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DYNAMICS OF FEMALE TRAFFICKING AND EXPLOITATION IN A 
DIGITAL AGE IN CHIKA UNIGWE'S ON BLACK SISTERS' STREET

By
Nnubia, Ifeyinwa Dorathy

Department of English
Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University, Igbariam Campus

ifynnubiaezezim@gmail.com
08037506103, 09037132149

Abstract  
he trafficking of female for whatever form of exploitative labour—physical, sexual, military, Tetc. - is a heinous violation of human rights and a reproach to all affected societies. The 
activities of trafficking, inglorious and dehumanizing as they are, have for a long time been 

carried out surreptitiously, leaving a vast majority of the world's population in the dark about its 
nature. Female trafficking is clandestine in nature and is carried out in most cases unnoticed and 
not indicated as a criminal network. The actors in this criminal enterprise have inflicted great pains 
on society and humanity, while they seek wealth and twist dreams and people's lives and 
aspirations, most times without being noticed. But in recent times, this menace has gradually been 
uncovered by writers, human rights activists, government agencies and international 
organisations. The efforts put in by these individuals and groups have yielded enormously in 
unearthing the schemes, structures and stratagems of the traffickers and their loathsome deeds. 
This paper therefore, explores the dynamics of female trafficking in Chika Unigwe's On Black 
Sisters' Street.
Keywords:  Trafficking, Exploitation, Dehumanisation, Sexism, Womanhood.

Introduction 
Literature is a representation of life, as well as mirror on the society that produced it. This is because 
the literary artist draws his material from a given society and milieu. Therefore, this paper reflects 
the topical issue that inspired the novelist whose work is selected for this study. Opinions on female 
trafficking, an aspect of the broader concept, human trafficking differs from scholar to scholar. It 
has become an issue of international concern, in addition to the exploitation of women for various 
reasons and purposes. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), ''Trafficking in 
persons'' (or human trafficking) is internationally defined by The United Nations Protocol to 
Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children as:

The recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons by means 
of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of 
deception, of the abuse of power/or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or 
receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control 
over another person for the purposes of exploitation. (42)

Human trafficking can take a variety of forms such as slavery, forced labour or services, servitude, 
removal of organs, and/or sexual exploitation (United Nations,42). The First World Congress 
Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, held in 1996, defined the commercial 
component of sexual exploitation as, "sexual abuse by the adult and remuneration in cash or kind to 
the child or a third person or persons" (1). It is the commercial element that separates sexual 
exploitation from other sexual crimes such as rape, molestation, and sexual assault (5). In other 
words, it is an abuse by an adult pimped by another adult that involves a form of sexual 

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commercialization. According to Modupe Adeleye:
Human trafficking for sexual and domestic reasons is not a new phenomenon. 
Overtime, men, women and children have been trafficked for the profiting of 
members of criminal syndicates. More recently, humans have been trafficked for the 
retrieval of their organs and a lot of these victims have been left to serious health 
challenges and death. Trafficking for sexual and economic exploitation is considered 
as a modern form of slavery and a serious violation of the rights of victims especially 
because human trafficking always comes with issues of physical, mental and 
psychological violence, coercion, fraud and manipulation (27).

In the views of Ifeoma Odinye, “Trafficking and Sex slavery have become so rampant in Africa and 
in the world today. Thus, both are perceived as modern forms of slavery which impinge on the 
general well-being of boys, men, women and girls in particular” (18). Taneem Saeed in Odinye 
asserts that although it has been 200 years since slavery was officially abolished, there are millions 
of people across the world that are still subject to slave-like conditions. Trafficking is the biggest and 
fastest means by which people are exploited and forced in to slavery (31). In recent times, sex slavery 
and human trafficking are among the most lucrative and fastest-growing sources of income for some 
girls, and secretly organised criminal organizations all over the world. Corroborating this, Linus 
Akor's statement that “the history of human trafficking, including that of the trafficking of women, 
cannot be completely divorced from the phenomenon of slavery” (13).

Evelyn Nwachukwu and Chukwuka Ogbu maintain that "Human trafficking is a kind of modern 
slavery and the victims are mainly women and girls" (1). This is because both involve the acquisition 
and transportation of humans across local, national and international borders for servitude, with or 
without the consent of the trafficked person(s) (90). Slavery, according to Oshadare is the social 
sanction of involuntary servitude imposed by one person or group upon another. He explains that 
slavery, as a phenomenon, made its appearance when pristine tribes reached the pastoral (as distinct 
from the hunting and gathering) stage of development. Slavery-then was modest with regards to the 
number of slaves, because the care of flocks required only a few hands.

