A FEW miles from the green grass of Mauritania’s presidential palace, in a slum where the Sahara washes into the capital, Mbarka shields her five-year-old son’s eyes from the dust. She was his age when her mother gave her away to be a slave.
Mbarka’s mother was herself a freed slave. But when her former master said he needed help at home, tradition dictated that she had to give up her daughter to him. Mbarka did all the chores she could but the family still beat her. She doesn’t remember how old she was when the father and his son started to rape her, but she had her first child at 13.
Mauritania, with its tiny economy and population of just 4.3m, would normally attract little attention. But its vast expanse—it is four times larger than Britain—and its position astride migration and smuggling routes across the Sahara have pushed it to prominence. This month France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, visited it to discuss co-operation...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa https://ift.tt/2uH4h1p
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