The Vidomegon Children
"Man preys on man". This is almost a truism. Benin children are well cared for when they live with their parents’, but when they are entrusted to another family to be for support, they are treated like objects.
In Benin, the phenomenon of placing children has
come to a tragic end over the past few years. In Benin traditional
society it was a common practice and even a privilege for the real
family, but this has gone astray. In the past, placed children could
enjoy, like those in the adopted family, a good education, learning a
trade, or even training towards to their future integration in social
life. In evolved society, which is aimed ever more at the need of money
— particularly in urban centres, where couples work mostly as
employees — placing children does not comply anymore to the
same rules. A child is now an object of exploitation, a beast of
burden. It is at everyone’s beck and call, even when they
originate comes from relatives or relatives by marriage. We often see
Vidomegons beaten or ill-treated and abused, bearing on
their body the marks of blows received and disabled as a consequence.
Today Vidomegon stands for ill-treatment.
The girls, have for the most part become ambient
vendors, and are often lead into prostitution. When they cannot bear it
anymore, some finally run away and are then at risk to the dangers of
the street.
The phenomenon of Vidomegons constitutes
a real problem of society in Benin. It is in the southern region of the
country, where life is deeply transformed, that it is the most
emphasized. A survey by the Ministry of Social Protection, assesses at
more than 100,000 the number of children placed in the two biggest
cities of the country, Cotonou and Porto-Novo. They come from villages
of the centre and the South of the country, and for the majority they
belong to families with more than six children, whose polygamous father
, is either a farmer, or a fisherman (62 %).
This system is very wide-spread in Benin and
research into this topic has shown some areas as being children
suppliers. Among these nine clearly defined areas appears Toviklin.
Indeed, in this city 54% of the families place their children and 46%
among them are in domestic or ambient vending.
There are three kinds of placement:
1. Sale placement. This is a sort of child abandonment under a paid contract that can vary from 15,000 to 20,000 F CFA. The child joins an other « family » which is not his and which grants him a new social identity and the status of “protected” person;
2. Half-paid placement. This is practised as virtually a temporary contract;
3. Simple placement in lieu of child care.
• Slave children : according to the Benin daily « L’Aurore » (the Dawn), which quotes a UNICEF report, "Vidomegon girls as well as boys work an average seventeen to eighteen hours a day without rest and are never provided with schooling".