Omolola notes that a more dramatic change in the character and complexity of slavery came in the 
late 15th century-and mid-19th centuries when many Africans were shipped across the Atlantic  as  
slaves   in   what  later  became  known  as  the  trans-  Atlantic  slave  trade. 

"The intercontinental slave trade, which involved Europeans and Africans, was 
carried on through four continents of Europe, Africa and the two Americas. 
Following the voyages (countries such as Brazil and Haiti were discovered to be 
awash with rich mineral deposits and plantations waiting to be exploited. The 
exploitation of these resources required a large reservoir of labour, which the native 
Red Indians could not cope with. Consequently, as more plantations were set- up and 
more mines were opened up, the demand for slaves increased dramatically and 
attention shifted/to Africa. This marked the genesis of the massive importation of 
able-bodied Africans into the new world as slaves. This trend in human trafficking 
for forced labour continued until 1808 when the obnoxious trade was formally 
abolished (84).

Although slave trade ended in 1808, nearly 200 years ago, a contemporary form of slavery, that of 
the trafficking in women and girls for exploitative sexual and commercial labour in Europe and 
America from Third world countries, particularly Africa, has been on the upward swing in recent 
years. Several socio-political, cultural and poverty related issues may have accounted for the 
phenomenon of the trafficking of women in Nigeria.

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Leadership problems, mismanagement of public funds, squandemania, the get-rich-quick 
syndrome, unemployment, growing population and mass migrations swelled the populations of 
major cities as parents and families began to take greater risks in an attempt to escape poverty and 
improve their living standards. Accepted practices such as placing and fostering children at the 
homes of relatives were turned into money-making ventures for parents and the phenomenon of 
cheap labour through human trafficking escalated, driving large numbers of young girls, women and 
children into the streets to work. Thus, trafficking of children and women for exploitative purposes 
in Nigeria is of two dimensions: internal and external. Internally, children are procured as domestic 
workers, while external trafficking provides girls and women for prostitution rackets in Europe and 
in some cases, unsuspecting young girls and women have fallen preys to traffickers who use them for 
rituals.

Besides, prostitution and related trafficking offences have been linked closely to other crimes like 
drug trafficking and human smuggling; these crimes are most common in border zones. It becomes 
easy to source for vulnerable girls and women who may be trafficked as sexual slaves. So trafficking 
of women and children for sexual exploitation is becoming one of the leading illegal economic 
activities along with drug trafficking and arms smuggling. The exposure of women and girls 
domiciled in border communities to human trafficking has become acute. In addition, a lot of 
females who hitherto were smuggled out of the country find themselves stranded at the border 
communities for several reasons and thereby become easy prey to human traffickers. Research has 
indicated that location and environment are key factors to consider in the sustenance and spread of 
trafficking in persons for sexual exploitation. Scholars like Melrose posits that attention should shift 
from studying factors and causes from individual pathology to socio-economic and situational 
pathology. In other words, we should begin to look at how prevailing situations and circumstances in 
an environment predispose the members of such environment or community to certain patterns of 
living.  This paper will examine perspectives on trafficking of women as portrayed in Chika 
Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street.

The theoretical framework for this study is Trauma Theory. The term, “trauma theory” was first 
documented and explained in Caruth's work Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and 
History. The theory originates from the exposition and explanation of Sigmund Freud on traumatic 
experiences in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Moses and Monotheism. In essence, Freud's 
concept of “traumatic neurosis.” is what the American Psychiatric Association in 1980 accepted as 
“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD), an idea important in defining the trauma theory. Caruth 
defines “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” (PTSD) as: 

a response, sometimes delayed, to an overwhelming event or events, which takes 
the form of repeated, intrusive hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or behaviour 
stemming from the event… The event is not assimilated or experienced fully at the 
time, but only belatedly… To be traumatized is precisely to be possessed by an 
image or event (70).

Trauma theory is explored across different disciplines such as literature, critical theory, history 
and historiography, social sciences, legal studies, psychology and psychiatry, etc. Thus, it has 
influenced and affected many areas of human experiences. Shoshana Felman attributes the 
contemporary interest in theorizing about trauma to “three interrelated twentieth-century 
occurrences” namely; the discovery of psychoanalysis, the discovery of trauma as a new type of 
understanding of historical causality and of historic temporality. According to him, a traumatic 
experience occurs too immediately for the consciousness to record, but its mental or unconscious 
images (memory) come back to the victim belatedly and repeatedly when such action repeats 

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itself. Therefore, memory helps the victim to recall his or her experiences in the forms of dreams, 
flashbacks and hallucinations etc.. Felman explains that literature appreciated, and literature of 
traumatic experiences remains opens with all horror, nightmares, silence both cognitive and 
linguistic breakdown. According to Patricia Clough, trauma is the engulfment of the ego in 
memory. But memory  might be better understood not as unconscious memory so much as 
memory without consciousness and therefore, incorporated, body memory, or cellular memory.

