Unbroken chains: My untold story of human trafficking

It was a sunny morning in September 2016, and my 12-year-old self and my mum were walking to the market to buy foodstuffs as we do every Saturday. The journey is usually 15 minutes from our single room in the slums of Lagos,
Nigeria to the market, but it took 30 minutes to get there that special day.

This was because when we got to the last junction where everyone crosses the road into the market, Mum stepped on a very small flyer that looked like a 100-dollar bill. She picked it up discretely thinking that someone must have dropped it.

However, after taking a much closer look and reading it, we noticed that it was an advertisement that read “Free jobs in Italy, as an African hairstylist, and as a babysitter”. I was quite confused, as it read that there was a job as a ‘babysitter’, whereas mum was overjoyed at the realization that she could apply for a job as a hairstylist because, she was the best hairstylist in the slums, where we lived.

We were about to cross the road when the traffic light turned green, but just then, a man in a red hoodie and black shorts, in black crocs and red socks approached us and told us to wait. He pulled the flyer from Mom’s hand and scribbled some things on it and gave it back to us as he run off on a phone call. We read the flyer again and saw that he had crossed out the ‘baby sister’ and written ‘babysitter’. It now looked like this; “free jobs in Italy, as an African hairstylist, and as a babysister babysitter”.

Later that evening, Mum stepped out of the house to make more inquiries about the flyer we saw while I was doing my homework.

She came home after about three hours, and by that time I had finished all my homework and chores. I asked what took her so long, and she replied that she spent one hour trying to get more information, and the other two trying to find and then had a long meeting with the man we saw when we were about to cross the road earlier that day. She mentioned that the fee for relocating was ₦150,000,000. She also commented that you had to be fifteen and above to go, and I was just 3 years away from being fifteen so I could stay home while she worked.

Mom explained to me that even though we didn’t have enough to pay, I could sell items on the street after school and she could find other jobs to do. She also stated that she would find the money and persuade the people running the program (free jobs in Italy), to help me go with her. It took mom about a week afterward to finally persuade me to go with her on this trip and so we worked hard to raise the money.

We were able to get the money within a few weeks and paid. When we did, we were given a date (by the same man my mom saw on our way to the market) to come to the airport for our flight. Mom sold everything and rented out our single room.

I gave some old clothes out and we each had one bag. On the day, we arrived at the airport very excited about our future. When we got there, we saw the woman who was assigned to us for the flight to Italy. She asked us what our names were, and if we were there alone. We told her the information and that we were there alone. She directed us to get to the car we were assigned to. We got in and we were driven to the local dock.

At the dock, I asked Mum to call Dad and tell him where we were. She said that she didn’t know his number and that he probably wouldn’t have cared since he left when I was a baby, claiming that he was going to give us “a better life”; he never came back. We saw other people waiting with unhappy faces when we got there.

At the dock, a ship arrived and took us to Haiti. Mum told me that it was just to recheck our documents, but she was wrong, instead, we had to form a long line from the ship to the dock there. We had to stand there, so our documents and passports could be taken away and we could change our clothes. By this time we knew that something bad had happened. We had been scammed. We became very scared and mom couldn’t stop crying. We all had to change our clothes together (even underwear), whiles the traffickers watched us.

We boarded the ship again and we were shipped to New Delhi, India. When we got there, we were driven to a brothel where we stayed. I prayed to God every moment as I cried that my mum and I wouldn’t lose our dignity and that we would stay righteous and holy.

We were assigned our jobs soon after and neither my mum nor I worked as prostitutes, or as sex workers, or for sex commercials. I was forced to beg and sell things on the street, and my mum was forced to work three different jobs; as a nanny for a family a salon worker, and a cleaner at a hotel for long hours.

We didn’t receive any money for our work. All the money we made went to the traffickers. If we didn’t make enough money by the end of the month, we would be beaten and abused. We made about $20 000 every year for the next three years. If we made anything lower than $ 15,000, we would be beaten and thrown back out on the streets.

This went on for about three years and we started to lose faith in God. We prayed all the time, yet we were still in a very bad situation. Mom no longer looked beautiful and hopeful. I had learned many tricks to survive and reach out for help.

Sometimes I was caught and caned but, I was determined to save us. We wanted to escape but didn’t know how to. But, a few days after the third year- I found a flyer that someone had dropped on the floor. It gave an emergency hotline to call if you were being human trafficked. I used the phone my mother had given me secretly and called the hotline. On the call, I explained what had happened to us. After a few hours, they brought a car to pick me up.

At first, I didn't trust the car driver, but I trusted the organization. I took them to mom's second job and she was also rescued there. She explained to me that she would call the homeowners and tell them that she was going to the town to buy foodstuff to cook for the family she was working for. She came and we were taken to Mumbai to get new passports and documents.

The organization was working with the police, and they got our passports and documents back after a few days. They helped my mum get a job in the UK and arranged for me to go to a school there. They also helped us regain our faith in God and we eventually gained asylum in the U.K. We are now living happy Christian lives here in the U.K. but I can’t forget the horrible things I went through. It has affected me so much that I cry sometimes. It has been 6 years since that faithful Saturday; time flies by quickly.