Life of Maria. Season 1.

"Tell me everything you have been doing since you came to Europe" Austin said.

I didn't remember how many times he had asked for that information in the past but right there, i felt it was time to open up to him.

He was right there beside me on the bed.
We were in Stockholm Sweden and it was during the winter.

I had met Austin back in Lagos in 2006 at the Lekki Beach.
I was with my friend at the beach when he walked up to us.
One thing had led to another and we eventually introduced ourselves.

There was something about him that was very difficult to understand, He seemed too cold and confident and also seemed to have had answers to every questions.

He had come up to where i packed my Toyota Rav4 jeep and continued talking to me even when i stopped answering his questions.

We eventually started dating but knowing that i was returning to Italy soon, i thought everything was going to end. Little did i know it was just the beginning.

...... Watch out.

--
We will begin this Season in a few days.

No insults.
If you can't have it my way, stay anonymous.

Boooked all front row seats

Ozoigbondu 1 of Berlin.
Who dey book all front seats there, abeg shift make I yansh down.

Reporting for class.

First story Zubby would write and i'll come early.,ride on sir!

yawnnnnnn

is this sub summary of your relationship with maria, her girls, the bitches and almost life taking event with your rival .....

Subscription dey this one?

ZUBY77: Life of Maria. Season 1.

"Tell me everything you have been doing since you came to Europe" Austin said.

I didn't remember how many times he had asked for that information in the past but right there, i felt it was time to open up to him.

He was right there beside me on the bed.
We were in Stockholm Sweden and it was during the winter.

I had met Austin back in Lagos in 2006 at the Lekki Beach.
I was with my friend at the beach when he walked up to us.
One thing had led to another and we eventually introduced ourselves.

There was something about him that was very difficult to understand, He seemed too cold and confident and also seemed to have had answers to every questions.

He had come up to where i packed my Toyota Rav4 jeep and continued talking to me even when i stopped answering his questions.

We eventually started dating but knowing that i was returning to Italy soon, i thought everything was going to end. Little did i know it was just the beginning.

...... Watch out.

--
We will begin this Season in a few days.

No insults.
If you can't have it my way, stay anonymous.

Oya let us go

Oya Let the party begin

Booking my space, my sweet Maria, she reminds me of the westside story

Make u na no guck am he is trying to lure u to subscribe to his site

Zubby the fraudster looking 4 subscription fee, seun osewa with over a million followers does not ask for money but zubby with his meagre followers is defrauding peepz, this dude should be banned 4rm this site

sirEAGLES: Zubby the fraudster looking 4 subscription fee, seun osewa with over a million followers does not ask for money but zubby with his meagre followers is defrauding peepz, this dude should be banned 4rm this site

haters go and die

sirEAGLES: Zubby the fraudster looking 4 subscription fee, seun osewa with over a million followers does not ask for money but zubby with his meagre followers is defrauding peepz, this dude should be banned 4rm this site

Fraudster?

I weep for the mindsets of Africans.

Because he closed his own website and asked that you subscribe if you must read it.

That makes him a fraudster.

Can't you just ask him to help you or stay away instead of calling him bad names.

sirEAGLES: Zubby the fraudster looking 4 subscription fee, seun osewa with over a million followers does not ask for money but zubby with his meagre followers is defrauding peepz, this dude should be banned 4rm this site

I would do more if it is to be my website... Have you ever renewed a domain name or host? Imagine spending almost 20k to renew them, and take my time to write on my website, then an a$$-hole like you will want me to open it to non-considerate broke-a$$ like you?
May the God you serve/revere punish you severely for being foolish and heartless.

Amen @Nehemiah
Haters go and die

sirEAGLES: Zubby the fraudster looking 4 subscription fee, seun osewa with over a million followers does not ask for money but zubby with his meagre followers is defrauding peepz, this dude should be banned 4rm this site

slowpoke No 1. Ewu ohia na ezuzu. Can you define fraudster, that some one asked you to pay for a service he is rendering doesn't make him a fraudster, you either pay or you take your broke ass outta here. If you can't afford 500 naira per month for a service you are interested in then you better quit nairaland cause here ain't meant for you. Just go and start selling pure water, anumanu

Nehemiah459:
I would do more if it is to be my website... Have you ever renewed a domain name or host? Imagine spending almost 20k to renew them, and take my time to write on my website, then an a$$-hole like you will want me to open it to non-considerate broke-a$$ like you?
May the God you serve/revere punish you severely for being foolish and heartless.

