Erstellt am: 28. 9. 2010 - 18:52 Uhr

"We think we deserve something"

Zwangsprostitution und Menschenhandel zwischen Europa und Afrika. Chika Unigwe, Autorin von "Schwarze Schwestern", im Interview über die Ausbeutung afrikanischer Frauen.

"Schwarze Schwestern" schildert die Schicksale vier afrikanischer Frauen, die als illegale Prostituierte in Antwerpen arbeiten. Sie wohnen gemeinsam in einer WG, aber erst als eine von ihnen brutal ermordet wird, erzählen die übrigen einander ihre Geschichten. Da ist Efe, die jugendliche Alleinerzieherin, Ama, das Missbrauchsopfer, Joyce, die im sudanesischen Bürgerkrieg ihre Familie verloren hat, und Sisi, die arbeitslose Betriebswirtin. Chika Unigwe verleiht jeder dieser Frauen eine eigene Stimme, ohne es je auf Betroffenheit anzulegen. Authentische Vorbilder für ihre Charaktere hat die Autorin auf der Straße gefunden, wie sie im Interview erzählt:

Koen Broos

How did you do the research for your book?

When I started writing the book I didn’t know anything at all about that world. So I put on a mini-skirt and high-heel-boots and went to the red-light district of Antwerp. Over some weeks I spoke to a number of illegal prostitutes in a café where they hang out. I also interviewed them in the streets and behind their windows.

So you pretended to be one of them?

Initially I didn’t want to do that. But when I told the first girl that I was researching for a book she burst into laughter. In her reality being black and being Nigerian meant being a prostitute. So I played along with that and didn’t bother to correct her. Then most of the women thought I was just another Nigerian sister who wanted some information. That way it was a lot easier to get answers from them.

And the stories in your book are a combination of their true stories?

Yes, a combination of their stories and my imagination. But there’s not a single story that belongs to a particular person because I didn’t set out to write a non-fiction book. I set out to write fiction. I was just interested in collecting as many stories as I could to get a notion of what kind of lives these women are living and have been living before they came to Belgium. The central question was what motivated them to leave Nigeria to work here as prostitutes.

Money and status seem to be a big motivation for the characters in your book. They dream of expensive jewellery, big cars and houses and their own businesses. They are poor but it’s not that they are starving or living in the slums. They have their social networks in Nigeria and some of them also have jobs. So why would they exchange their simple lives against a luxury life they have to sacrifice their body and dignity for?

We think we deserve something, right? And as far as the women in my book are concerned, they haven’t got that because society or their own families have cheated on them. So making money abroad - no matter how - is their way of getting what they deserve. In Nigeria money means independence. With the money they earn in Europe they can get whatever they want when they come back.
Ama for example one of the characters in my book: It’s true she has a job and works in a restaurant. But every day she sees all these other girls with their nice clothes and manicured hands who have all the things Ama dreams of. So yes, she could have continued living with her aunt and not have come abroad but she wanted to do more than survive. She wanted to get all these things other people had of which she thought she also had a right to have.

Bis zu diesem Punkt mag es fast scheinen, als kämen die Frauen, die Chika Unigwe stellvertretend für hunderte immigrierte Sexarbeiterinnen portraitiert, als "einfache Wirtschaftsflüchtlinge" nach Europa. Als ginge es ihnen ausschließlich darum, auf die Schnelle das große Geld zu machen, um zurück in Afrika in Saus und Braus zu leben. Denn genauso ködern die Zuhälter ihre Mädchen und bauschen deren legitimen Bedürfnisse nach ein bisschen Luxus zu völlig verblendeten Vorstellungen realer europäischer Lebensverhältnisse auf.
Es wird allerdings schnell klar, dass die Frauen ihre Entscheidung, im Ausland zu arbeiten, oft weniger für sich selbst, als für ihre Familien treffen. Denn wer käme auf die Idee, die vermeintliche Chance Europa auszuschlagen? Also lassen sie sich auf einen Handel ein, den sie im Vorhinein nicht abschätzen können: Die Zuhälter besorgen den Frauen Pässe und bezahlen ihre Reise und Unterkunft. Die Kosten dafür werden ihnen als Schulden verrechnet. Zusätzlich müssen sie den Zuhältern den Großteil ihres Einkommens überweisen, und auch ihre Familien sind auf regelmäßige Zahlungen angewiesen. So werden die Frauen in einen Kreislauf getrieben, aus dem es für die wenigsten einen Ausweg gibt.

Klett-Cotta/Tropen

Can you tell me a little bit about Luc? He is Sisi's boyfriend in the end and the only European character in the book. He represents a very naïve point of view telling Sisi to try to break out by going to the police and everything will be fine.

