Recently, someone shared the story of a lady, Titi(not her real name), with me. She was born into poverty, and her parents could barely get her to school for the most basic of education. Well, she ensured the worst of government schools for both primary and secondary education. After toiling to make ends meet, God answered her prayer when she was approached by a church member who told her about an opportunity to travel to Libya.
Growing up, one of the most famous travelling stories I heard was that of ladies relocating to Italy to work as prostitutes. Rumours even broke at one point that some of them were made to sleep with dogs and horses, and that that was how HIV got into the world. These ladies are mostly victims of trafficking because they weren't told they would be sex workers when they got to Europe. That's human trafficking; that's one of the most resistant forms of modern slavery that just won't go away.
Titi's case was slightly different from that of the ladies trafficked to European countries to work as sex slaves. The agent told her from the outset that she would be going to Libya to work as a maid for a married couple. With that, she will be fed three times a day, she will be given a room in the house, and she will be given a uniform that she must wear while on duty. So, with accommodation, feeding and, to an extent, clothing worries out of the window, she can save enough money to start a business back home once her two-year visa expires. She had no plan to renew.
When the news broke that she had been given a Visa, people celebrated with her. Some people even prayed for the kind of grace Titi encountered. The assumption was that once one is travelling out of the country, everything will suddenly become great for the person. After all, the condition of many people is so bad that they feel travelling out of the country can never lead them to a condition as bad as they are currently experiencing.
When Titi got to Libya, the first thing that was taken from her was her international passport. That right there is the first clue that things may not go well for her over there. If not, why would her most important piece of identification be taken away from her in a foreign land? How will she seek proper help from authorities without identification if she were to be going through challenges?
When she got to her place of work, she was given a place to stay and all. She started work, and it was going smoothly until one day when the lady of the house requested a massage from her. Naturally, for a maid, massaging the boss may not be a bigger deal, especially when they're both of the same gender. Things started getting trickier for Titi when the boss lady instructed Titi to massage her privates. At first, she was reluctant, but she had to do it or be thrown out of the house to the unforgiving street. And from there, Titi became the lady of the house's pleasure partner.
Now, the reason why this experience got out there was because Titi is now seeking help. The boss lady took a liking to Titi and showered her with gifts as Titi helped her to climax. But Titi knew she was playing a dangerous game. The man of the house is a soldier and not always around. Titi knew if he caught her with his wife, not even God would save her from certain death. And with the man back from his latest mission, he was already suspecting.
The next time Madam invited Titi, she rejected, and now she's living the worst form of hell on earth one can ever imagine. Of course, the lady of the house will never tell her husband that Titi has been warming her bed. However, she has sworn to make Titi's life miserable. Titi called the agent who brought her in, and the agent told her to apply wisdom and sort it out by herself. Now, she's trapped in a foreign land with no passport and living with a woman who wants to ruin her. If this isn't modern slavery in plain sight, what is?
Titi's story is not an isolated one. Poverty has seen people work in terrible working conditions, thereby jeopardizing their lives in the process. I've read countless stories of people talking about how some foreigners with industries in Lagos maltreat their local staff to the point of beating them in broad daylight. Whenever I hear such, the first question I always ask is, What is the government doing about this?
In the end, slavery didn't start because whites were kidnapping blacks and ferrying them around the world. It was the black men who were kidnapping their fellow black men and selling them to the slave masters, just like we have today, where modern slavery is packaged and sold out to us by people we trusted. Beware! Slavery never stopped; it only took a different turn.