lol @broke ass hmmm issokay, 4 a guy who sold drugs, defrauded italian mamas, assualted fellow africans etc who claims to have made money in europe coming back to 9ja nd asking u to pay to read his fabricated BS I weep 4 our youths, anyway that's what happens when u leave ur intensive english SS1 u ought to be reading 4 @zuby's crap, u re jst a kid hence I won't dignify ur sorry existence with my reply again, @zuby is a fraud I maintain

sirEAGLES: lol @broke ass hmmm issokay, 4 a guy who sold drugs, defrauded italian mamas, assualted fellow africans etc who claims to have made money in europe coming back to 9ja nd asking u to pay to read his fabricated BS I weep 4 our youths, anyway that's what happens when u leave ur intensive english SS1 u ought to be reading 4 @zuby's crap, u re jst a kid hence I won't dignify ur sorry existence with my reply again, @zuby is a fraud I maintain

And this more of the reason why the site was locked up, cos of people like you.. he told you all his life story not for you to be using it against him, but for you to learn.
you have a very shallow mind, no quality of a man and good runner in you., you aren't meant to be here in the first place..
so immature... you are hereby evicted!!

GBAM

“Tell me everything you have been doing since you came to Europe” Austin said.

I didn’t remember how many times he had asked for that information in the past but right there, i felt it was time to open up to him.

He was right there beside me on the bed.
We were in Stockholm Sweden and it was during the winter.

I had met Austin back in Lagos in 2006 at the Lekki Beach.
I was with Juliet my friend when he walked up to us.
One thing had led to another and we eventually introduced ourselves.

There was something about him that was very difficult to understand, He seemed too cold and confident and also seemed to have had answers to every questions.

After our time in the beach, He had come up to where i packed my Toyota Rav4 Jeep and continued talking to me even when i stopped answering his questions.

We eventually started dating but knowing that i was returning to Italy soon, i thought everything was going to end. Little did i know it was the beginning of us together.

That was how i met Austin, the most intelligent and the most dangerous man i ever met in my life.
Austin Azubuike was never scared of anything. He lived his life like a programmed robot, planning his way to the end before starting anything.

My name is Maria. Not my real name because i had to change the name. The kind of work i did in Europe warranted that i changed it. Not just me, but all the other street girls.
Yes, i was a street girl. Not that i wanted to be but that was where i found myself. Not just me but over 95% of all the Nigerian girls that came to Europe during that period.
Only quite a few of the girls came for academic purposes. And even at that, half of them eventually ended up in the streets.
The central Europe was not meant for African girls except that the parents lived there to support you.
The purpose was mostly that the Nigerian men, who were supposed to be taking care of most of the girls, also came to Europe for the same thing; money. There was no way for them to hustle and share the money with women at the end of the day.
For that purpose again, there was only one thing left for the girls to do; hustle too.
European system had no special provisions for African women. The same law that guided men also guided women.
Deal on drugs and go to prison. Most men who had no hearts to deal on drugs ended up doing other jobs such as loading fridges and tyres for business men who came from Africa. Some resorted to stealing and some did whatever thing that could fetch them money.
That was the fate of the Africans who traveled through the deserts to Southern European countries for greener pastures.

I was born in Ekpoma, Edo State Nigeria in 1981. I was only 18 years when i was taken to Europe.
I first came to Italy in 1999.
I had just failed my second attempt at Jamb and couldn’t get admission into the University.
I was angry that i was going to wait for another year before another Jamb. Therefore when the offer to travel abroad came, I took it.

“I don’t know why You always ask this question. You have seen and helped many Edo girls in Europe and i am sure you know what they all did. We all did the same thing Austin, all of us” I said.

I knew he wanted to know more. I had been with him while he questioned some of the girls he had rescued. It had always been the same routine; What they did before they came to Europe, How they came to Europe, why they came to Europe, what they did in the past and all that.

I had been with him and watched as he helped these teenage girls. At a stage, i wished i had met him when i newly came to Europe but i was there long before he came.

I had decided to open up to him, although he already knew most of the things about me.

I was Born Angela. When i was young, my mother told me that i looked like an Angel; therefore she had given me that name.

