TRAVERSE Issue 15 - December 2019 | Seite 62

a talk about modern slavery in a Slovenian Secondary school. We arrived in Athens in December and sent our rig on a boat to Alexandria, Egypt. While waiting for it to ship, we tried to find out about slavery in Greece and stum- bled upon a lady called Click in a suburban community centre. In her youth Click had been a guerrilla fighter in Zim- babwe and is probably the most powerful, strong willed lady you could ever come across. As a single mother in her 20’s she found herself in need of a better job. She was offered one in Greece and left Zimbabwe with the hope of sending money back to her family. Arriving in Greece, her passport was taken from her, she was locked in a flat and forced to work as a domestic servant for years. Eventually she escaped. Leaving Click we continued our travels through Egypt and into Sudan where we met a group of Indonesian people who had found themselves trapped into a life of slavery in Khartoum, the Sudanese Capital. This continued as we carried on around the world. We heard countless stories from people of all walks of life who had been trapped by slavery. We met people in Kenya who were helping Kenyan’s trapped in Syria. We met people in South Africa who were supporting kids that had come from Africa’s west coast on the promise of football trials but had instead, been trapped in forced labour. People in Mexico who were helping women sex trafficked by the Cartels. And even people in Dallas who were helping girls coerced in to forced prostitution by traffickers masquerading as boyfriends. We heard many, many stories like this. They all had a similar story to that of Mo and Click; an individual’s vul- nerability exploited on the promise of something better and the reality, something far worse. We met with ten organisations on our travels all of which fight modern slavery and human trafficking with complete determination and unbelievable resourceful- ness. In a world with so many factors stacked against them, they need all the help they can get. You can donate to their fight and learn more about slavery worldwide on our website or better still, why not dedicate your next ride to the fight against modern slavery? MB TRAVERSE 62