Barcelona August 2001

A long, lonely, lingering illness in a Spanish hospital, a once beautiful young body, wasted and emaciated by contagious diseases, a recent past that had included horrific sexual mutilation of her genital and anal areas and finally, death alone one morning and burial by strangers in an unmarked mass paupers grave on the outskirts of Barcelona. This was the fate of one of the hundreds of young Nigerian girls who have flocked to this part of Spain in the last 18 months.

Who was this young woman? Why did an educated 23 year old Nigerian woman end her too short life in this manner? As I sit here writing this, looking at the pitifully few personal belongings the hospital handed me - a pair of small silver earrings, two cuddly toys, a pink elephant and a grey dog, I wonder. She was, of course, someone’s daughter and granddaughter. Surely also, someone’s sister, cousin, aunt or niece. She would have had friends and schoolmates. Will she be mourned? Will those who encouraged her to come to Europe care that she is dead? Or have we become so dehumanised that the death of one of our children, our relatives, our friends, so long as it happens in Europe, happens in the in the struggle to make a living, is now acceptable?

What did I know of her? She had been admitted to the hospital 6 weeks before, suffering from Tubercular Meningitis. When I was contacted by the hospital and went to see her for the first time, she was painfully thin, emaciated and so weak that I had spent a large portion of the time scratching her head and moving her legs to a more comfortable position. because her muscles were so wasted she could not move any of her limbs. Her eyes were always unfocused – seeing into a distance that I couldn’t begin to understand or reach. She cried out often that she just wanted to die. She was confused and disoriented. Sometimes her name was J, another, E and then again, M. She couldn’t say where she had been living before she was brought to the hospital, or remember phone numbers of any friends or the people she had been living with. She spoke sometimes in English and sometimes in Bini. She couldn’t remember or wouldn’t give, the address of her family in Nigeria. The hospital was concerned that someone so ill appeared to be so alone and were hoping I could help to find some family or friends who would visit her.

I returned a few times with some Jollof rice and fruits like mango and paw paw. Eventually, the hospital told me she was cured of the illness and should be moved to a rehabilitation centre to undergo physiotherapy to help her regain use of her limbs and build up her strength. She was beginning to have more confidence in me and told me her surname and the secondary school she had attended in Benin City. With this information, I contacted our Embassy in Madrid, hoping they would have the resources to put an announcement in a newspaper in Benin, so her family could be informed. But they seem to be inundated with similar cases and were impatient: “How did she come to Spain? How can a 23 year old not know her own address in Nigeria? Was she registered with us? Tell the hospital to contact the Ambassador.”

The last time I saw her, she promised that the next time I came she would tell me more about herself and her story of how she came to be here, so I hoped I would be able to make contact with her family myself.

But here was to be no next time. As I was preparing some more food to take to her one morning,, the hospital Social Services telephoned. “We’re very sorry, but X died about an hour ago. Can you come to the hospital to see the doctor and help with the paper work.” I saw the doctor who told me they would have to do an autopsy because they really did not know why she died. She was cured of the Meningitis and were planning to discharge her once they had found a centre that would accept her. This was when I learnt of the terrible sexual mutilation she had suffered

So why did she die? Had she been so abused and degraded that she had lost the will to live?

I have to admit I am angry. I am extremely angry with those in Nigeria, especially in the Benin area, where the majority of young women walking the streets of Barcelona come from (some who appear to be as young as 13). Do not pretend you do not know that when you send your daughter, your sister, your niece to Europe, you are sending them to be sexually used and abused. Do not be fooled by talk of training in hairdressing or fashion design. There is no training other than learning to say the price for sex in Spanish.

What a waste of the future of Nigeria. This young woman is not the only one, nor the first. Many die in the desert on their way here. Others die as she did, in a hospital , like chickens, with no names, having been given all kinds of diseases by the men who pay them about the price of a drink and a packet of cigarettes to have the freedom to do all kinds of practices their wives or girlfriends would not condone. Is this why you had children? Was it for this that you sent your daughters to school?

Let me tell you how it works. A sexual pyramid system has been created. Your daughter or your sister is brought here. She already owes money to the Mafia that made the arrangements. Once here, she finds that what she earns is not enough to live on and to pay the Mafia that brought her. So she is encouraged to find friends who also want to come to Europe. She is promised a small commission for putting friends in contact with the mafia who will then bring them to Europe. Her friends, having to pay her commission and the mafia, find that they also can’t make enough money, so they try to get more friends to come, in order to also earn some commission.... And so the pyramid is created. Meanwhile, with all of this, the market becomes saturated so the price of each sexual service goes down - your daughter needs to work harder, more often. To attract customers, your daughter has to offer either more and more way- out practices, or provide them for less money. Who benefits? Not your daughters, but the men who can demand more sex for less money and the mafia who can demand more money for less ultimate income.

As the World conference on Racism in opens in South Africa and there have been calls for reparations to be paid for the suffering caused by the slavery of generations ago, it is shameful to see how families in Nigeria are now colluding voluntarily in a new slavery. The worst kind of slavery - sending young women to be the sexual slaves of the same people who enslaved our ancestors all those years ago.

Back to the young woman who has died. As I began to get to know her, I saw that as she got stronger, there was a certain strength and determination in her eyes and voice as she expressed frustration when she wasn’t understood; there was a beauty in her face the few times she smiled. She was a young woman who, in another era, could have contributed to Nigeria economically, politically, socially. Although I didn’t really know her, I mourn her passing and the waste of her life. Do you?

If anybody reading this is wondering what has happened to a daughter, a sister, a cousin or school friend who attended IMAGUERO SECONDARY SCHOOL, SAPELE ROAD, BENIN CITY until 1994 and left for Europe in the past 18 months and thinks this young woman could be her, please contact the newspaper for more in formation.

Judi Oshowole