That's what I call it:
a market.
It's a labor market.
A market set up by human traffickers.
It's like when you're selling sheep.
Someone raises the sheep,
and then sells them, to make a profit off the work they put in.
But these agencies...
they don't even give you a drink of water.
They don't raise you either, feeding you the way a parent would.
Worst of all, is that these traffickers
buy and sell human beings,
without having had to put in any effort.
Because to sell sheep,
you've had to put in a certain effort to raise them first.
Without that work you'd get nothing.
And so how can it be that for something as worthy of respect as a human being
whom they've made no effort to raise
or to provide with food and drink
they can put all this work into trafficking them?
I can only be ironic
and say thank you.
There's nothing else you can say to them.
Because they're dealing with human beings
destined to be sold like any other product.
Let's be very clear: it's our own country that opened up this market.
Our own president who began this trafficking business.
The state wanted to bring foreign currency, dollars, into the country
and so they made it easy for the mafias to traffic young girls.
They've been buying and selling us for 21 years.
By us, I mean Ethiopian women.
This sort of trafficking didn't exist before.
Ethiopians who came to Lebanon did so to pursue university studies.
When you come to a country like this one,
and you're leaving your country for the first time,
it's your heart that bleeds, truly.
When I left my family,
my tears began to flow the minute I got on the plane.
Because I started wondering: where am I going?
What kind of people will I be dealing with?
What language will I use to communicate with them?
I prayed to God to keep me safe.
I cried the whole way here.
I was so young.
It was the first time I'd ever been separated from my mother and father.
It was very hard.
As soon as I landed at the airport,
the first thing I heard were the shouts of policemen.
We were all herded into one room.
There were so many of us.
Even if I didn't understand what they were saying their rage was very clear.
They weren't treating us like human beings.
We were shoved around.
They told us go here, go there!
They were yelling at us, it was terrifying.
I stared at the floor, the ceiling.
I felt like I was suffocating in a great darkness.
If these men are shouting so much, I thought,
then what will my employers be like?
Because these were the men in charge of "security,"
of enforcing the laws of the state,
wearing its uniform.
No one takes these facts into consideration.
No one listens to us.
People say, 'things will get better with time.'
And this is what makes me angry.
Of course things will change with time.
But no one sees us as human beings.
That's the fundamental thing.
Should it really take a person that long to evolve?
Why should it take time to be seen as "human" in the eyes of others?
If technological advances can be made this fast,
then why should it take so long to evolve as a person?