Mende Nazer Foundation

"Slave" from Mende Nazer is a bestseller around the world. 30 years ago she was born in a little sudanese village. When she turns 12 slave traders came and attacked the village. She was raped, battered and bought to a rich family in Khartum. There she was concluded for eight years as a slave. Her family thought she had been murdered by the slave traders. But Mende Nazer worked, 18 hours a day, with no payment, without free days. She lived like an animal.

In the year 2000 she was sent by her hostfather with false documents to Europe to work for his sister. But even in Europe nothing changed for Mende Nazer. She was still a slave, locked in a house in London, frightened of the foreign environment. Fortunately she met a Sudanese, who helped her to escape and to hide.

Mende Nazer started her fight for asylum. And she learned to live. Her whole life she was a slave. She had no education and didn't have knoledge about normal things. Mende Nazer had to learn to be free. For her was any little event an adventure.

But there was no happy end. The sudanese diplomate said Mendes story would be wrong. She would have been a paid maid and no one would have locked her. Mende Nazer had to fight. Her greatest adventure was to return to her family in Nuba-Mountains in Sudan.

The day of her escape she met the british journalist Damien Lewis. She told him her story and he wrote it down. Together with the filmmaker Mareike Schomerus he attended Mende Nazer for six years.

In the year 2006 she became a british citizen and could visit her family in the Nuba-Mountains, where the people can live in peace since the Bürgerstock-contract was signed.