I graduated from Secondary School in Uromi in 1998. After failing My Jamb exam in 1998, i waited for a whole year at home before re-taking the same exam. The result of the second attempt was also bad and i didn’t know what to do with myself.
Then she came.
Aunty Pamela. She lived in Lagos Nigeria and had a small boutique in Surulere.
She said she wanted to send me to Europe to live and work there.
Her offer took away the bitter memories of Jamb and to make things better for me, my parents encouraged and supported me to follow Aunty Pamela.

We traveled to Lagos and went to where Aunty Pamela had her shop. I spent a few days before i was told that we were going to Ghana.

As a teenager, I was trilled with such news as going to a different Country.
However, when we were smuggled into Porto Novo through Ogun State, i knew that it wasn’t going to be all rosy on the way to wherever i was going to end up.

Back in Edo State, women who traveled to Europe were making waves. We had heard so many news about how they picked up cars in the streets and how it was generally very easy to become rich over there.
We saw it as a blessing for any family to have one daughter who lived in Europe.
What baffled me was how our men were not the ones who went to Europe to make the money.
In other tribes i knew, it was men who struggled to make money.
Even in Ekpoma and Benin where i grew up, over 95 percent of the shops were owned by men, especially the Igbo men who were blessed with trading occupation.
But i couldn’t understand why it had to be Edo Women who were preferred to go and make money in Europe. But i wasn’t going to ask questions. Maybe the gods preferred women to men over there.
I didn’t know much about the World but since there was Television, I knew that the World was a big place.

At a stage, all these things didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was that i was going to Europe to make money. How i was going to achieve that wasn’t my troubles, someone was taking me there and it was her responsibility to make sure i made the money.

We got to Porto Novo and slept in a hotel for the night.
It was the beginning of my journey to Europe.

*Grabs a seat*
Weldone Zubby

Interesting..

Chapter 2

The following day, we set out for Ghana.
We were four of us; three teenage girls and Aunty Pamela who was leading us. At the borders, she told the authorities that she was taking us to teach us how to deal on clothes in Accra. They believed her after she gave them some money as bribes.

That was how we got to Ghana and some days later, we Proceeded to Burkina Faso.
It was at Burkina Faso that one of us decided she wasn’t going anywhere again.

Amara.
She was an Igbo girl from Imo State. I didn’t know how she was recruited but i saw her at Aunty Pamela’s shop when i came to Lagos. She wasn’t a friendly person and as a result, i avoided asking her questions.

She had gotten as far as Burkina Faso and decided she had traveled enough. All efforts by Pamela to get her to continue was in vain.

Pamela was to hand us over to one man who would take us to Libya. Her own mission had ended there in Burkina Faso.

“This man will take you to Tripoli. You will travel to Italy from there. Aunty Philo is waiting for you girls. I am returning to Lagos tomorrow” Aunty Pamela had announced to us.

We were all surprised because we even thought she was leading us to Italy herself.
Those sudden change of plan had triggered a bitter reaction which nearly caused all of some big trouble.

“I am scared and I am not following this stranger. I will follow you back to Lagos tomorrow” Amara had said.

Pamela looked at her. “Why are you scared?”.

“I don’t know” Amara said. “But i can’t follow this stranger to anywhere. This is not what you told my brother in Lagos”.

“If you want to return to Lagos, go ahead but i am not paying for your transport” Pamela had said.

We watched as Amara stood up and left. We all thought she was going to return since she had no money but we never saw her again.
There was no phone and as a result, we couldn’t call her. It dawned on us that she was gone for good when we waited for her for over four hours in the dirty hotel where we were lodged.

One more hour later, Aunty Pamela announced that she was going.
She gave some US Dollars to the man who was going to lead us but gave us no money.
I became afraid because i didn’t know what we would do if the man chose to disappear with the money. I and Nina were going to be stranded in the middle of nowhere.

As we watched Aunty Pamela walked away, we knew that our fates were in the hands of God.
I had said some prayers and waited for the time when the man, who told us to call him Pascal, would announce that it was time to go.

Pascal wasn’t a Nigerian. I didn’t know where he came from but he spoke French and little English.
I guessed he was from Burkina Faso or Ivory Coast.

“We leave 12 in the night” Pascal had said to us before he left the hotel where we were lodged.
The worst part of our fears when he left was that we had no money whatsoever with us.

“What if this man don’t return here?” Nina had asked me.

I told her not to even think about it.

“The Journey to good Things are usually difficult” I had replied.

