Chateau Rouge, a dirty neighbourhood in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, is famous for all the wrong reasons. Crime, drugs, illegal immigrants, counterfeit goods and prostitution are some of the “high points” of the area. Assistant Editor, SEUN AKIOYE, met some of the underworld workers and reports on the Nigerian teenage prostitutes.
It was a cold, windy and bitter December evening and Gift (Surname withheld) has been standing for about eight hours by the entrance of Metro 4 station in Chateau Rouge, one of the most vibrant, yet undesirable districts in Paris. The business cards she was distributing since 8am were almost exhausted and so was her patience and strength.
The cards belong to Olivia Beauty Salon which is situated at 102; rue du Doudeaville and which prides itself for employing “American Technic” in style. It is one of the hundreds of such saloons one could find in black neighbourhoods in Paris.
“I don share over 100 cards since morning, no one ever called me, na so the day go end?” Gift began in a rather muffled voice as a gust of cold wind crammed the words back into her mouth. Soon she was chasing another woman with an unkempt hair and who looked reasonably prosperous to be able to afford her fare of €50 for a hairdo.
On the surface, Gift is a pleasant and unassuming woman of about 30 years old, having lived in Paris for a couple of years, she is one of those usually referred to as “old coaster”. What is more, she spoke tolerable French and has acquired the skills of hair styling and make up. Gift is not also wanting in beauty, despite her age and life experiences, she still commanded a body that could turn the head.
There are talks about her not to sterling past, but one may just consider it as idle talks, sponsored by jealous jilted lovers. Gift was not one to display her past on the public plate but surely France was not the first European country she had lived in. Many of the Nigerian men said her first destination had been Italy.
All over the streets of Chateau Rouge, young Africans run riots all over selling roasted groundnuts, call cards or sharing business cards. There are hundreds of other Nigerians both male and female who braved the bitter weather in the winter and the summer heat soliciting for customers and getting more snub than encouragement, from Rue Dejean to Doudeaville and Panama streets, they labour night and day in the dirty, smelly streets of Chateau Rouge.
Chateau Rouge is not the only place to find Nigerians in Paris. There is a sizeable population of them in places like Marcadet-Poissonniers, Chateau d’Eau, Gare du Nord, Gare du L’est, and Strasbourg- Saint-Denis. But the Nigerians living in Chateau Rouge are some of the bitterest one can find in Europe.
Chateau Rouge has been described as an African enclave; it is also the epitome of everything that is wrong with Paris. As you ascend the escalator from the underground station into the streets, hundreds of black young men and women who are generally referred to as hustlers mob you with solicitations for hair do, pedicure and other services, legal and illegal.
Chateau Rouge holds a fascination for Africans in Paris and more for the illegal immigrants because at least 95 percent of the population are black and a large percentage of that are also illegal immigrants. There are a number of migrants from North Africa and they own all the fruits, vegetables and meat businesses. In their store one can get goat meat, cow tail, goat head, liver and other condiments. The African population is shared between immigrants from the Francophone African countries and those from Nigeria and Ghana mainly.
The Francophone ruled the streets during the day and night. The best jobs, apartments and businesses belong to them. They are favoured by French bureaucracy too and many of them are documented migrants. They are aware of this advantage over their Anglophone counterparts and they make every effort to rub it in. The Nigerians know their place and generally keep out of the way of the Francophone.
‘There are many crazy Nigerians in Paris’
Henry (Surname withheld) has acquired a reputation as one of the most prominent hustlers in Chateau Rouge. Even though he has been resident in Paris for only a little over a year, with an equally limited knowledge of French, it is a feat which came with some balls.
Henry has years of struggle behind him. Born in Imo State Nigeria, he has forayed into business in Ikotun, Lagos, for a number of years and when the decision was made in favour of hustling abroad, his family had spent fortunes in achieving this dream. He tried US visa to the UK and Germany before he finally secured the visa to France. In all, he spent N1.3million.
“I would have returned home but for the money I invested into coming into this country. We are not well at all, nothing is working, it is only when you get here that you know your visa is useless without papers to live here. Because of that, many of our people have run mad because they think too much,” he said.
In his mid-20s, Henry had realised early the almost impossible situation he was into. The first problem was accommodation. Without resident permit, no landlord would take you as a tenant, so the only option is to sublet.
