived alongside about a dozen other families in a row of shacks made from scrap timber and tin – all of them working to pay off debts owed to the brickyard’s owner. They referred to him as uncle. He had come to them as a saviour.
Before the brick yard, Sayana spent her days caring for her elderly grandfather on the family’s small farm, where they grew enough rice, fruit, vegetables, ducks and chickens to feed themselves and some bits to sell from their roadside grocery store. They lived relatively comfortably until grandpa fell sick; years of medical bills drove the family into spiralling debt.
With loan sharks at their door, they were forced to sell their home. Then, with nowhere to go – and still multiple outstanding debts – they turned to the brickyard owner, who bought out their debts and give them a place to live, work and repay him, one brick at a time.
“At that moment, we owed him $800. With four sets of hands to do the work, we figured we would be in the clear with a year,” Sayana said. “We couldn’t see clearly at that time. We were so wrong.”
The brickyard boss was mostly jovial with those working under him, playing the role of benevolent patron. But he was also a police officer and a domineering character, and in his brick yard, he made the rules.
Work began at 5am and continued until dark, stopping only for an hour’s rest around midday. Visitors were not allowed on-site and residents were rarely allowed out, with children left as collateral during important religious ceremonies or funerals. Families who failed to meet targets had their pay cut. Safety standards and protective equipment were non-existent and illness and injury were treated by a doctor brought onsite by the boss.
The atmosphere is dark and draining, almost hellish, due to heat generated by the fires burning under stacks of bricks inside the giant handmade kilns. The air is charred, dry and dense with dust kicked up from the ashen floors. Lungs heave. Sanitation is poor and so is nutrition, with families cutting down meals and eating low-quality food to pay off debts quicker. Getting sick, it soon became clear, would become a defining feature of life in the brick yard – and a vital tool in keeping families trapped there, with exorbitant treatment costs, rent and utilities fees added to debts, which were a constantly-moving figure controlled arbitrarily by the boss. Most months, debts would grow, rather than decrease. In fact, the whole system was designed to drive them deeper into debt, binding them further to life in the brick yard.
“We were trapped,” Sayana said. “We thought he was our angel but he in reality he was worse than the devil. It was impossible to make enough bricks to clear the debt.”
Fourteen years after her parents first turned to the brick kiln boss, Sayana still works for him. The magic number is almost double the original $800 he paid to consolidate their debts. Now, Sayana is a young mother, married to a man who had grown up alongside her in the brick yard. And she is counting down the days until her own son, now three, is old enough to stack bricks.
“Its not what I want for my children, but its our only hope,” she said. “After so many years in here, I’m not sure how we could live in the outside world.”
Fuzz Kitto
Sayana's stories this had been and a real one for so many people. And one of the things that we see through these stories is a consistency that happens, which is common in a lot of stories. They had a health problem. And the grandfather needed medication after the medical procedures and that drain the resources of the family. So they had to sell off the farm and the the reasonably comfortable income and life that they had to go into debt and a person paid off their debt and basically bought them into labour. And till they until they could pay it off. This is called debt bondage. As I said before, and what debt bondage does is it traps people in there, what they often don't know is that that they are not actually paying it off, they in fact, don't understand much about interest and the interest keeps on going. And Sayana’s story is typical in a lot of ways as well, because it is actually about finding themselves in a system where the money they owe doesn't decrease, it actually increases, because the little they're given and then again, they're eating less to try and live as simply as possible to pay the debt off. But it doesn't make any difference. It is something which comes compounds the whole situation, to the point of making a real difference to their ability to pay it off. And to get into some sort of freedom out of that. Her son, she thinks is going to be following her. And the other thing which came through in Sayana's story is that she is not sure that she can actually live on the outside anymore.
People get trapped, not only physically not only bonded because of the debt that they are paying off, but also psychologically, they get to think that this is reality and their life. And particularly it becomes intergenerational generation after generation, that's all the life that they know. And that's a difficulty in trying to work out how it is they learn to live after that as well. In many ways people who are trapped in situations of debt bondage, find themselves unable to to find a way forward or to find a way out.
And one of the things that we are finding when it comes to the worker voice platform and MillionMakers we're developing, it means that we can actually reach in the situations where people have often found themselves in debt bondage, because they've paid a labour agent, the money to actually get a job in another country, to be able to send back to their family and to help them. But again, they don't understand the amount of interest has been paid. And so it goes on and on and on. They find themselves trapped.
It's only when we get in to find these stories and find what's happening there and find a way of being able to rectify and to restore them into something which has justice within it. I've just come back from spending three days in Geneva with the United Nations Global Compact Forum on Business and Human Rights. And so many of the stories that are coming through in the social area, around the area of slavery has to do with people moving from one home that they've had into another one, it's not always the case, unlike Sayana's story, it was more local, that they, they were moved into the brick kiln. But a lot of people have to move out of their region, and they move and leave, lose contact with family, with friends, with communities. And, or it is they go to another country to try again, to get money to send back home, so that the family may survive and can find a way of actually coping with either climate change effects, or sometimes out of distress of a conflict, or in a way of trying to find a way out of the poverty cycle that people find themselves in.
People that do that are not dumb. People often say, "well, how do they get caught in these situations? You know, shouldn't they know better?" Often they don't know better. And again, it's often that they are tricked. In fact, most times they are tricked. Sometimes they are coerced. But it is being deceived, which is a part of the nature of slavery. No one decides that they're going to go into slavery, yes, this sounds like a good idea. It's that they are deceived and tricked into being bonded by the debt, or by paying off a situation of health, etc, which of course caused the debt in the first place. So this is a way of starting to understand something of what happens in slavery in this dimension. And through the story of Sanyana of debt bondage, that form of slavery.
What is it can you can do about it? Get informed, and start to tell people about these stories start to tell people about the sorts of slavery, the different sorts that there are. And you can check with companies that you might be buying, say, bricks, or the more particularly, tiles are more, particularly slate tiles that come out of a quarry, and ask the company, do you know if there is any slavery in the supply chain? It might well be that they'll quickly say, no, no, of course not, we're a good company. But they don't know their supply chain. It's opaque. They might just know the people that they are buying it off, either the warehouse in country or the company that they're buying from if it's coming in from India, or if it's coming in from other countries where we are importing a whole lot of building products, for instance. And so one of the things is to start to ask companies to check and to say, if they say, you know, well, no, there's no, there's no slavery, to say, "can you verify that? Have you checked? Can you please show me what you have done to check your supply chain to make sure it is not there?"
Each of us have actions that we can take, and particularly those of you or consumers, check out, ask companies, if they know their supply chain, and if they've checked right down through not just to their suppliers, but down to tier four, tier five, tier six, to know what's happening there. Because often that's where the debt bondage is happening.