We waited for hours until a few minutes to 12am when Pascal came.
He came with another strange man whom he introduced to us as our driver.

“He drive us go Agadez” Pascal had announced.
We didn’t know where Agadez was located or why we were going there, we were just left in the hands of total strangers who were supposed to hand us over to another man in Tripoli. The worst part of it all was that we feared we were going to be raped or even killed.
I regretted making that decision to go to Europe but i didn’t know what i was getting into. I had always thought that it was only through the Aeroplane that people traveled to Italy.

We left Burkina Faso in the middle of the night.

I, Nina, Pascal, the driver and two other girls we picked in another hotel. They were also from Edo State.
Meeting the new girls was a source of hope for us. We had agreed in Edo Language, that we would fight the two men if they attempted to rape us.
One of the new girls had brought out a knife and showed to us and said she would stab any bastard that attempted to touch her.
Just like me, the rest of the girls were also teenagers; all fresh from Secondary schools, promised a better life in Europe and tricked into making a journey that we eventually heard many had died on.

The old Land Rover pickup dragged its feet on the sandy way.
Four of us girls were seated at the back while the two men occupied the front seats.

Before 6am in the morning, we arrived in a town which i had forgotten its name.
Th small town was in the middle of the desert inside Niger Republic.

The old and children stared at us as if they had never seen strangers. There was no civilization in the town and that made me understand that Nigeria was a Heaven.

We located the small local market and bought some dry bread that were as hard as stone. We had water in the pickup; therefore we ate our bread with the water as we waited beside a Mosque which happened to be the only good building in town.

We spent nearly the whole day in that village before moving again.
The smell of Petrol at the back of the pickup didn’t allow us to breath well, not that there was fresh air in the first place.
The temperature was high and i understood it was the reason why we had to spend the whole day in that town.

All through the journey, i had wished that i never attempted it. But in the middle of that desert, there was nothing i could do.

We arrived in Agadez, Niger Republic before the following morning.

There was a hotel where we were taken and to our surprise, we met more Nigerian girls there.
As expected, it gave us more hope that we were in the right direction.

“We stay here and wait for your man. He come we go back” Pascal had said.

What?
He was going to hand us over to another stranger.

There was nothing we could say or do except obey. If we had money, we could have decided to run away but the truth was that Aunty Pamela knew this.

She knew all along.

I'm really finding Maria's story touching and interesting. Please make it the usual two updates Zubby

sirEAGLES: Zubby the fraudster looking 4 subscription fee, seun osewa with over a million followers does not ask for money but zubby with his meagre followers is defrauding peepz, this dude should be banned 4rm this site

How does that make him a fraudster? Do you want awoof forever? Is Seun Osewa also writing stories? If he is, sure he would ask ppl to subscribe too cos as much as I know, Zuby doesn't ask you to pay to enter his website but to pay to view some of his stories and that's acceptable. When Seun start writing stories then you can compare them.
No offence intended pls

Nyc one

Chapter 3.



Arlit was a large town North of Agadez. That was the next place we found ourselves.

The next man who came to pick us up was from Libya. He was light skinned like the Europeans and spoke French too.
I didn’t know how they were all connected to each other but that route had the largest human trafficking cartel in Africa.

Due to Language barrier, we had no conversation whatsoever with our new driver.
He was also on a rickety Land Rover loaded with water and Gas.
Nina and I were suddenly alone again with a new stranger.
The other two girls were handed over to a different crosser who had his own Land Rover.
The Agadez was a large meeting and exchange point where the Libyans came to pick up the girls.

At Arlit, we rested and waited for the night. According to the rumour we heard in Agadez, the Government of Ghadaffi arrested people traveling to Italy and jailed them.
The information had created fear and Panic in us and the worst was that we couldn’t even ask our driver any question.
I even wondered whether the Niger Republic had any kind of government at all.
Agadez was filled with foreigners, mostly Nigerians, Malians and Burkinabes. There were a few Ghanaians and Ivoriens too.
It wasn’t just girls anymore, there were also equal or even more number of men there. All waiting to go to Europe through Libya.

It was 9pm when we left Arlit and headed North towards Libya. That was the longest Journey of all the Journeys. We drove the whole night and only stopped when the driver added petrol to his Pickup in the middle of nowhere.
It was difficult to sleep in that condition because we not only feared we could be raped or killed, we also feared the government forces could attack us.