“I live in a room sublet from another person; that is the only way illegal immigrants can live in France. The other option is the street. I pay €400 per month and share the room with another Nigerian. If the Agbelegbe (police) should catch us, there would be trouble,” he said.
Getting his share of €200 is no mean task. “The only job I can do is barbing. I learnt it here when I came. I had to hustle on the street with thousands of other people for customers; when you barb, I charge €10 and the shop owner would collect €5. That is how I scrape my rent together. I don’t eat regularly; I have not eaten today (at 5pm).”
Accompanied by the reporter to the only Nigerian restaurant in Chateau Rouge, Henry declined the offer of food or drink. “Bros, it will be better if you give me that €10. I can buy drink on the street for €3 and keep the change for my house rent,” he said.
No one can blame Henry for not trying to get resident permit. After arriving in Paris, he had immediately relocated to Finland where he claimed asylum or aduro, as it is generally known. “As soon as they took my fingerprint, they knew I came in with a French visa and I was deported to France. They said I should claim asylum in the country that offered me the visa; it is a rule called Ireland rule,” he lamented.
Claiming aduro in France is not as easy as it sounds. Coming from Nigeria, it is difficult to convince the government that your life is in particular danger of Boko Haram or that your government wants to kill you. In short, all the lies, which usually swayed the Europeans no longer, hold water.
“What will you tell government is the problem with Nigeria that you are running away? You can’t say Boko Haram; you can’t say government is pursuing you. Unless you say you are gay, but you must prove it by marrying a gay person. The government knows we are lying but it must be a deep lie. It is terrible, we are running crazy here; our life is not complete because we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, “Henry’s statement was accompanied by a vigorous shake of head, which indicated anger instead of self-pity.
Most of the Nigerian illegal immigrants live on borrowed times and they try to make the most of whatever is left of it. Learning French even though is a requirement that can ease their survival, has become a hard job. “ We can’t learn because of too much thinking. We don’t know where we will be tomorrow, but we know that our inability to speak the language dey cut our parole,” Henry said.
But Gift has a different experience: “ I went to language school but when I returned here to Chateau Rouge, I lost all the French I learnt because I am working with Nigerians and living with them, that is my problem,” she said.
To learn French, Henry said: “One would have to leave the naija environment and move away from English speakers.” But that is the problem because it is in your community that you find refuge and security, especially for undocumented immigrants like Henry and Gift.
It was now 6pm and it was peak hour and the streets are parked with Africans. The market at the intersection of rue de Poullet and rue de Dejean is awash with buyers and sellers. The whole area cuts a picture of Idumota at peak hour. On rue du Dejean, the Arab sellers of fake products have set up stalls for their “if you love Prada, you will like this” imitation products. On other streets, hundreds of hustlers mob passersby with solicitations. By another corner, a game of cards was underway, while a Cameroonian approached the reporter and offered a set of Chanel perfumes for €8 while assuring him of his product’s high quality.
Gift and Henry joined in the hustle but soon returned to their frustrated soliloquies complaining about the weather, the bad business and the terrible feeling of being an illegal immigrant. “ I have not made anything today. I don’t know how to balance up, even to eat is a big problem,” Henry began. After distributing almost 100 business cards, Gift had made two jobs but” they paid badly, I made only €35 from the jobs,” she said.
“Bonjour Mama, La coiffeur?” Henry asked a passerby who answered with a dirty look. He left her and went after a man with a disheveled look, convinced he had hit gold. “La coiffeur?” he asked but got no reply. One hour later, after getting about 30 dirty looks, Henry returned to the saloon, flung himself on his barbing chair and closed his eyes.
Two streets away, Michael also known as Wapamiya, was watching the game between Barcelona FC and Depotivo La Coruna on a small flat screen television installed against the northern wall in his underground restaurant. With him was a friend from Guinea Conakry. Wapamiya, a small, thin man of about 40, did not look anyway like a restaurant owner and like many other businesses, he had rented the basement of a Cameroonian restaurant where he ran his exclusive Nigerian restaurant.
Wapamiya has paid his dues. Over 10 years ago, he left Nigeria through Sokoto, Niger, Mali, Algeria, Morocco and finally Spain where after eight years, he got his papers and made a fortune selling African food. Three years ago, he came to Paris, learnt French and opened his restaurant.