Sigmund Freud located traumatic memories in an unconscious psyche, which is the mind. Patricia 
Clough and other affect theorists, such as Brian Massumi, located traumatic memory entirely 
within the brain/body. Hence, there is a strong connection that exists between affect theory and 
Cathy Caruth's well-known view of trauma. Caruth explains that 

Trauma is experienced as the literal registration of an event … Modern 
neurobiologists have in fact suggested that the unerring “engraving” on the mind, 
the “etching into the brain” of an event in trauma may be associated with its elision 
of its normal encoding in memory (152). 

However, contemporary literary trauma theory further asserts that trauma creates a state of terror 
excited by sudden appearance of danger which divides or destroys identity. This serves as the basis 
for a future argument that suggests that identity is formed by the intergenerational transmission of 
trauma.

Trauma, in my analysis, refers to an emotional response to an overwhelming event that disrupts 
previous ideas of an individual's sense of self and the standards by which one evaluates a given 
society. The term, “trauma novel” refers to a work of fiction that conveys profound loss or intense  
fear on an individual based on recollected memory. One characteristic of the trauma novel is the 
sudden transformation of the self (personality) ignited by external factors such as terrifying 
experiences that expose previous recollected experiences which inform the new perceptions of the 
self and the society.

Therefore, the experience that elicits an extreme response from the protagonist is not necessarily 
bound to a collective human or natural disaster such as war. The traumatic experience can include, 
for example, an intimate personal experience of female sexual violence and rape as found in the 
selected text. The major trauma theory employed in a given literary piece depends on the nature of 
the experience which is used to assert the position that traumatic experience produces a “temporal 
gap” and dissolution of the self. For example, Hurt Kali Tal writes: “Accurate representation of 
trauma can never be achieved without recreating the event since, by its very definition, trauma lies 
beyond the bounds of “normal” conception”(15).

The above explanations represent the Freudian concept of trauma and memory which emphasizes 
the importance of understanding trauma through narrative recall of a given experience. Many 
contemporary African literary scholars such as Chika Unigwe and others have depicted the ugly 
and bizarre experiences of girls and women who have been sexually molested in order to expose its 
negative consequences on the female gender, their growth, and development as individuals in 
different societies.

Dynamics of Female Trafficking and Exploitation in Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters' Street
Opponents of immigration often prefer to ignore the tragic forces that compel people to risk death in 
order to reach our lands of plenty, not to mention the horrors that often await the "lucky" few, once 
they arrive. Unigwe focuses specifically on the very precarious situation of women, particularly on 
the issue of sex-slavery. On Black Sisters' Street renders an account of how four African sex workers 

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in the city of Antwerp strategically relate to exoticist definitions of African womanhood that are 
central to the sex industry, while it is simultaneously conveyed that their personal histories surmount 
these.

The story portrays four female characters '—Sisi, Efe, Ama and Joyce. The first three women all left 
Nigeria on their own accord to go and work in Antwerp as prostitutes, in the hope of creating better 
lives for themselves and after earning enough money to start afresh. Crucially, the protagonists' 
stories diverge beyond these broad common features: Sisi. whose real name is Chisom, is a 
university graduate who has been unable to find a job in Nigeria because she does not have the right 
"connections" (22); Efe has to support a son whose father, a married man, refuses to acknowledge 
the child; and Ama, who was abused by her devoutly Christian stepfather in Enugu and, upon 
denouncing him, set off to her mother's cousin place in Lagos, finds no satisfaction in her 
"predictable" and "circular" job (159) at her relative Mama Eko's small restaurant. Of the four main 
characters, only one, Joyce, is tricked into coming to Belgium under false pretences. The young 
woman, whose real name is Alek, is originally from the Sudan, where her family were massacred by 
a Janjaweed militia. Following the tragedy —during which she is also raped— she spent several 
months in a refugee camp, where she falls in love with a Nigerian soldier, Polycarp. The couple soon 
settles in Lagos but the man, pressured by his family into marrying a girl from his own Igbo ethnic 
group, arranged for Alek to be sent to Belgium — allegedly to work as a nanny.

The novel firmly situates the life narratives of four African women within today's geopolitical 
power relations. The women's narratives include tragic episodes of poverty, war experience, sexual 
abuse and families torn apart in their home countries, which made them vulnerable to the call to 
enter the global woman's traffic network run by Oga Dele. On arrival at Belgium, they soon find out, 
however, that they have escaped their circumstances for a mirage of a better and wealthier life in 
Europe, and soon see their dreams shattered. The novel draws on life writing to portray the 
experiences, and memories of the four protagonists' may not seem entirely unexpected.