On the morning of the following day, we entered a small city inside Libya.

The driver drove into a compounded and asked us to come down.
We followed him to a house inside the compound where his wife, who understood some English words, explained to us that we would leave the town again in the night but with a public bus. She said it would take us the whole night and half day to get to Tripoli from the town.

They gave us more bread and some kind of meat pie to eat.
The wife showed us the bathroom where we cleaned up and changed clothes.
She showed us a room to rest and wait until our next journey.

We relaxed and even slept and waited for our next journey to the unknown.
I wondered if Italy was in Heaven to warrant people embarking on Such dangerous Journeys.

When we woke up and walked to the sitting room where the woman of the house was watching Television, she chatted us up.

“You are in luck. Sometimes people’s vehicles break down in the desert and they die”

“Die, why can’t other people see and pick them up on the road?” i had asked the woman.

It was then that she gave us a shocking news.

“Because there is no road in the desert. Every driver just guess the direction and follow it. Its all sand and seconds after a vehicle drive past a point, the strong Breeze closes the tyre tracks and its all middle of nowhere again” she laughed.

I continued asking her questions. “But how does your husband know the way to here”.

She looked up at me. “He doesn’t know. He only guess like other drivers. He missed the road sometimes and end up having to go in rounds. If you travel the road in day time, you see people in far away walking or driving in different directions. But its good money for us”.

The good news according to the woman, was that we had gone through the worst parts.
We were taking normal buses to Tripoli in the night and we were going to drive on tared roads.

In the late afternoon of that day, the family fed us again. I didn’t know how much they were paid and who paid them but i gave a lot of credits to whatever ring that was responsible for crossing us through the massive desert. They knew what they were doing.

It was 6:30pm when we left the Wada town and took the night bus heading up to Tripoli.
Most of the passengers were from other countries. Somwere there for trading business; especially the Igbo men.
The two people i chatted up inside the bus said they were from Onitsha Nigeria and were going there to buy vehicle spare parts. They also said they came through Kano State instead of Burkina Faso.
They made the Journey easier for us as we all talked deep into the night before sleeping off.

We stopped in a small town outside Tripoli and took a private car to an already paid hotel room.

In the hotel alone, we were about 6 Nigerian girls, all waiting to be taken to Italy.
The man who took charge of us spoke English very well despite being a Libyan. He told us to call him Ali.

That was how we eventually found ourselves in Tripoli.
The city was very beautiful with flowers and clean roads.
They were many Nigerians there as well, some selling drugs while others did whatever job they found.

The hotel Manager came to our room after four days and asked for our names. When we told him, he said that a call came for us from Italy.
We followed him to an office underground and waited for some minutes before the call came again.

The female voice asked if it was Aunty Pamela that sent us there and we agreed it was her, she told us her name was Aunty Philo and that she was calling from Napoli in Italy.
She was friendly on the phone and asked how our Journey went.
She told us that someone would come down to Libya before one week to arrange for our travels. She also said that our hotel bills had been taken care of and that we shouldn’t be scared of anything.
Before she cut the call, she told us that the manager was responsible for our food and that he has been paid in advance. She also said that the manager would give us 100 Dollars each to use to buy things for ourselves.
That was a good news because that was the first money that we received since we left Lagos. But of course they knew that 100 dollars won’t take us anywhere.
It was just to show us that everything was rosy up there in Italy.


---
This Story is still open at globalruns.com

4; The Stranded girl.


Nkem was an Igbo girl.
I met her in Tripoli on my way to Italy in 1999. She was stranded in Libya and didn't know how to go back home.

Nina and I were out in the street one day when she walked up to us and asked us to help her with some money.
Initially, we told her that we didn't have money but when she summarized her situation to us, we gave her 10 dollars each from the little we were given at the hotel where we lived.

Nkem had come to Libya the same way we did but according to her, she had been waiting for her contact in Italy for three months.

The woman who was supposed to pick her up in Tripoli had not contacted her as at then and there was nothing she could do. She had been evicted from one of the cartel's hidden hotels all over the town and was forced to sleep in the same room with some of the Nigerians men hustling in the city.

"Why don't you ask the men to help you out?" I had asked her.

She had looked me in the face with agony and said "Nobody cares about anybody here. They are hustlers and hardly make enough for themselves. The few who had slept with me were kind enough to give me money for food so that i stay alive for them to climb again. Look at me, i don't even know if i am pregnant, i haven't seen my period for the month".