Wapamiya’s shop was not the most affluent restaurant one can dine in. To get there, one would have to descend through a dirty stairway into a humid and smelly basement. But the unpleasant journey was soon forgotten when Joy, the maid, began to list all the food on offer which include pounded yam, semolina, wheat with a full complement of egusi, okro, bitter leaf and orisirisi meat. There is also Nkwobi and Isi-ewu which goes for as high as €25. The pounded yam cost €10 per plate, while a bottle of palm wine is €15.
“When I got to Spain, I was washing plates. I had no one to help me. The problem with our Nigerians is they are too lazy. What they should do is learn a trade and learn the language. Instead they want to make money the first week in Paris. In Spain, I went to a catering school and here, I first worked for somebody before I opened my own business. Now my name is all over Chateau Rouge,” Wapamiya said and opened another bottle of beer.
Joy sat quietly at a corner, hidden by the darkness. She is a lady of about 25 years and of tolerable beauty. Her hair was made in dreadlocks –to save money on weekly hairdo- and her oval face had a sort of bitterness in it. She has been living in Paris for a year and half and has worked for Wapamiya as cook, cleaner, server and maid for three months. The salary was just enough to pay for her €360 per month room in Gare du L’est and a little “change to carry over the month.”
Joy rarely smiles and it was understandable. She had spent considerable years in Italy as a prostitute before she moved to France. Left with little options, she reverted to her old trade until three months ago when Wapamiya took her in. Joy is a Benin from Edo State.
“ I don’t have papers,” she said in a matter- of- fact manner. This singular position has placed her in a delicate situation. “I am managing this job for now because I can’t look for any other job, “ she said.
As prostitutes, we don’t follow Nigerian men
Perhaps the best kept secret of Chateau Rouge is not in its dirty and winding streets nor the countless African restaurants and illegal businesses but in the figures that lurk in the shadows after sundown, the infamous prostitution ring.
It is an open secret in Paris’ African circles that the biggest prostitution ring resides in Chateau Rouge and Nigerian women are most infamous for this trade. “It is a bad image for us as Nigerians here,” Henry said.
The Nigerian prostitution ring in Paris began rather late in the 1990s. The first migration of the prostitutes came from Italy, when the government of that country began to crack down on the trade; those that came initially were the retired hustlers who helped set up the ring in Paris. They found homes in Chateau Rouge and Chateau d’Eau.
Then, more girls arrived. Undocumented and broke, prostitution became the easy way out, in the dark corners of black neighbourhoods and Chateau Rouge has plenty of that. Today, the population of Nigerians in Paris has blossomed and the natives of Edo State are about 80 percent of that.
The Nigerian men can swear that almost every girl in Chateau Rouge has once been a hustler and that they are all from Edo State. “They start as hustlers. After some years they graduate to working in the bars or at the saloon,” a Nigerian barber said. But Wapamiya believes that not all the girls are from Edo and there is a sprinkle of other tribes like the Yoruba and Igbo in the trade. “The Edo people are more here and there is more of their girls here. But they are not the only ones in the trade, there are others too,” he said; he had taken his third beer within an hour.
“You will see 18-21 year old girls on the streets, they don’t want to work, they prefer the street life. If you call them to talk to them, they say no,” Wapamiya said and burst into a song. He claimed to be a “retired musician” with two albums to his credit in Spain. “Wapamiya is the title of one of my albums,” he screamed and began to sing a track from the album. His voice was harsh as it moved from one key to another. It sounded hollow in the echo of the basement; but Wapamiya claimed it was a sold-out album.
The reporter decided to seek the ladies of the night. On the dirty and drug infested rue du Panama are some Nigerian women, standing close by the wall. From close observation, none could be younger than 40 years. They were dressed in flowing Ankara robes with red sweaters and multi-coloured shoes. They are perhaps the ugliest set of prostitutes ever seen. As one passes by, they greeted: “Mon ami, Cava?” And if one replied in English, they added, “How far, you need me?”.
These old harlots are all returnees from Italy who refused to retire even in France. They charge between €20- €30 for a ‘short time’. It was a cold and miserable night and business was slow; so one of them even agreed to a smaller amount of €15 “for a ‘short time’ only”.
The prostitutes extend to rue du Doudeaville, where younger women between 25 and 35 years old hold sway. While the “mother” prostitutes wink at you, the younger women wait until you are near before grabbing you in a torrent of French. “Hello love,” one responded in English. Understandably, they are more expensive than the older women.
