Florentine wasn’t her real name, neither was Florentina, but she answered to both. She was a second year mass communications student at Unilag. And even though her parents were not paying her tuition or her living expenses, they were still disappointed when she didn’t score high enough to study medicine, or engineering, or law.
In her first year in school she couldn’t afford to stay in the hostel, so she lived with an aunt, a distant relative who made her sleep on the floor in the sitting room, next to the driver and the house girl, who were on intimate terms. The aunt also paid her school fees and gave her a little extra to take a bus to school. In that first year Florentine lost twenty kilograms and failed half of her courses.
Then she met an old friend in school and moved in with her on campus and the aunt stopped sending money.
The tokunbo cars, expensive jewellery, and latest phones owned by students at Unilag makes it hard to believe there is poverty in Nigeria. Florentine’s friend, for instance, bought Brazilian hair from another student who regularly travels to Dubai to buy clothes, jewellery, and human hair to sell to her schoolmates. Florentine’s friend paid two hundred and fifty thousand naira for the hair, and a week later she had it taken out because other girls now had virgin Peruvian hair and she didn’t want to be unfashionable. She gave Florentine the discarded weave, and when Florentine had it fixed everyone said she looked more beautiful than the current Miss Unilag.
Not that Florentine objected to the way other girls made money, but she never went clubbing with them. They would go out on Friday, usually to one of the expat clubs on Victoria Island, and they would either come back the next morning or be away all weekend and only return to school early on Monday morning, sometimes dropped off by chauffeured luxury cars. Monday was when they settled debts, bought airtime for their phones, or sent money home to parents and siblings.
But Florentine was not brought up to sell her body. That’s what she told her friend, and that’s the reason the girls stopped inviting her to parties or to clubs.
Unlike them, Florentine had found friends who looked after her. One was her boyfriend, Nosa, a banker on the island. They would meet at a hotel near school where they would spend the whole weekend together. They couldn’t go to his house because of his wife.
Another friend, who was even more protective over her, was a much older man. A chief, in fact: Chief Ojo, a well-known businessman in Lagos. He was more generous than Nosa, and he took her to better hotels and even let her stay there alone for the weekend after spending Friday night with her. He was also married, but unlike Nosa he was old enough to be her father - so she could never think of him as a boyfriend, even though he introduced her to his friends as his little wife and he constantly asked if she was cheating on him.
With just these two steady friends, and occasional men she met through friends, Florentine was able to pay her school fees, eat three times a day, and soon enough buy her own Peruvian hair. Even her grades improved. And when there was no hope of passing a paper, she could afford to pay the lecturer to overlook the fact that she hadn’t taken the exam.
It is easier on one’s ego to receive charity when you don’t need it. When Florentine’s income was sufficient enough and steady as well, she was able to go clubbing with the girls without a thought for the judging eyes that would follow her all the way there, whispering ‘prostitute.’
It was at a club that she met a boy. He was about her age but he was also a student at university so that made him a boy. While the other men there were older and richer, and bought champagne for their dates, he sat with a group of girls who paid for his drinks. He kept looking at her, and when she got up to go to the toilet he got up too. When she came out he was outside the door. He said, ‘Hey,’ and handed her a business card as if he was someone important. She wanted to tear the card and throw the pieces at his face, but he had started walking away and the girls he was with were looking at her with resentment, or perhaps it was envy.
Back in school she showed her friend the card and learned that she had hit the jackpot. She sent the boy a text but he did not respond. She called and he rejected the call. She sent three more messages over the week and had given up when he called her two weeks later and invited her to his house in Victoria Garden City.
He asked if she wanted to make money. She did. He told her about a place called the Harem. It was an exclusive club owned by his brother, Malik. If she wanted in she would have to have an HIV test first. He would pay for it. She couldn’t tell anybody about the club, and once she became a member she would have to stay there for weeks at a time and wouldn’t be able to contact anyone outside. While she considered it, he added, ‘You will make one million naira in a month.’
She told the banker that she was pregnant, and as she expected, he gave her money for an abortion and was busy anytime she called. She told Chief Ojo that she was going to Ghana with a friend; they were going to buy gold to sell to their mates in school. He praised her entrepreneurial spirit and gave her money for her new business.
Three months later, on the day after the results of her second blood test came back, the boy picked her from school and took her to his house in VGC. There was another girl there who didn’t talk a lot and was constantly looking about: at a door opening, a door closing, the boy standing up.
At midnight a man came to the house with a policeman walking behind him. The boy introduced the man as Mr Malik, the owner of the Harem. Malik told the two girls that they would be blindfolded for the journey to the club. Florentine wanted to object; the other girl began to cry and beg to be allowed to leave. Malik told her it was too late.
The girls got into the back of Malik’s white Range Rover Sport which had blackened windows and he collected their phones. The policeman tied clothes around their faces. They drove for hours and when the car stopped and the blindfolds were taken off, they were in a large compound surrounded by a twelve-foot fence topped with barbed wire. Dense forest grew beyond the compound. The house was huge and unpainted, but otherwise complete and elegant; it had the double height columns that had become trendy in Lagos. About twenty cars were parked in front. Some had drivers waiting in them. A generator was rumbling in a corner by the gate, and as they walked up to the building, they could hear music coming from inside.
A woman opened the front door and greeted Malik with a hug. She was in pink lingerie. She had a glass of wine in one hand and a smouldering cigar in the other. Other girls in lingerie were strolling about or sitting on sofas with men, drinking and talking or cuddling and laughing. The men, about ten, wore masks like the ones people wear to fancy dress parties.
‘You cannot know who your client is,’ Malik said as he led Florentine and the other girl up the staircase. ‘They are regularly tested for HIV and other STDs, just as you were. You cannot ask them for money. You cannot ask them to use a condom. If a client shows you his face, you must look away. And you must tell me. If you think you recognise someone, you must keep it to yourself. If your client is a woman, you cannot refuse. You cannot speak to anyone about what happens here. At the end of the week, Sisi will pay you two hundred thousand.’
The girls were taken to different rooms and given lingerie to try on. Florentine got dressed and was going downstairs when Sisi, the lady they met at the door, stopped her on the stairs.
‘I have an important client coming today,’ Sisi said. ‘He always wants to be first to try the new girls.’ She took Florentine’s hand and led her back up the stairs. ‘Malik didn’t tell you something; sometimes a client will give you money. You can keep it so long as you didn’t ask for it, but you must tell me about it. This guy who I have for you, he is going to settle you big time. You can thank me later.’ She led Florentine into the room. ‘By the way, what is your name?’
‘Rolake, ma.’
‘That’s too local. From now on you are Florentine. OK? And don’t call me ma.’
As Florentine waited on the bed, changing her position a dozen times, unable to make up her mind which pose was most seductive, or for that matter whether she should go for sexy, or for the good girl look, she contemplated her luck and smiled at how she would soon be richer than the banker and would no longer need the chief either.
Someone knocked and she said, ‘Come in.’ She had decided to sit up, stretch out her legs and lay them one on top of the other, with her arms spread over the headboard.
He stepped in, clutching a bottle of Moët in one hand and two champagne flutes in the other. He looked comical in a glistening mask with gold discs and green feathers at the edges, and a long white tunic, stretched in the middle by a protruding belly.
He raised the hand in which he held the glasses and lifted the mask off his face.
‘Rolake!’ he said. His mouth remained open and his eyes bulged.
Her legs retracted towards her body and she pulled a pillow to cover herself. ‘Oh shit! Chief!’ she gasped.