By Zainab Jobarteh
Unlike many, who leave their home country with the sole aim to reach Europe, Absa Jallow, 31, traveled to Nigeria in 2011 with the intention of going to school. While she was there, she lived with Gambians and worked as a cook after completing school. As many young people, Absa too wanted more for herself and her family, her wish was to migrate to Europe through the ‘’backway’’. However, fate had other plans.
In 2013, she came across people that claimed to have jobs for her and some other Africans in Libya. What they did not know, however, was that these people were human traffickers and they were going to be sold in Libya.
‘’We did not know they were human traffickers until we arrived in Libya,’’ she said. ‘’When we arrived there, we were all locked up in a room and our buyers came for us in their taxis’’
Absa explained that she refused to go with the person that bought her, and that was how she ended up in prison. She said she has been in prison thrice, and each time she went through torture, abuse and unimaginable pain. The first time she stayed there for three months, she was there for 6 months the second time and 2 months the final time.
She finally met a Senegalese man who was also Fula like her. He bought her ‘freedom’ and married her.
Asked whether her suffering ended after she married, Absa responded; ‘’it added’’. Freed from the beatings and maltreatments of the prisons, Absa thought she would finally find peace with this man. However, the events that happened after she left and married the man were the complete opposite of what she had envisaged.
She explained that she decided to get married because she was tired. ‘’It was the only thing that could have given me at least five percent of my freedom’’.
‘’He knew I did not love him,’’ she said. ‘’After we got married, he revealed to me that he had two wives who are both in Senegal, and that I am the third one.’’
The believe that Lebanese are mostly the perpetrators of this inhumane act in Libya does not really apply to Absa’s story. She lamented that the entire process was done by black people, a black person sold her and a black person married and abused her.
She narrated that she was always locked up in the room and she had no keys. She got pregnant and the pregnancy lasted for one year two week, which she said was a mystery to the doctors.
Absa could not give birth so she was operated on. Unfortunately, ‘’the doctors mistakenly left some metal – like object in my stomach after the operation because there was chaos in the town, on my hospital bed bullets were coming through the windows’’.
She explained that she finally came back home with her four month old baby in 2017 with the help of IOM. Asked how she got back on her feet after her return, she responded; ‘’I was already strong and on my feet way before I came back home’’.
For someone who had gone through pain and maltreatment in a country she knew no one in, Absa said she had to be strong on her own and register with IOM to be returned voluntarily.
‘’The process of getting registered and coming back home requires strength. Knowing you are going home to your family with absolutely nothing is hard, but, I had no option but to be strong,’’ she said.
Even after her return which was facilitated by IOM, Absa said she lived in excruciating pain as a result of the object in her stomach. Though she did not know there was a metal in her stomach, she still decided to seek help from IOM and they facilitated for her to get tested.
Absa Jallow had a second operation in The Gambia and the metal was removed from her stomach. She was given a reintegration support package by IOM and opened a grocery store. However, the business ran down quickly ‘’because of the dependency rate of family’’.
‘’I applied for a grant from the Youth Empowerment Project (YEP) and established a restaurant, which is still operating,’’ she noted.
Graduated from Armitage High School and worked as a secretary at Kombo Kerewan Upper Basic School, Absa said she would not have embarked on the journey if she knew then what she knows now.
She is also a volunteer of Migrant as Messengers and advocates against irregular migration in The Gambia.
Though healing from the trauma and terrible experiences, Absa said her biggest concern now is how to get her divorce from the father of her son. She narrated that she is still finding it difficult to be free from the marriage because the man, who now lives in Senegal, has refused to show up in court.
‘’The Cardi Court had asked me to present a witness, but where can I get that from? My mother is also against the divorce because she thinks I was happily married. While I was there, I never revealed to them what my husband used to put me through because I did not want them to worry,’’ she explained.
Stigmatized in society, lost friends and ‘’she did not come with nothing but a child’’ thrown at her more than she can count, Absa said she has no intention of going back on such a journey. Her plan is to be successful in her business and be happy with her family.