Trapped: In Case You Missed Joy’s Story on CNN

Introduction:

At 10, Joy’s family took her to Lagos from Benin and sold her to a man who kept her as a domestic slave until the sudden disappearance of the man which made Joy homeless. At 15, Joy had started roaming the street of Lagos, making her an easy target for traffickers. Joy’s story reveals something profound that needs urgent attention.

Joy’s Story

Joy’s family was very poor so at 10, her family sold her to a man in Lagos who kept her as a domestic slave. When she was 15, the man suddenly disappeared and Joy ended up homeless in Lagos where she was an easy target for human traffickers.

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She fell in love with a man she met and lived with him for a year. This man then arranged for work for her in Mali. However when they arrived there, she discovered that he was in fact a fraud; that she sold her to a trafficker for 1000 euro.

“When we got to Mali,” says Joy. “I was surprised he sold me to somebody in Mali”.

Joy’s trafficker forced her to the long journey through the desert so she could be sold in Morocco before going to Europe to make money in prostitution for him. She travelled with the group of men and women led by the man who had bought them.

“When we passed through the desert, we faced so many difficulties. They can just beat you; they can do you anything they want, because you don’t have anybody that you can go to. The only thing is to go back to their system. What they ask you to do you’ll do it in order not to have any problem. Every time I cry.

“What kind of life is this? But I’m already inside. I can’t go back. We eat once a day. We eat maybe from 7 to 8 in the evening. After you eat, that time till the next day in the night again before you can eat. I pray to God for forgiveness and to help me out of this situation.

“The difficulties I have seen in the desert. So many friends I’ve met. So many friends have died. There’s a girl I know. When we were going together in the desert, this girl was my good friend. And she was pregnant. And because of this no good living. There’s no good food, no good treatment. She didn’t have any treatment.

“Sometimes, one day, she didn’t even eat anything. And in her stomach there’s a baby. Every time she got sick. It was at the end of the day when she want to deliver the baby she didn’t survive it because there was no good treatment. So she died”.

Joy was trafficked to Morocco then Spain before she ended in Copenhagen, Denmark where the Airport Police arrested and imprisoned her for fraud after admitting she used another person’s document. She spent two months in jail. She was deported back to Lagos, Nigeria.

Arriving in Nigeria, she was detained for four hours, but was able to negotiate her release by paying the authorities 100 euro that she had received from the Danish authority.

“I am in Nigeria now,” she narrates. “It is very terrible, very difficult. When I was in prison in Denmark, I think it’s better than here in Nigeria moving in the street doing nothing. It’s a very difficult place. There’s no help – nothing. You can’t even walk in the day. Someone would hold you and rob you or even kill you. No job to do”.

Joy finally found shelter at the redeemed Christian Church of God on the recommendation that the Church could offer help. The pastor prayed for her as she began a new life. But Joy didn’t realize that the Church wanted funding in order for her to stay with them.

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Joy’s last hope is the dream of finding her family.

The CNN crew then followed her to Benin. Meanwhile the Benin women in Denmark had told Mildwater that she could only understand their plight after visiting Benin City in Nigeria.

The narrator implied that everyone in the community knows the kind of job young women do in Europe. And that going to Europe is a kind of social status. The community believes it’s like a curse to go to Europe and come back without lots of money.

The community will then put pressure on you to go back for the money, irrespective of how you get it. Women often sign contracts with the sponsors who would collect their money by all means possible.

Within ten minutes in a village in Benin, Mildwater was approached by mothers who offered their children to her. “He’s already free for you,” says one woman who had already given her child. In all, Mildwater was offered four children.

These women say their children do not go to school because of lack of facilities. However, they want them to go to school but not in Nigeria or Africa, because according to them, the suffering is too much.

By Hakeem Babalola

Copyright 2008 mysmallvoice@yahoo.com