Not for Sale

One of our assignments is a book report on a justice themed book. So here’s the blog version of mine:

One of things I do in my free time here is read. A lot. The school has a library that we can borrow books and DVD’s from. Last week (actually a few weeks ago but I didn’t manage to finish writing this post before now) I picked up a book called Not For Sale. I read the blurb and figured it would be a good read as I waited for one of my roommates to finish reading The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne (which I have now read and you should totally read too).  Not for Sale is about the global slave trade and how we can fight it. I figured this would be some good light reading before going to sleep.

I was completely unprepared for what I was about to read. I guess I thought it would give a load of depressing stats about modern-day slavery and then tell me to write to my politician to try and get them to deal with it (which I’m not saying is a bad thing. We do need to put more pressure onto our governments to do more to combat slavery). Instead what I read were personal accounts of former slaves of their life in slavery and how they were rescued by certain organisations/people. Different chapters cover a different type of slavery, so there are accounts of sexual slavery in Cambodia and Thailand, bonded labourers in South Asia, child soldiers in Uganda, sex syndicates in Europe, child slavery in Peru and domestic slavery in the USA. Each chapter also tells how the organisation that helped them was started or how the person that helped them came to be aware of their plight.

Most of the organisations mentioned were started by people with no specialist knowledge of modern-day slavery or a great amount of resources. They just saw the need and then did what they could to help. In many cases they had to expand what they were doing to cope with the demand for their services. For this reason I think it’s one of the most inspiring books I’ve read, ordinary people doing what they could to help. It means that we can all do something to help. We don’t have to be super rich super geniuses (or should that be geniuii? – sounds a bit like weird and looks like I can’t spell genuine though)

My conclusion: you should read this book. End of. You’ll understand why slavery bothers me so much if you do. If I wasn’t afraid of being ‘smited’ by God I would even say that you should read it more than you should read the Bible (JUST KIDDING.  You see this; I’m running back to the line).

'I am not for sale. You are not for sale. No-one is for sale.'