Book Review

The Trials Of Mukom by Eni Mokube James

E-Communication Centre, Limbe; 24 pp.

Reviewed by Azore Opio

Scripted in a clear, concise style, the book tells the story and consequences of falling prey to traffickers in human beings who turn up with sweet natter about greener pastures growing in the urban areas for children. It pays special attention to child trafficking, which is one of the most easily exploited segments of society.

The play traces the horrific treatment a teenage boy receives in the hands of his fake uncle to whom he is delivered into slavery by a trickster instead of an education that he had been promised. And become a white black man! Alas! Mukom Ransom is turned into the helpless subject of human rights abuse and exploitation; the victim of horrid ill-treatment delivered by a female human trafficker.

For five full years, Mukom is fulltime baby-sitter, house cleaner, garbage collector, gateman, gardener, car washer, yardman, clothes and dishwasher, kitchen help and a dozen other mean domestic functions. A caged beast watched by two fierce house dogs. During his years of agony, Mukom discovers other children suffering his kind of fate on the city streets – they are thieves, street fighters and sometimes murderers, if only to survive.

For ignorant desperate poverty-stricken rural dwellers, The Trials of Mukom, and the South West Task Force against Trafficking in Humans, which was installed in the Region on June 4, 2014, can help to increase awareness about the realities of trafficking in humans and slavery and how to stop it. The book provides the ignorant lot with hope to avoid becoming victims of human trafficking and its horrors as Mukom escapes with the help of a legal expert and returns to spur his village mates to fight hard against trafficking in humans and slavery.