She was crying.
Her story had moved us to the extent of giving her 20 Dollars which she grabbed as if her life depended on it.

From what she narrated to us, it was clear that our condition could easily turn to that if our Aunty Philo from Italy didn't show up.
We couldn't imagine what we would do if that happened.

"You can come and stay with us in our hotel but the bed is just for two people" Nina had told her.
It was a chance she grabbed with both hands.

We had asked her to go and get her clothes but to our greatest surprise, Nkem said she had no other set of clothes except the Jean trouser and the blouse she wore at that time.
I didn't know if she was telling the truth or not but we ended up in our room that evening.
That was how she came to stay with us and use our clothes.

Nkem would wake up in the morning first and cleaned our room. All efforts we made to let her know that she was not obligated to do those things fell on a deaf ear.
She was just a nice girl that found herself in the cold desert of Libya.

One week after we met Nkem, our Aunty called again.
She said she won't be able to make it to Libya but said that the hotel manager would brief us on what next to do.

"Aunty there is something i wanted to tell you" I had said on the phone.

When she asked what it was, i told her about Nkem and her situation.

Aunty Philo said that the money she sent to the hotel manager was to prepare Nina and I for our next phase of travel which was to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe. She said she didn't have more money for one more person and told us to just forget the girl and focus on ourselves.

"She is not the only stranded girl there. There are others and she knows" Aunty Philo had said.

Nkem knew i was going to speak to Aunty Philo about her; she had been reminding me to do that ever since she came to stay with us.

"She said there is nothing she can do for you" I had said to her.
It was the most difficult news i had ever given to anybody since i was born. There were tears in my eyes while giving her that news.
Nina herself knew she was going to cry for Nkem and as a result, she stayed away from us when i was telling Nkem what Aunty Philo said.

"What is going to happen to me when two of you leave?" She was all tears.

I told her to have faith in God.

Have faith in God?
I had no idea what that meant but i said it anyway because there was nothing else to say.

A day after We spoke to Aunty Philo, the hotel manager came and announced to us that we would be leaving for the harbour the following night.

He asked what Nkem was doing in our room and we told him she was squatting with us.
He was very angry and said we should have taken permission from him before allowing anybody to sleep with us.
The worst part was that he ordered Nkem to leave the hotel immediately.

We tried to plead with him but he didn’t listen; he just called the security men to throw the girl out and that was the last time we saw her.

We stayed indoors the entire night and the next day until the manager came again and told us it was time to leave.

We got ready and went to his office where two tall men were sitting already.

After telling them we were the subjects, they nodded and stood up, shook the hands of the manager and asked us to follow them.

Outside the hotel, a black Toyota Carina 2 was packed.

We entered the back seat and they drove off.

By a few minutes before 9pm, we got near the harbour outside Tripoli and stopped.

“No talking” One of them said to us as we got down from the car and followed them.

We walked for about 10 minutes before it happened.

One hundred Flashlights came on our faces at the same time.
Another ten voices shouted at us.
I didn’t know what they shouted but the moment the two men leading us stopped and froze in one place, i knew it was trouble.

A large number of Police men emerged from the dark and put hand cuffs on us.
We were led to a large truck parked somewhere and were pushed inside.

“No problem, you come out tomorrow” one of the men had said to us at the back of the locked pickup truck.

We didn’t know where we were taken but when we got to a facility, we were pushed into separate rooms and the cuffs were removed.

I needed nobody to tell me that we had been arrested by the authorities.

I wondered why those two men didn’t know the route was dangerous.

The worst part was that the authorities didn’t ask us any question. They just locked us up in separate rooms and left.

There was a small wooden bench inside the small room where i was locked.
I had no other option than to lie on it and forced myself to sleep.
I didn’t know what was going to happen to us next but i didn’t care much anymore.

Nice 1 bosd

Chapter 5


“You Ghana?” The male voice shouted from the half open door of my cell.
He had knocked before unlocking it, it was the next morning.

“No, Nigeria” I said.

He kept his gaze at me and repeated, “Nigeria. Nigeria. Nigeria. Follow me”.

He took me to a large office where Nina was seated already.

“What is your name” one of the men who were seated behind a large desk asked me.

“Maria” I lied.
I felt it was very good to lie since we had no identification documents with us.

“When did you come to Libya?” A different man asked me.
He was holding a paper and a pen and was ready to write whatever i was going to say.

