Forced Labor2005
Togo TG
A local recruiter called a "navi" (meaning "aunt" or "big sister" in the Kotokoli language) came to see the victim, she was receptive. Her father had died and her mother and stepfather had left her and her sister on their own. The victim knew a Muslim girl must have a dowry in or to marry and knew that many girls went to Nigeria to make money. The recruiter offered just what she wanted--a chance to travel to Nigeria with her to make money to save up for her dowry. The recruiter even offered to pay for the trip. She told no one, but one day got into the recruiter's truck with 50 other Kotokoli girls on their way to Nigeria. The trip took three days. Finally they arrived in Shaki, in the north of Oyo State. They were told to line up so that their future employers could select their workers. A Nigerian woman selected the victim and she was taken to live and work with other girls. A piece of cloth on a mud floor was her only bed. The girls did housework and cooked dishes which they sold on the street. After a time the employer began prostituting them at night as well as working them all day. She was only 11 years old when she was first forced into prostitution. Sometimes they had to go to work so immediately that there was no time for them even to eat. After 2 years the victim discovered she was pregnant. She told the man she thought might be the father, and he paid for her to abort the child by taking herbs. After the abortion, she escaped from that house and looked for work elsewhere. She escaped the prostitution but still had no decent place to sleep and worked all day with no pay. Then her first employer found out where she was and began to threaten her. She'd been at the second place for 8 months when she escaped from there, too. She found another woman who spoke her language, and the woman arranged for a man to drive her back to Togo. The trip took five days. She had virtually no money, so the driver paid for her food along the way. AT the Benin-Togo border she was forced to walk across in order to avoid the authorities, and she was attacked and beaten by thieves hoping she might have something worth taking. She didn't. When she arrived home, the driver told her family they owed him the equivalent of $60. The family told him they would try to save it up and pay him. They are still working on it.
Forced Labor2010
Togo TG
Friends of the teen-aged male victim returned home with money after working in Nigeria for a year. So they put him in touch with the local waga or child trafficker of the area. He claimed life was too hard in Togo and urged the teen to go to Nigeria to make money, promising him the equivalent of $200 for a year's hard labor in the fields. He and his younger brother knew their parents would not agree, so they climbed on a truck bound for Nigeria with 8 other boys from their village. The trip took 8 days, waiting for passengers some days along the way. The boys could afford to eat nothing but ground manioc. Gradually the truck gathered over 100 people, mostly men and boys, all headed to Shaki in the Oyo State of Nigeria. In Shaki, the boys rotated hard labor in the fields around the town, the crops changing with the seasons. They constructed a simple wooden hut to live in and slept on straw on the floor with a platic tarp over it. They worked every day from before dawn until after dark. They were given quotas of work, and if they did not meet them, their wages were docked or they were beaten or both. Under the harsh conditions the victim's brother died. After that the victim escaped and found a way home. He now has the same financial difficulties as before. He counsels local teens not to seek work in Nigeria and some have listened.
Domestic Servitude2005
Togo TG
The victim's father was approached by a woman who offered the daughter a job caring for a child for a family in Lome. She did not mention payment, but the father agreed anyway, sending the daughter with the woman in a taxi to the city. For four months she lived and worked in a house in Lome cleaning, washing, and selling juice on the street in addition to watching the child. If she did not sell enough juice or did not finish all her housework, she was beaten with a stick or locked out of the house to sleep outside. She escaped that house and met some children on the street who spoke her language. They took her a woman who said she needed help selling her rice. The victim agreed, but after four days realized she was being abused there, too. She told her employer she wanted to leave and was brought to the police station. They informed a local NGO and arranged for her to go to the Oasis Center at Lome. After 7 days at the center, her father found her there and took her back home to Aouda.