I dropped out of secondary school four years ago when I got pregnant with my baby girl. There was no money to restart my education. My mother had left my polygamous father years ago, leaving me and my twin sister with him at our home in central Nigeria, although he was barely there.
I started working in another village at a betting shop for a monthly salary of 10,000 naira (£4.50). But in August this year, after one month, I decided to go back home. My journey involved going through the city of Makurdi where I slept overnight at a friend’s house. I was 19.
That evening, we were out when a guy told us his girlfriend had a similar shop in Ivory Coast and needed three sales girls. She would pay a monthly salary of 50,000 CFA (N140,700, or £64) each. I asked him if it was sex work, but he denied it.
My friend was afraid so she said no, but he was a sweet talker and swore in the name of God that it was a legitimate job. My twin sister was keen to come, but I told her to let me go first.
We lodged together in a hotel room ahead of my trip the next day and since he did not try to touch me at all, I thought he was a good man. He gave me a phone and bought a bus ticket for me. The journey from Makurdi to Abidjan took seven days on the road and as I had no identification, I was told to tell immigration that I was going to visit my sister.
In late August, I got to Yakassé in south-east Ivory Coast. My madam picked me up and took me to a hotel. She was a woman in her 30s. Her ashawo name (an alias given to sex workers in west African creole) was Blessing and she told me mine would be Destiny.
She took me to a ghetto – a small place of brothels and maquis [open-air restaurants] – and told me immediately that I was indebted to her for 1.5m CFAs (£1,900). She was being nice to me, she said, her other girls had paid 2m CFAs or more.
When I asked what the money was for, she did not respond. I started feeling bad. After a few days, she came to me with a small notebook that she wanted to do accounting in, so I should give proceeds of my work to her. When I said I had not done any work, she beat me. She beat me with everything she could find.
I kept insisting that I couldn’t do sex work, but she took me to the market to buy “hustling clothes” – short skimpy clothing – and soap. Because I’m skinny, she bought me drugs so I would be fat and grow a bigger butt. I fell ill after I started working but she forced me to continue. I didn’t know what the illness was and there was no way for me to get treatment. When I didn’t work, she wouldn’t feed me.
There was no one to complain to. I couldn’t speak French and had to use Google Translate to talk to people. So I started working, but also planning to escape.
My rates were 2,000 CFA (£2.50) for a short time or 10,000 CFA for overnight. But there weren’t enough customers because it wasn’t cocoa harvest season [usually around the last quarter of the year]. From my earnings, I paid 4,000 CFA every two days as rent for the room I was staying in.
Very early every day, my madam would come to collect my earnings and give me 1,000 CFA (£1.25) from it as my daily meal allowance. She would take money out of it for her own food before putting the rest towards paying my debt, which she would write down in her book.
The son of the hotel owner said he was in love with me, even though he had a wife and two children. Before he could help me escape, my madam took me to Abidjan [a city in Ivory Coast] and sold me to her friend. I don’t know how much I cost, but my new madam gave me a different name, Sweet. I was still feverish, but she forced me to have sex with men or I would not eat.
After three days, I got into the routine of sitting at the bar and crying. One man tried to take advantage of me, taking me to his house full of drunk boys and refusing to pay me. But I outsmarted him and we ended up at the police station.
The police worked with the Nigerian embassy to ambush my new madam and arrest her. My old madam started sending me messages. She said she would do rituals to make me mad because I wanted to put her in trouble even though she had helped me.
I’m waiting now to return to Nigeria and I feel happy. I can’t wait to be home.
*Surname withheld for privacy
As told to Eromo Egbejule
