We all know why it is important to support fair trade manufacturing, stories of slave labour, people being made to work long hours for hardly any pay, I don’t need to tell you what fair trade means. For me it is something that I really appreciated the significance of when my dad told me about his upbringing in Goa, India.
Dad was born in Kenya in 1932, his mother died of Cholera when he was a toddler, after which his father moved the family to Goa, he remarried but died when dad was a young child. From the age of 5 years old, with no one to look after him dad was forced to work looking after cattle from dawn to dusk with no pay and only very basic food and shelter. I only learnt about my dad’s childhood a few years ago when we went to Goa and I realised how little I knew about him so asked him what it was like growing up in India. When I was younger he used to tell us that him and his friends used to go to hear Gandhi talk, he later told me that the reason they would go was not to hear him speak but because they would get fed because Gandhi knew that until people had their basic needs met they would always be oppressed. Dad taught himself to read and write and when he was 19 moved back to Kenya where he lived until coming to the UK in 1971 as a refuge of the Amin government. My dad was fortunate because a kindly aunt helped him out as did other neighbours in Goa. What saddens me is that there are still millions of children who are still living horrid existences, my dad is now 73 years old, in all that time why has so little changed? I hope that in supporting fair trade we are helping to make a difference to those people who other wise would be exploited and ignored.