Rather than answering his question, i looked at Nina.
I wanted to know what Nina already told them.

“When did you tell them we came here?” i asked Nina in Edo language.

“Don’t talk to her again unless i gave you the permission” The man said at the same time Nina answered me.

“Yesterday. From Nigeria” Nina had Said. She spoke in Edo Language too.

The man asked me the same question again but i kept quiet.

“Your friend said she came yesterday. Did you come with her?” He asked.

I nodded and remained quiet.

“Where are you people going?” he asked.

I looked at Nina again.

“If you don’t answer me, you will go to Prison” He said.

The look on his face told me that he meant every word he said.

“I don’t know” I said.

“Do you know where you are Maria?” He continued.

I nodded.

“Where are you?”

I told him it was Libya.

He nodded and asked what we came to do in Libya and where we were going.

He kept repeating his questions in different ways until i told him we were going to Italy.

He wanted to know who brought us into Libya and were the person lived.
I needed nobody to tell me that it was dangerous to tell them about the people who crossed us into Libya.
However, i ended up telling them that we came through the desert with pickup jeep and that nobody brought us in.

After the interrogations, they took us both outside and asked us to enter the same truck that brought us there the night before.

We sat at the back of the truck for over two hours until they got to a city called Misrata.
The facility they stopped looked like prison from the outside and i was right. It was a prison yard.

We were taken to another office where we were processed.

Nina and I were taken to one small room by a woman who told us we were to stay there.
A set of light bed sheet was given to each of us together with a towel.

“You put them down and follow me” The lady had said.

We did as she said.

She took us to a canteen where she told us to chose what we wanted to eat.

We took snacks and followed her as she had said.

“This is where you come to eat lunch every mid day” She said as she pointed to an open hall.

At the far end of the large fence, We saw people playing every kind of sports; football, volleyball etc.

Without being told, we knew half of them were Nigerians. Libyans were generally light skinned. But the people playing outside were mostly Blacks. It was very easy to know that a lot of people had suffered the same fate as Nina and I.
Seeing those men and women playing outside that morning was the only encouragement we had as we quietly settled down in a Libyan Prison.

When we followed the lady back to an office, she gave us identical clothes which resembled the colours we had seen people wearing outside.

“You say thank you when i give you something” She had said.

She had just given us prison clothes and expected us to thank Her.
I didn’t know how things worked in that part of the World but i knew that i was not supposed to thank anybody who was throwing me into a prison facility.

After showing us some other things, she made us enter the room and she locked us from outside.

Nina broke down in tears as soon as she left.

“How did i end up here?” She had asked amidst tears.
It was the same question that had been worrying me all along.
“How did i came to Libya and what did i came there to do”

First, i had always thought that people went to Italy with Aeroplanes but the moment we were smuggled into Benin Republic, i had a feeling something was wrong.

It was like a dream as we sat on our tiny bed and shed tears.
Two naive teenage girls in a non familiar territory.

“What are we going to do?” Nina had said when she stopped crying.

I looked at her surprisingly. Why did she ask me that question?
We were both in the same trouble and she had the gut to ask me what we would do.
But i had to say something. I needed to make her feel a little comfortable. She could cry herself to death or sickness and it would be more difficult for me to face the situation we found ourselves alone.

“We will tell them to send us back to Nigeria” I said.
I didn’t know how i came up with that statement but i said it anyway.

The way things were done with us, i knew it wasn’t going to be easy to send us back to Nigeria.

Nigeria and Libya had no borders.
We were supposed to cross Niger Republic before getting to Nigeria.
It meant that they could be issues with the Niger authorities.
As a result of that, it was likely that we were going to spend a long time in a Libyan Prison.

We were still in that confusion and heat ridden room when a bell rang.

The same woman who locked us up came and unlocked the metal door.

“Time for food” She announced.

We stood up and followed her.

“You haven’t put on your new clothes” She said and stood on our way.

The look on her face suggested that she wanted us to change it immediately.

We returned to the inside and changed our clothes while she watched.

Ten minutes later, we were seated inside the hall where two long tables were arranged in the middle while separate chairs lined up beside them.

Another long hall was standing parallel to the one we were brought; it belonged to the men.

We sat down and waited for our food.
With us inside the hall were numerous Nigerians who were arrested for different crimes.
Right there, i realised that we had no Country. We were nothing.