I was forced to have sex or I wouldn’t eat. Then I found a way to escape my traffickers | Gift*

I Four years ago I dropped out of high school when I became pregnant with my little girl. There was no money to resume my education. My mother had abandoned my polygamous father years ago, leaving me and my twin sister with him in our home in central Nigeria, even though he was rarely there.

I started working in a betting shop in another village for a monthly salary of 10,000 naira (£4.50). But in August this year, after a month, I decided to go back home. My journey took me through the city of Makurdi, where I stayed with a friend. I was 19.

That evening we were out and about when a man told us that his girlfriend had a similar business in Ivory Coast and needed three saleswomen. She would each pay a monthly salary of CFA 50,000 (N140,700 or £64). I asked him if it was sex work, but he said no.

My friend was scared so she said no, but he was a nice talker and swore in the name of God that it was a legitimate job. My twin sister really wanted to come with me, but I told her to let me go first.

We stayed in a hotel room together before my trip the next day and since he didn’t try to touch me at all, I thought he was a good man. He gave me a phone and bought me a bus ticket. The journey from Makurdi to Abidjan took seven days and since I had no ID, I was told to tell immigration that I was visiting my sister.

At the end of August I arrived in Yakassé in the southeast of Ivory Coast. My wife picked me up and took me to a hotel. She was a woman in her thirties. Her ashawo Her name (a pseudonym for sex workers in West African Creole) was Blessing and she told me mine was Destiny.

She took me to a ghetto – a small place full of brothels and maquis [open-air restaurants] – and immediately told me I owed her 1.5 million CFAs (£1,900). She was nice to me, she said, her other girls paid 2 million CFAs or more.

When I asked what the money was for, she didn’t answer. I started to feel bad. After a few days she came to me with a small notebook in which she wanted to do accounting so that I should give her the proceeds of my work. When I said I hadn’t done any work, she hit me. She hit me with everything she could find.

I insisted that I wasn’t allowed to 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 medicine to make me fat and have a bigger butt. After I started working, I got sick, but she forced me to keep going. I didn’t know what the disease was and there was no way for me to get treatment. If I didn’t work, she didn’t give me anything to eat.

There was no one to complain to. I didn’t know French and had to use Google Translate to talk to people. So I started working but also planning to escape.

My prices were 2,000 CFA (£2.50) for a short term or 10,000 CFA for an overnight stay. But there weren’t enough customers because it wasn’t the 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 where I lived.

My wife came very early every day to collect my earnings and gave me 1,000 CFA (£1.25) as my daily meal allowance. She would withdraw money from it for her own food before using the rest to pay off my debts, which she wrote down in her book.

The hotel owner’s son said he was in love with me even though he had a wife and two children. Before he could help me escape, my wife took me to Abidjan [a city in Ivory Coast] and sold me to her friend. I don’t know how much it cost me, but my new wife gave me another name, Sweet. I still had a fever, but she forced me to have sex with men or I wouldn’t eat.

After three days I started sitting at the bar and crying. A man tried to take advantage of me by taking me to his house full of drunk boys and refusing to pay me. But I outsmarted him and we ended up in the police station.

The police worked with the Nigerian Embassy to ambush and arrest my new wife. My old woman started sending me messages. She said she would perform rituals to make me angry because I wanted to get her into trouble even though she had helped me.

I am now waiting to return to Nigeria and I am happy. I can’t wait to be home.

*Last name not provided for privacy reasons