Flying Through Water by Mamle Wolo

We all grabbed bailing vessels. Thunder cracked, and lightning streaked across the sky like a celestial tree revealing its branches for a split second. I felt as though I were caught in a different dimension where death was as present as life, and everything was elemental and terrifying.

I thought about this world and the things we humans struggled for, and all the ways in which we imprisoned ourselves, and each other. It seemed to me that greed was just as much of a prison as poverty, only worse. Here I was alone on this island in the middle of nowhere, stripped of whatever meager possessions I had ever owned. And yet in nature’s heart I felt liberated and endowed with a splendor beyond anything humans could ever purchase. 

What greater wealth was there in this world than freedom?

This story is told in three parts. Sena describes his life in Ghana and his special relationship with is grandfather who tells him stories of his village life before the artificial creation of Volta Lake and the Akosombo Dam. Sena lives with his mother, sister and baby brother. They are very poor but he has been able to go to school. His education is not perfect and the teachers are often absent and they do beat the students but if he can sit the final exam there is the promise of further education and hopefully a better life for his family. But there is a young man who visits their village with promises to the young boys of work and money and perhaps even adventures. Sena is suspicious of this flashy man who they call 'Jack of Diamonds' and he has heard stories of boys sent to work with cattle - boys who are given little or no food and forced to work in dreadful conditions. Sena is determined not to follow this path but then his grandfather dies, his mother is gravely ill with malaria and his best friend declares he is heading away to work because he is sure the promises from 'Jack of Diamonds' are true. 

Sena loves his family and he really wants to help them so after his final exam he leaves a letter under his sister's pillow and he heads off - what he does not know is that this will be a journey into hell. So begins part two. Sena is taken to work as a slave for a cruel master catching fish and diving deep into treatrous waters to untangle the fishing nets. He is given virtually no food, he is beaten and the group of about ten boys are forbidden to talk to each other except about their tasks. Yes this is illegal human trafficking. Can Sena escape? Where will he go? What will happen if he is caught? He does befriend one of the boys and then that boy is killed - possibly murdered by their master - so now Sena must leave. He arrived at this place terrified of water and unable to swim. After several months of this cruel work he can now swim but he is still terrified of the dark water and the waves and he has not learned how to float. Part 3 is all about survival because he does find his way to a small deserted island with only monkeys for company but of course he must also find a way to get back to his family. He also carries huge guilt about the boys he left behind and he has made a new wonderful discovery of a special and rare underwater animal - the lake Manatee. The book ends with a sense of hope for the future for Sena himself but also for other trafficked boys and hopefully also for this very special wild creature who is also trapped in the waters of this lake.

Here are a few text quotes from this book:

Treatment by teachers: The humiliation hurt almost more than the lashes, but I hardened myself to it even though it upset me that the teachers beat us when they knew how hard our lives were. They knew we weren’t late out of laziness or what they called I-don’t-care-ism. But I got used to that too—the callousness of powerful people and the way they didn’t care what was fair.

Kekeli - a description: She had a round face, and when she smiled it was as if the distance between her lips and chin had been measured with a protractor and traced with a compass, their curves were so perfectly parallel. Her laughter was like that of a baby discovering funniness for the first time and too little to contain it. She could spark off the whole class.

Grandfather the storyteller: He said stories took us where our legs couldn’t go and showed us what our eyes couldn’t see, and that the best thing about books was that they were still there when storytellers were gone. I could see what he meant when I thought that one day, he wouldn’t be here to tell us stories anymore—a prospect I quickly banished. I loved his stories more than any I’d read in books.

Jack of Diamonds: Everyone was excited and following his every move, but something in me held back. I wondered if I was the only one to whom his mannerisms seemed somehow familiar, as if he’d studied them on someone else, like Shatta Wale or Burna Boy. Perhaps I was just being silly, but it made me uneasy that we couldn’t see his eyes, because he never took off his sunglasses. And it was amazing how he kept that black jacket on in this heat.

Publisher blurb: Sena treasures his life in rural Ghana-playing soccer, working the family farm, striving to do his best at school-but he is increasingly aware of his family's precarious security in the face of poverty. When an alluring gentleman comes to town to befriend local teenagers, offering promises of a better future, it only takes one more unsettling turn of events to send Sena into the clutches of human traffickers. Sena's ordeal, escape, and remarkable survival makes for a page-turning adventure of self-discovery and empowerment.

Searing and eye-opening, readers will devour Sena’s story in a day. School Library Journal

Wolo skillfully sheds light on the horrific practice of the trafficking of children, and the grim situations many are forced to live and work in—but she also tells a story of hope and perseverance. The vividly described settings include imagery that paints the scenes for readers as the story unfolds. A powerful look at human suffering and the will to survive. Kirkus Star review

Jack of Diamonds turns out to be a pied piper for a human trafficking network and thus, Sena finds that he has been sold into indentured labour to a fisherman who employs a motley crew of children, some as young as three, in a bid to compete with foreign trawlers working the Volta Lake. Cold and brutish, Sena’s master is a formidable antagonist, the like of which populates Dickensian novels, but the real villain here is the systemic poverty that has left intergenerational scars and threatens the possibility of a future for its under aged victims, who are malnourished, overworked, and constantly exposed to the risk of drowning. The Lagos Review

Fans of Hatchet and A Long Walk to Water will find Flying Through water an engrossing book. Sadly I have no idea how I discovered this book - I must have seen it recommended somewhere.

Listen to an audio sample here. This book only in hardcover so far is too expensive here in Australia (AUS$32.50) but I read a copy on a Kindle.

I recommend this moving and atmospheric story for readers aged 12+ especially those with an interest in social justice. Your senior students could also investigate the work of our Australian organisation that assists victims of modern slavery - The Freedom Hub.

I recently read this book which also explores the topic of human trafficking:

Stitched up