How far will people go to escape poverty? Insights from the movie 'Mvera'
I had expected anything, except what really happens in the movie – the young people being killed and their organs harvested for trafficking.
What you need to know:
- 'Mvera' is the latest Kenyan movie I have watched, and its story continues to haunt me.
- The film depicts young girls from a poor village lured by a supposed benefactor, only to face unimaginable horrors.
Mvera is the latest Kenyan movie I have watched. It has been two weeks and the story still wrings my heart painfully. The movie is a horror story born out of desperation caused by poverty. It tells the haunting tale of several girls from a poor village in Kenya's coastal region. They are lured from their homes by a supposed rich benefactor, under the pretext of sending them abroad for greener pastures.
The film is accomplished in many ways, especially in its ability to transcend fiction. It's an emotional reminder that art, whether in writing, painting, sculpture, motion pictures, or theatre, reflects society.
Spoiler alert
I expected many things would happen to the girls when I started watching the movie. I am my mother’s child and sometimes instead of patiently waiting to see what will happen in the movie, I try to predict the next scenes. One of my predictions was that the girls would be taken to a country like Saudi Arabia instead of the United States of America they had been promised. Saudi Arabia came to mind because the country is mostly in the headlines in Kenya for terrifying reasons such as a domestic worker from Kenya being found mysteriously dead.
My second prediction was that the girls would end up doing odd jobs instead of the ‘respected office work’ they had hoped for…I had expected anything, except what really happens in the movie – the young people being killed and their organs harvested for trafficking.
There are many causes of vulnerability in life but I think the worst form comes from poverty. The movie shows how poverty triple strips people – of power, dignity and dreams. It left me feeling cold and alive to what poverty can do to people. If the young women who were lured to their death did not come from poor families, they would not have been too eager to jump onto an obscure opportunity without asking all the right questions, especially going by all the concerns people in the community were already raising.
Moral authority
This movie is a cautionary tale for both parents and youth. Just because you are poor, it does not mean you blindly accept help, especially when such help is questionable. But I must hasten to add that I do not have any moral authority to speak about what anyone in extreme poverty should do. It may not always be possible to know where a shoe pinches except you walk a mile in it. However, I am convinced I speak for many when I say taking caution is better than having your child, sister, or brother turn up dead.
During my Fourth Year in university, I took a course on social planning in developing countries. One assignment took me to Kibra, Kenya’s largest informal settlement, to assess an NGO’s impact. To successfully write the report, a number of beneficiaries were identified and I conducted one on one interviews with them. This assignment gave me my first front-row seat to the informal settlement.
Read also: A day in the life of a 16-year-old girl
My most memorable interviewee was a 25-year-old who had a 13-year-old daughter! I had heard about teenage pregnancies but the idea of a girl having a baby when they are 12 was rather complicated for my then 21-year-old brain. The lady told me that because of the poverty she grew up in, she started relying on men for money from an early age, and they asked for sex in exchange. She said such was the lot of many young girls in her neighborhood.
However, not even this interview helped me fully appreciate how far poverty can push a woman.
Until three years later.
I read On Black Sisters Street by Chika Unigwe, and I have been haunted since. The novel follows the lives of several girls who are sold into sex slavery in Belgium. I had previously heard stories of people being trafficked for sex and it did not make sense. I wondered why, instead of risking their lives, these people didn’t just go to live with their aunts. This novel untangled the interiority and the complexities that bring women to the point where the only option they have is to be trafficked to Europe as sex slaves.
The choicelessness of poverty demands that policymakers and leaders address youth unemployment and support small businesses with urgency. "How far can people go to escape poverty?" I don't have a definitive answer. But based on the movie Mvera I recently watched, it seems people will go "to the ends of the world."
The writer is the Research & Impact Editor, NMG
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