It seems very simple if you don’t know the system behind illegal prostitution. And there are many people like Luc who really want to help because they can’t fathom people like Dele who is the pimp in the book and the sort of evil they can do. I have met a few men like Luc who have actually managed to bring out their girlfriends or wives from prostitution.

How did they do that?

They took out loans and paid off their girls’ debts. That worked because pimps like Dele are not really into the business to kill or hurt their prostitutes as long as they don’t break the deal.

So if a man wants to help his girlfriend he has to play the game. Are there no other options?

I think this demonstrates how complicated the situation is. The thing is that the pimps also have a hold on their girls’ families. One girl told me that once she came to the point where she didn’t want to pay her monthly rate and thought: "Let’s just see what happens!" The day after her money was supposed to come in her mother called and begged her to pay. Some guys had beaten up her brother and promised that next time they would do worse.

How long do they have to work to pay off their debts?

When I started my research the average rate was about 20.000 to 30.000 Euros. But only some weeks ago someone told me that she had to pay 60.000 Euros. You can spend quite a number of years - eight, ten, twelve years - paying that off.

And when the women really finish their deal and come back to Nigeria - do they have a hard time reintegrating in the society when everybody knows how they earned their money?

No, because Nigeria has become a society where money can buy almost anything. Money can buy back respectability as well.
Which is why mothers would pimp their own daughters. I’ve heard of a case where a mother paid for her daughter to be brought to Italy. I don’t know if she knew that her daughter was supposed to work there as a prostitute. Anyway, the girl couldn’t handle it and wanted to go back home. But since her mother had borrowed the money that brought her in she needed her mothers’ permission. So she called her and said, "I don’t think I can do this", and the mother said, "What’s the big deal? You dance in clubs", and she said, "No, I do other stuff", and the mother said, "So you dance topless, I don’t care", and her mother just wouldn’t let her come home. Then the girl took a photograph of herself in her working clothes in lingerie and high heels and sent it to her mother. When she asked her mother what she thought of it she just said, "Oh, you have nice shoes on".

So they just don’t want to know what’s really going on?

No, they don’t. Because once you know you become culpable and then you can’t enjoy the money that you need.
A professor from Benin City told me that there is a whole new middle class group coming up: Mainly single women - widowed mothers or women whose husbands have left - with daughters working as prostitutes in Italy, Belgium or Spain.
But this is not to judge. It’s very difficult to live in a society where obviously there is a lot of wealth but that wealth is not getting to you.
What really touches me is these women’s huge sense of solidarity and obligation to their families. Any money that doesn’t go to the pimp goes back home. They are sending huge amounts to make sure that once they quit prostitution they will have better lives, their businesses will take off, their children go to school and they are building homes for their mothers. They are doing a lot of communal good basically and they almost sacrifice themselves in the process.

At one point in the book Ama says that working as a prostitute was her own conscious decision. Do you really think these women have a choice or do they just want to make themselves believe that they do?

I think it’s difficult to talk about choices when you have no options to start with.
One of the saddest things I found out is that there actually are girls who bribe band managers to put them on their list as performers knowing that they would be auctioned off. There is an auction house in Brussels where these girls parade naked with number plates around their necks while an auctioneer proclaims their vital statistics and good qualities of their bodies. They are hoping to be bought so that at least they have the protection of a pimp in Belgium. I don’t think that’s a very easy step for anyone to take because nobody willingly enslaves herself. But what are the options if you are not bought? You don’t want to go back to where you have just escaped from and where you are probably owing someone a lot of money to bribe these managers. That’s why I’m always very wary of talking about choices. It’s true they have made the choice to come and work as a prostitute, they have made the choice to be sold. But I don’t think it’s a real choice because there are no other choices available for them.

In your book, spirituality, prophecies, rituals and curses play a big role and they always imply something either very good or very bad for the future. At some points you as an author also give small glances into the characters’ futures and reveal false promises and hopes. Is that a kind of a rebellion against your tradition?

I’m quite a cynic when it comes to those sorts of prophecies. In the last ten to fifteen years there has been an explosion of new Pentecostal churches in Nigeria which are also exported to Europe. And when I see how easily vulnerable people are manipulated by them it makes me angry. I know this girl who asked her pastor for some guidance and moral support to quit prostitution. But he told her to keep the deal with her pimp because prostitution was only a sin against her flesh, but breaking a vow was a sin against her spirit and that was worse. I really have a problem when I hear such stories! Because these girls are very religious and contribute a lot to the income of pastors and churches.
So even though I tried really hard to stay objective when I was writing the book, I guess that when it came to the churches and prophecies, my personal feelings sneaked in.