It was a Saturday morning at the Amitofo Care Centre, a boarding school for orphans and destitute children in Malawi, and Francis, 19, was playing football with his friends. He had lived at the school since he was 11, after his father died and he and his mother had been chased out of the family home by relatives. That day he was in a buoyant mood—he was about to graduate from Amitofo and hoped to pursue a career in medicine. 

The football match was interrupted when a fellow student told Francis that Brandson Njunga, the human-resources manager, wanted to meet him (Francis’s name has been changed to protect his identity). Francis claims Njunga said he had a job for him: he needed Francis to travel three hours by bus to a town called Liwonde, next to a national park of the same name, to pick up a parcel. If the trip was successful, Njunga would pay him 35,000 kwacha (about $20)—more than most Malawians earn in a week.

Francis says Njunga told him that if the police stopped his bus at a roadblock—something that happens regularly in Malawi—he should lie and tell them that he was travelling to look for work. Francis remembers feeling uncomfortable: “I asked myself, why did he tell me to say that instead of telling them the truth?”

But Francis knew Njunga wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was also tempted by the prospect of earning some cash. He took a quick shower at his dorm and then set off down a dirt track to the main road. Two minibuses and a bicycle taxi later, he had arrived at his destination: a squat brick and concrete lodge, surrounded by a leafy garden.

Inside, Francis found three men in the middle of breakfast. They invited him to sit down to a plate of eggs and chips and a cup of tea while one of the men went to fetch the parcel. The man returned and handed Francis a plastic tub, which contained something wrapped in newspaper. “It wasn’t that heavy,” Francis recalled. In low voices, the men told him not to tamper with it. They didn’t tell him what was inside.