But the stars of the dark world are the teenage Nigerian girls and there are many of them on rue Pollet and Dejean. One can also find them by the entrance of Metro 4 train station, beside Bata store. On this night, the reporter counted at least 25 of them, all fresh, delicately beautiful, they smell fresh too.
They little girls threw caution into the wind; they spoke at the top of their voices and played little girly games. One could see they were really little girls who had lost their innocence. One of them was busy recounting her exploit with an older man to her colleagues under the illumination of the street light. They switched between Bini language and pidgin.
“ When we reach hen, the man dey look me like small pikin hen. I work am, work hin legs, nah hin come dey shout.” The other girls laughed and slapped the loquacious girl on the back. The French boys smoking nearby heard them and one of them came over. He hugged the talkative girl very tightly and attempted to kiss her. The girl in defence grabbed his private parts and the boy screamed in pain. He spoke some French which indicated that he would be prepared to remove his clothes there on the street.
“ He is just using you to tap,” one of the girls who had remained quiet said. She is tall and dark, with some tiny tribal marks on her face. The marks added a strange beauty to her dark face and when she smiled, her teeth were big and white. None of the girls gave her name but the reporter found identities for them. The talkative one was short and fair, streetwise and businesslike, she played hard with the French boys and uses the word F***K very often. She agreed to a ‘short time’ for €50.
“C’est est cher, take €20”
“Look at me now,” she said and turned around to show her selling points. “All these for €20?”
“La coupe longue or toute la nuit?” the tall dark girl asked. She said she is Itshekiri from Delta State and has been in France for a couple of years. She agreed to €35 for a ‘short time’ saying that was the least she could go.
It is a costly business for those who want to patronise the girls of the night, especially the teenagers. The least they could agree for a ‘short time’ is a whopping €35; that is not all, the patron would have to rent a hotel room for minimum €35. And there are many of such hotels around Chateau Rouge, the closest being Hotel Meliti.
“This one looks like a Yoruba, from Lagos,” another girl chipped in.
“Tell us the truth, are you not from Nigeria?” another asked.
“If you are from Nigeria, we cannot ‘work’ you. It is a rule, we don’t follow Nigerian men,” Itshekiri said in a serious tone. Once the girls knew you are Nigerian, they become violent and very defensive.
The teenagers have an unwritten rule never to “work” any Nigerian man because it may come back to haunt them. Henry had earlier warned that the girls would not agree to any of their countrymen no matter how much you are willing to pay. “They don’t know who will marry them, so that it will not turn out to be a relative of their former customer,” he said.
The reporter asked Itshekiri why she would not go with a Nigerian. “Na like this the world dey,” she said using her gloved hand to draw a full circle in front of her; the line disappeared quickly in the semi darkness. “You don’t know where you will be tomorrow, so it is better to avoid them. If we like you, we can talk with you like am doing but we will never follow you. All these girls will not follow you,” she said.
“You are a big man from Lagos; you can come here and go back. We don’t have that opportunity. We dey here dey work inside cold. In Lagos you will be in your car and I will be trekking, so I also have to work hard here to make it,” Itshekiri said.
Despite working in miserable weather conditions, the girls are exposed to other dangers like the occasional police raids and threats from violent men. For instance, a man came and priced a girl, he smelled of alcohol and cigarettes. The girl called the talkative one and passed the man over. But even this bold dare devil teenager would not accept him, “ If you go with him, he will beat you hen, and there is nothing you can do,” she said.
Some hours earlier, Henry had met a girl on the street whose name was Happy. She was a short dark and ugly girl of about 22 years. Henry told her story: “She was brought here by her master who resides in Ghana. She owed the man about €20,000. When she started working, she was paying the master’s intermediary here but that one did not deliver the money. Things got so bad, the master declared her wanted. She had to move away from where she was living; she is now on the run.”
Most of the girls also have tales to tell but they will not quit the work, at least not yet. Many like Happy are tied to the masters who paid their way to Europe; the girls are mandated to refund a certain amount of money every week.
It was 9pm and the girls are in a state of agitation. Business was dull and every customer is welcomed except the Nigerians. “So you just dey use us dey gain information hen?” Itshekiri asked the reporter who promised to come back in February 2016.
“You may not see me, I may not be here. Who says God cannot change my condition tomorrow and I will leave this place?” she said. It was a more powerful statement than she realised and as she waved goodbye. She left her friends and disappeared towards rue du Dejean into the cold windy night.
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