E20 She Wasn’t Free to Say No. The Reality of Human Trafficking Few Talk About

Send us Fan MailEspérance means Hope. And somehow, across genocide, trafficking, and 20 years in captivity on American soil, she never stopped living up to her name. In this episode of Language Legacy, a special five-part series from From Where to Here where Alabama teenagers interview elders from immigrant and refugee communities, Espérance sits down with a young interviewer named Kirby and tells a story that most people in this country have never heard. She survived the 1994 Rwandan genocide as a young Tutsi woman, lost both parents to assassination, and was trafficked to the United States by an educated man who made her his slave. What followed was two decades of captivity across multiple US states and foreign countries, hidden in plain sight, in America. She escaped in 2013. And she's been fighting ever since.What makes this conversation so rare isn't just what Espérance survived — it's how she talks about it. Clear-eyed. Specific. Urgent. She draws a sharp line between sex trafficking, which dominates the public conversation, and labor trafficking and forced labor, which she argues is just as widespread and almost entirely ignored. She's pushing to change statute of limitations laws for survivors of modern-day slavery in the US — reform she believes could ripple into policy changes in countries around the world. She also talks about what kept her alive: a Rwandan proverb that carried her through decades of crisis, the memory of her mother's storytelling, grandmothers who held her in refugee camps, and a name given to her before any of it happened, a name that turned out to be a kind of prophecy. Kirby, a teenager from Alabama, asks her questions that most adults wouldn't know how to frame, and Espérance answers every single one.This is Language Legacy. Youth and elders. Questions that carry history forward. Stories that were almost lost, and weren't.Language Legacy is part of From Where to Here, the podcast exploring the cultures, languages, and human stories that connect us across borders. Hosted by Alexandra Lloyd, French-Canadian now based in Birmingham, Alabama.Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts, or watch the full series on YouTube. If this episode moved you, share it with one person who needs to hear it — that's how stories like Espérance's reach the people who need them most.----------📩 Let’s stay connected.Join my email list list for thoughtful reflections, resources, and behind-the-scenes moments I only share there.🎧 Subscribe & FollowFollow From Where to Here on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen so you don’t miss a conversation.📱 More language & culture, daily. Find me on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook @fromwheretoherepod🤎 If this episode meant something to you…Leave a review or share it with someone who’d love it too.