TRUE LIFE STORY OF A MIGRANT

TRUE LIFE STORY OF A MIGRANT

My name? You can call me Ese. I am eighteen years old, from Edo state. Two months ago, a friend of my aunt came to our house and said she could help me get a job abroad, she said she knows someone there who has been helping other people. We only had to provide about Six Hundred thousand naira for my transport to the Libya. My aunt, my mum and my elder brother all gathered the money and gave me some extra for the trip. Two weeks later, we were ready for the trip. 

From Edo state, we were transported to Kano, and then Katsina, and, I don’t know the names of all the places, but they said they had to follow that particular road because of Immigration and other officers that collect money from them on the road. We went through several bush paths and un-tarred road in a long lorry until we were completely in the desert. More than ninety percent of us girls were from Edo state and I think all the boys were Ibo because they were speaking more of Ibo language. The temperature at night was as cold as if you were in the refrigerator, and in the daytime, it gets so hot and dry as if we will faint. Because of the cold at night, we lie down next to each other so tight and some were just sleeping with each other just to keep warm because it was really cold. We traveled for about one day and a half because of the sandy road, and the lorry too.

On the evening of the first day, suddenly, we saw some guys like local vigilantes who stopped the truck. They asked all of us to come down. They had guns on them. They searched everybody and collected all the money, watches, phones and everything we had, but they didn’t touch the driver and his assistant. Later we were told that those guys were gendarmes. That marked a new chapter of suffering for us. Usually when the truck stops and is ready to take off again, we all alight, so the truck can move and we start jumping back in as the truck is in motion. The truck cannot move in the sand when it is full. We all jumped in as the truck continued and we arrived at another junction very far from where we were robbed, in fact, it looked like another country. We were on the outskirts of Libya, the border town I guess. There we met another group of rough-looking guys, but they were different from the first set of guys. These ones didn’t ask us to come down and give them our belongings, no; they simply started shooting at the truck, at us. The truck driver quickly jumped out, his assistant too and so did all of us in the rear. It was nothing like I had ever seen nor heard about my entire life. They kept shooting as we were jumping. Once you get to the ground, just keep running, wherever and however fast your legs can take you. We ran hungry, tired and thirsty. I cannot confirm to you an exact number, but they must have killed not less than fifteen of us that night. The rest of us hid everywhere imaginable – in holes, under the sands, behind a mountain of sand… everywhere.

In the early hours of the next morning, where we hid shaking and dozing, soldiers dressed in their military uniform started fishing us out one after the other, they simply came to where we were as if they were the ones that hid us there. They also had a truck where they loaded us onto. I didn’t hear a word of what they were saying, they didn’t speak English either, but, one word was very constant on their lips – terrorists. That’s what they called us as we climbed their truck. When they were done fishing us out, they moved us to a camp – a prison camp outside the town. God! Pray you never experience half of what we went through in that camp. We were fed once a day, and given a big bottle of water once in two days. We were allowed to bath once in two days as well, that’s all the good that camp offered. Every morning, we were brought out in batches, poured water on, and flogged until our backs bled. Every morning. I didn’t know that the name they called us as they loaded us on the truck was a prelude to the punishment they had planned for us.

If anyone died, they had a truck awaiting such missions, they simply threw the corpse onto the truck and drove off with it. Whatever they did with the dead bodies! They would come the next morning, read out something to us in their language – Arabic I guess, they didn’t wait for our response, we didn’t have any anyway because we didn’t understand anything they said, and then… the routine commences again. We were flogged too much.

For the guys there was no redemption, they will be flogged every morning just like the ladies that did not decode the message. Soon I learned that I could save myself early death; if the soldiers did not understand English, they could at least understand signs. So I made a plea sign to one of our tormentors, and beckoned on him after the morning flogging, he came close enough to hear me say: sex, honestly I did not know whether he understood, but my greatest prayer at that moment was that he did so that I would not have to die the way others did. The man pulled me out and took me to his cubicle – our tormentors’ quarters in the prison premises, he pointed his finger at me warning me, I guess not to try anything funny, then he left me there and went out to continue whatever other work was out there for him. That man slept with me whenever he wanted; whichever way he wanted. His friends too came and did same with me. It was not long before I discovered that some other girls soon followed and were kept as sex slaves by these soldiers. That continued for one week. We escaped flogging for one week but I had the most tormenting sex experience of my life in that week.

The following week, someone from the Nigerian embassy came after the morning routine, I peeped through the window and saw him discussing with the man who usually read whatever to us every morning. In the afternoon he came back and we were assembled. He addressed us and told us that the Nigerian government is not aware of our presence in that place because we entered the country illegally, but that the head soldier contacted him that there were some blacks at their prison facility and he was sure that they were mostly Nigerians. He said he had pleaded with them to release us so we can return to our country, he said that is the best he could do. We could not be more grateful for the freedom, not even thinking at the time how we would get home, there was nothing we wanted more.

They got a driver for the truck that brought us, we drove at night and came to the Algerian border. The border soldiers there were good to us, they gave us water and some food, not enough for everyone, but we had a breath of fresh air. They told us they didn’t have a place for us to stay but showed us a path where smugglers used to pass through, they warned that it was dangerous that we could get killed, but that was the only help they could render since we didn’t have papers.

We needed money, we needed transport. Everyone went their way from there, but there was only one thing on my mind: how to get back home. That was when another phase of hustling began; I had to serve the smugglers who were on the move, I am sure other girls did the same too, it made no difference to me anymore whatever they did to my body. Three days later, I got enough money to transport to Nigeria through a similar but better road than we came. We arrived in Kano; I don’t know how, but that was how far my money brought me. I borrowed the driver’s phone and called my sister in Abuja to tell her I was in Kano, and needed transport to come to her, she told me she was also surviving by hustling that I should just hustle and get the transport money. I went to a place called Sabon-gari – someone told me that there is where non-indigenes live. I got to a place I think it is called Sanyaolu road and saw several girls, immediately I knew what they did for a living, so I met one of them who said there was no problem I could join them hopefully I could get lucky that day. And I did. I already got my transport from the first three men that slept with me, but I needed extra money, so I lasted three days there too and moved on to join my sister in Abuja just two days ago. That was how my whole life was completely altered in a period of four weeks. The cold in my chest, the stripes on my back, the pain in my private part, my health, the emotional torture, I cannot even count the number of men I’ve slept with within four weeks, sometimes I just want to die, all these I brought on myself just because I wanted to travel abroad at all cost.