Prostituting Nigeria

[oasis]

It's almost midnight in downtown Athens, Greece. Ten young Nigerian women dressed in miniskirts, halters, and stilettos strut under the faded awning of a crumbling hotel. Men in cars cruise by and eye cleavage. When a car stops at the curb, one woman darts to the driver's side. She hangs her head and half-bare breasts through the open window. How many euros will this man pay for a half hour with her? I wonder.

I'm a writer from the Chicago suburbs searching for glimpses of hope amid the depravity of the European flesh trades. Here in Athens, and later in Amsterdam, I find Jesus' followers are lovingly pursuing trafficked women engaged in prostitution.

This week I'm traveling with Nea Zoi, a ministry of International Teams, serving prostituted men and women in Greece. Prostitution is legal here, and one in four Greek men regularly pays for sex. Consequently, the number of women and children forced into prostitution has increased tenfold over the last decade, according to Amnesty International. "The evil of trafficking and prostitution is dark," says Nea Zoi director Emma Skjonsby Manousaridou, a Seattle native in her early 30s who joined the ministry in 1999. "And yet, I've seen God is here."

Three times a week, 8 staff and 20 volunteers from Greek evangelical churches canvas downtown neighborhoods, knock on brothel doors, and scour the streets for prostituted women and men. Since 2004, Nea Zoi's teams have spoken with about 50 trafficked Nigerian women per week.

This spring night, our outreach group includes Eirene Hatzigianni, a Greek social worker, and Jennifer Roemhildt, the American founder of Nea Zoi. We tote baskets of books, Bibles, fliers on health and legal rights, cookies, and thermoses of hot tea. Two team members pray nearby as others offer tea and friendship to the women. Typically, teams have only seconds to exchange a few words over tea before a customer flashes cash at a woman or police sirens send her fleeing.
Fear and Friendship

We spend more time with "Maria," a petite Nigerian with brown and blonde braids. She likes music, so Eirene and I sing a cappella: "He carried the burden of the world on his shoulders. . . . He can carry you, too, my sister." Then, in a lovely soprano, Maria sings us her own African worship song. Maria tells us she composed gospel music and led her home congregation's choir in Benin City, southern Nigeria. But desperate to flee poverty and support her mother and many siblings, Maria was lured by promises of a high-paying job as a waitress in an Athens bar.

Her story is far too common.

When Maria's meager waitressing income failed to cover her food and rent, the man who trafficked Maria pulled her into prostitution. She owes him 50,000 euros (roughly $75,000) and lives in virtual slavery, forced to remain within his eyeshot except when she works the streets.