"I used to cry day and night because I left my mother when I was already 10 years old and I have not seen her again," she said.

Her father tore her away from the family and took her to Nigeria, where she was forced to work. She eventually was abandoned by her father and became a family's housekeeper.

Amavi, an outspoken girl dubbed "Happiness" because she's always smiling, isn't alone in her experience. In 2003, the U.S. Embassy reports, several thousand children were trafficked each year in Benin.

But the country isn't unique. Child slavery is found in more than 60 percent of countries on the African continent. Stand Up for Africa, a human rights monitoring group, has reported that more than a half-million African children work as slaves each year.

Yet there is reason for hope and some happiness among young people in this Western African country.

The Red Cross has helped set up watchdog panels in about 100 villages to educate parents about what could happen to their children if they are sold. In Cotonou, a major commerce center in the country's south, other international groups have set up orphanages.

Amavi's refuge has been Terre des Hommes, a temporary shelter that provides about 100 kids a safe place to sleep and eat. The French-operated home, one of several in Benin, helps children who suffer psychological trauma, malnutrition and ill health.

Survival is a driving factor behind child trafficking. Desperate parents struggling to feed their children in remote rural areas often see Benin's cities as a cure for their children -- a place that can provide work, food, shelter and schooling, as well as financial support for the family staying in the village.

A common result? Parents sell their kids.

"A child represents an investment, and when he becomes too heavy a load for the family, it is possible to entrust him to others. The commercialization of society and the system of 'entrustment' has become a source of revenue for the parents," according to the 2006 "Rights of the Child in Benin" report by the World Organization against Torture, an international coalition of independent human rights groups.

Child traffickers offer such desperate parents $10 and a piece of cloth per child, guaranteeing the child will be provided a home, food and education in the city, according to the report.

Only later do the children learn that their parents have been misled -- and by then it's too late. Children work as domestic servants, market, factory or mine workers, or farm laborers. Some are forced to beg on the streets or sell illegal drugs. They are beaten if they disobey, and they're prohibited from contacting their parents.

Traffickers lure girls, most between the ages of 7 and 12, from their villages, promising a bicycle or other substantial gifts in exchange for work, according to USAID Benin. Many are forced to become prostitutes. If they refuse, they are starved or beaten, according to the U.S. agency.

"Benin is a transit hub for the trafficking of child slaves through West Africa," stated a 2004 Stand Up for Africa report. "The trafficking of children from Benin to neighboring (relatively wealthy) countries has become a booming, highly organized business," which observers say has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry.

In addition to passing several anti-child-trafficking laws, the Beninese government in 2004 established a national child protection committee; signed an agreement with Nigeria last year to prevent trafficking of women and children and punish those who break the law; and financed a three-year United Nations initiative to investigate reports about endangered children and get them help.

But a lot of work remains to be done so Benin doesn't see more children like Amavi.

"I'd like to ask if you would take my name and my address for the people that are around you," Amavi pleaded with the Y-Press reporting team, "so that (I will) be able to see my mom."

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Keisha Mitchell, 18; Elisabeth Randall, 17, Chris Reissaus, 17 and Jonathan Gainer, 14.