By Iminza Keboge
Published December 16, 2019
A Kenyan woman responds to an advertisement for dancers and hostesses in a WhatsApp group.
When she arrives for the job in New Delhi, India, she realises that her dream is just about to turn into a nightmare when her passport is confiscated and she is forced into prostitution to pay off the debt of those who have brought her from Nairobi to India.
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Welcome to the latest television investigation as BBC Africa Eye uncovers a network that traffics African women to India as sex workers for African men.
BBC says the investigation features Grace, one of the many African young women who are trafficked to India, who goes undercover to expose the people involved in the sex trade.
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BBC Africa Eye, whose exposes are beamed on television networks across Africa, says Grace, like many other women in a similar situation, is asked to pay off a grossly inflated fee for the facilitation of her travel to India in order to regain her freedom. The facilitation fee, that BBC describes as ‘grossly inflated’, says can range from US$3700 to US$5800.
Consequently, these women are forced to have sex with strangers to pay off their debt before they are freed. Even when they repay their so-called ‘debt’, BBC stresses in its international publicity, many find themselves trapped: living illegally in India, many have no choice but to continue to work in the sex industry.
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“Every night, gatherings are held across New Delhi. Scores of women parade themselves in front of men, who mingle and chat while being served drinks and African food in underground bars. The women are from East and West Africa. The men are African and can choose the women they like and take them to their homes, an alley, or a brothel, to have sex. These meeting places – are illegal clubs known as ‘kitchens’,” BBC says. “In this web of corruption and deceit, most trafficked women are still trapped after they have made the payments demanded of them. Their visas have expired and they end up as illegal immigrants. Many of the trafficked women either become a Madam, forcing women into sex work, or continue to be sex workers themselves.”
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In Imported for My Body, the latest episode of BBC Africa Eye, Grace takes the viewer to the place she says she spent six months paying her ‘debt’ besides exposing the people that brought her over to India. Grace, caught up in a vicious cycle of alcohol and sex, is left wondering if there will be an end to her nightmare.
“I don’t want anybody else to go through what I had to endure. I want this to stop,” she tells BBC Africa Eye viewer.
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