Two children have been brought in early June 2020, without their parents’ knowledge, by a shepherd in transit to the gold panning site of Tingrela to work there. Tingrela is a town in Ivory Coast but that borders Mali. Each of the two children is expected to receive twenty thousand CFA francs as a monthly payment for the hard and arduous work on the site.

According to the children, their living conditions at the gold panning site were unbearable because they did not have sufficient food and drinks, and the housing conditions and sleeping time were bad.

Every day they were given a few silver coins to go out and buy food and one day one of the children, instead of buying something to eat, went to a phone booth and dialed his father’s phone number that he had memorized. When his father found out that it was his missing son, he went to see the Mayor of the Commune to help him bring his son back.

That’s how the deputy mayor took matters into his own hands. Immediately the Town Hall contacted the child’s uncle who lives in the town of Tingrela to pick him up with the manager of the phone booth. The latter went to pick up the child who said he was together with another boy. The father called one of the child’s aunts who also resides in Tingrela and she brought the child with her and then looked for a way to bring him back to the village. The other boy stayed with his uncle in accordance with his parents in the village.

Both children are at school. Since classes are closed for COVID-19 reasons, one child helps his father with the field work in the village while the other child stayed at his uncle’s house in Tingrela.

The NGO ENDA Mali, partner of the WNCB Alliance, is responsible for the successful removal of the children from the gold panning site through its interventions in the Cercle de Bougouni. The NGO has trained local councilors and populations on several themes, which has enabled them to have expertise in the support and transfer of children and young people on the move.