This article is part of a feature series, Migration within Africa: Home so close to home. She never imagined then that at age 32, circumstances would leave her closer to the women she wanted to help than the ones doing the helping.
At 16, she became pregnant with a man from Benin City. A second baby arrived three years later. But he left them for another woman, kicking Diamond out of the house. Desperate to provide for her mother, siblings, and children, she took on low-paying or menial jobs, depending on handouts from the neighbours to get by. A week after the conversation with her best friend, Diamond made a call to Auntie Angela, the madam in Ghana, to accept her offer to be a call girl.
After that, Diamond would be free to leave and work independently. They [officials] wanted to know our mission in Ghana. We lied that we are traders. In Accra, they were received at the bustling Tudu truck station near the Central Business District by a man who took them to their madam in Kasoa, a peri-urban town of about , inhabitants, 33km A hub for trade and commerce, Kasoa is home to people from several Ghanaian ethnicities as well as foreigners from Nigeria, Liberia, Togo, and Ivory Coast.
Prostitution is a thriving business in West Africa, especially in Liberia, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone, whose economies were ravaged by civil wars that all ended in the late s. Although commercial sex work is illegal in Ghana, it is a booming business in areas like Lapaz, Cantonments, Osu, East Legon, and Kasoa where select local pubs are often inundated with young girls in revealing clothes seeking potential clients. At their residence in Kasoa, Diamond and her 10 friends shared a single room containing just five thin mattresses without bedsheets on the floor.
It felt like a prison β no TV or radio set or chair. The paint on the wall had faded with marks of dirty human hands. The room was poorly ventilated with a rusted, noisy ceiling fan. The only window had a net meant to prevent mosquitoes and other insects from entering but that was torn.
