Mende Nazer is one of many people who have endured modern slavery. At the age of twelve or thirteen, she was kidnapped in a raid on her village by a military gang, one of whom raped her before selling her into slavery.
After spending six years as a household slave to a family in the capital of Sudan, she was passed on to a relative of the family who was married to the acting chargé d'affaires at Sudan's embassy in London.
Escaping to a safe house in London with the help of a Sudanese man, she applied for asylum, which was initially refused in 2002 because the UK claimed that “slavery is not considered persecution”. Mende faced deportation to Sudan with all the risks that involved.
A massive campaign managed to reverse that decision and gave Mende settlement status.
The confident, lively dramatisation of this story, first performed in 2010 and now touring in a fresh production, opens briefly with a scene in London where Mende, staying at a safe house, meets a journalist. We are then taken back to her earlier years with her family in the Nuba mountains of southern Sudan.
We meet this affectionate family, see her brother taking part in a wrestling contest and hear of some more troubling things, such as her female circumcision and an arranged marriage with a consequent bride price. A bright, communal dance is one of the final moments of this section before the village is raided.
Kidnapped by the gang that raided her village, she is sold as a slave servant to a reasonably well-off family in Khartoum, where the woman Rahab (Sara Faraj), who gives her the name Yebit, forces her to work most hours of the day, to eat out of a separate bowl rather than the dishes the family used and told she has to make sure she never smells.
Yolanda Ovide as Mende effectively conveys the young girl’s diminishing self-confidence and growing distrust of others. Injured by Rahab knocking her to the ground, she requires medical care. The care worker, sensing there may be something more than the physical injury bothering Mende, tries to get her to confide in her, but Mende is too nervous and scared of what might happen if she does.
It is only in London, when the family she is sent to serve go away on holiday leaving her with their friends, that she takes the opportunity to make a break from slavery and in the process gets to phone members of her family who are still alive.
The cast of nine confidently performs multiple roles. Despite the story containing many harsh, terrible moments from rape to murder, which are never explicitly shown, the upbeat mood of the show carries a message of hope.