When freedom is 4,000 miles away

Marieme, who escaped from slavery in Mauritania and arrived in America in 1997, lives a simple but joyful life in Cincinnati.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Mauritania was the last country to abolish slavery. This story is part of a special report, "Slavery's Last Stronghold."

Cincinnati (CNN) -- On a cul-de-sac behind a strip mall in an anonymous neighborhood of this Midwestern city is an incredible story of escape from slavery.

Marieme's neighbors don't know her history. She mostly keeps to herself in her modest stucco house, 4,000 miles from her native Mauritania. Her six children know their mother's story well. She rescued them from slavery, too.

They are living a life they never could have hoped for in Mauritania, where an estimated 10% to 20% of people are enslaved.

The horrors Marieme endured as a slave in West Africa still dominate her dreams and flood her eyes at unexpected moments. In her first attempt to escape, she ran for two days and two nights through the Sahara Desert, barefoot, only to arrive at the home of another slave owner, who returned her to her master.

"They did everything to keep me from running away. See, they branded me so I wouldn't walk any more," she says in French, lifting up her fuchsia dress to show large patches of scar tissue on her calves and knees, caused by a metal poker. "But it's God that helped me."

A CNN reporter and videographer visited Marieme, 55, shortly after traveling to Mauritania to document slavery in a place where it is arguably more prevalent and more ingrained than anywhere else in the world. After witnessing the bleak reality there, we wanted to hear from someone who had risen up against the odds -- who had escaped not only her master but her country.

How had she done it? Who helped her along the way? And how did she end up in Ohio? We hoped to uncover a sort of formula for freedom. Perhaps parts of it could be replicated by hundreds of thousands of others.

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When freedom is 4,000 miles away