Pictured above: Originally from Nigeria, Elizabeth Ekere Imeh is a survivor of sex trafficking and currently lives in Cote d’Ivoire.
“Seul?”
“Seul?”
The man in the green-striped shirt kept repeating that same word to me and I had a sinking feeling in my stomach — his eyes were not kind. What could he want from me?
I thought: The French word for “only” is “seulement,” so could “seul” mean “alone”? I still don’t know how I made this connection, but I chose to trust myself in that moment.
Seconds earlier, I had been staring off in the distance, my arms resting behind me on the shopping cart, my chest and stomach arched out, lounging in the middle of the supermarket. My father darted away to grab butter, and said he’d only be a moment.
Usually, “moments” here are fine, I can survive a moment alone, even with a language barrier and criminal energy teeming around me. But a lot can happen in a moment too.
As I stood there, aloof, the man in the green striped shirt paraded by me, no groceries in hand. He took one look and seemed uninterested, but glanced again realizing that I was a white woman alone.
An African woman yelled at him from across the store, but he paid her no mind. Instead, he continued to stare, his eyes piercing me. He refused to look away and he started to walk in my direction.
Yikes. Here we go.
“Bonsoir,” I said, trying to act confident even though my French vocabulary is first grade level at best. After polite greetings, I’m usually at a loss and hoping to leave the conversation.
And then the questioning started.
“Seul? Etes-vous seul?” he prodded.
I played dumb in the face of a potential predator.
“Je ne comprends pas, pardon,” I repeated a couple times. “Je parle anglais.” I speak English, leave me alone, please.
“Oh, you speak the English? English? I know some. You are here with … brother?” he asked.
Is this guy actually trying to figure out if I’m here with a man?
My father, butter in hand and a scowl on his face, quickened his pace at the sight of this man interrogating me.
Without a word, I raised my eyebrows, with my jaw pointed in the direction of the worried white man heading our direction. My father addressed him, “Qu’est-ce que tu veux?” (“What do you want”) and he stumbled away, marching towards the back of the store. No words were needed when he heard my father’s accent and tone. He understood from my father’s accent that he was “from here” and by his threatening tone, that he was upset.
But what about the fatherless and defenseless? Those in the supermarket without someone to come to their aid?
His body left our aisle but his presence didn’t leave the store until we did. I watched him as he darted around, his eyes on every female from young to old. What was his purpose for being here? It definitely was not to shop for groceries.
He got in line around the same time we did, but at another register. He had a small bag of meat he’d gotten from the butcher, and that was it. He may have truly needed to go to the store, but my spirit was unsettled.
Though the man was trying to ask me a simple question, I’ll never know his true intentions. I do know that in this culture he would not have approached me alone if his intentions were pure. And hopefully these intentions would not have put me in the way of danger, like so many women and children in Cote d’Ivoire.
And it’s true. The statistics of harassment and trafficking of persons in West Africa are astounding.
The short-lived conversation with the man got me thinking about the the conditions here for women post-war. Especially in a nation that, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, has a 47% poverty rate.
In December 2003, the United Nations General Assembly passed the “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children.” According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, this protocol became the first legally binding document to define trafficking internationally and be used as a standard in punishing traffickers.
The U.S. State Department in their 2018 Trafficking in Persons Report also defined trafficking by listing ways humans are trafficked today and taking a closer look at all countries for signs of exploitation of innocent people. These include: sex trafficking (including children), forced labor (including children), domestic servitude and “unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers.”
The 2018 Trafficking in Persons Report stated, “As reported over the past five years, Cote d’Ivoire is a source, transit and destination country for women and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking, and a source for men in forced labor.”
The report goes on to describe this trafficking and its characteristics per region. The U.S. State Department reported adult trafficking in Cote d’Ivoire may be underreported as a majority of reported victims are children, and campaigns to fight this trafficking are more strongly emphasized on combating child trafficking, the report stated.
“Some Ivoirian women and girls are subjected to forced labor in domestic service and restaurants and exploited in sex trafficking,” the report went on. “Ivoirian boys (including Burkinabes) are victims of forced labor in the agricultural and service industries, especially cocoa production.”
In August, I interviewed Elizabeth Ikere Imeh from Lagos. Though she has children back in Nigeria, she left in February 2016 for what she thought was a good job in Europe. But in a pitstop in Abidjan, the woman who recruited her for work “in Europe,” told her she was now to pay off the debt of her plane ticket by prostituting in Abidjan. She was taken to a hotel where she was repeatedly abused and then prostituted for over two years.
Elizabeth has left that life now and is starting over through help from a church and a non-government organization that rescues women out of sexual bondage. She is currently searching for a good place to live. I will be writing more on her story soon.
In Janice Fong’s 2004 literature review “Trafficking in West Africa,” she says, “The lack of alternative ways of earning a living, and the absence of economic stability in many African countries, drives people to migrate and look for other opportunities.” Poverty, she explains, is not the only reason — but a major reason — people find themselves in dangerous situations looking for work.
Writing this column was difficult because there aren’t many studies or accurate numbers on human trafficking and abuse here. Nevertheless, this is the topic I want to research during my year in Abidjan by interviewing survivors.
Unfortunately though we like to think recent campaigns against trafficking are significantly diminishing the problem, trafficking is still happening every day in our communities. Even so, spreading awareness is so important to victims. A good step in that direction is opening up conversations by telling their stories truthfully.
By humanizing crises, we can impact change and bring injustices to light.