Voicing the memories and experiences of four African women in Flanders, the novel offers, a dreary 
portrayal of the submerged world of illegal prostitution in the red light district of Antwerp city. It 
suggests the descent into disorientation and denial of worth that they face. Working as sex workers, 
the women must pay back in monthly instalments the fee of 30,000 euros to Dele, the costs of their 
exportation to Belgium. With their fake passports withheld by Madam and living under her close 
surveillance, the four women are almost literally imprisoned in the house in the red-light district but 
also objectified in the position of black sex workers satisfying white men's sexual desires. "As for 
liking black women, Oga Dele had told her [Efe] that they were in great demand by white men, tired 
of their women and wanting a bit of colour and spice." (84) Primarily, the women are indeed socially 
constructed through exotic, sexualised codes of black womanhood.

The four women are indeed not victims of Dele's antics, as the novel conveys, but agents in a 
transnational world making choices, strategic choices that are restricted by circumstance. If they 
want to be successful as sex workers, the women are to abide to gendered and racialized norms and 
codes of behaviour. The novel is indeed not so much an account of four African sex workers with a 
glitter and a matching G-string, boots up to her thighs or as one who stood behind the glass, and 
prayed that no one would notice her." (134) The novel clearly suggests the constructed nature of 
black sexualised womanhood by describing how the four women dress up and act upon the role 
behind the window that is expected from them. If it is true, in the terms of Eva Pendelton, in her 
article Whores and other Feminists that "sex work is drag in that it is a mimetic performance of 

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highly charged feminine gender codes" (Pendelton, 183), to which we may also add racial codes, 
then the novel portrays the four protagonists in the process of performing these highly charged 
exoticist codes of black femininity.

The four protagonists cannot generally be seen to change or subvert the normative scripts they must 
follow; until Sisi's failed attempt to escape at the end of the novel, the women almost conscientiously 
do, say and behave according to what Madam and others tell them. The disruptive potential, 
however, resides not in the women's rewriting of the codes of black sex workers, but in the narration 
of how they act out these codes. Unigwe juxtaposes scenes of the women's performance as black sex 
workers to self-reflexive fragments that explicate their doubts, uncertainty, embarrassment or 
feelings of freedom, while being disguised and text portions in which the women are seen to take an 
emotional distance or critically comment on their behaviour. Unigwe describes what goes on in the 
heads of the women, while they try to the best of their capabilities to please the men that approach 
them. In so doing, their work is revealed to the reader as a strategic lie. Joyce piously scrubs the 
make-up off her face on request of a regular customer who calls her "Etienne's Nubian princess." She 
is ready to change the script and to change costume, as it were, whenever this is desired. Her ultimate 
goal is not, however, to please white men's desire. The latter is but a means to achieve economic 
purposes and upward social mobility. Or in the terms of Ama: "the men she slept with were just tools 
she needed to achieve her dream. And her dream was expansive enough to accommodate all of them" 
(169).

More specifically, On Black Sisters' Street inherently connects the issue of storytelling to 
constructions of black womanhood. Narrating their histories to each other - life writing being a 
formal way to underscore the narrative dimension of identity - the women change the story about 
themselves alongside the rapidly changing circumstances that have occurred to them. Sisi and Joyce 
have changed their names and are originally called respectively Chisom and Alek, the latter, as she 
reveals, is Sudanese, not Nigerian like she made everyone in the house believe. Alek refers to the UN 
refugee camp she lived in for a while as "a collection of sad stories" (194). On arrival to Belgium, 
Sisi is determined to "shed her skin like a snake and emerge completely new" (98). Madam invents 
the story of an escape from Liberia that Sisi must tell about herself in the Immigration office. 
Reiterating one of Unigwe's points in Becoming Black in Seven Lessons, Madam further adds: 
"White people enjoy sob stories. They love to hear us killing each other, about us hacking each 
other's heads off in senseless ethnic conflicts. The more macabre the story the better." (121) Sisi 
agrees to be Libyan, "in the next months she would be other things. Other people. A constant 
yearning to escape herself would take over her life" (121). While the performance of sexualized 
definitions of black womanhood is central to the four women's lives as sex workers, their family 
histories emphasize their identities as a series of narratives invented strategically to suit the 
circumstances.

Reading the novel as a narrative of community reveals how the text structurally resonates with 
ongoing mobility and circular movements of migration, rather than with linear-chronological 
notions of progress and plot development. Also, On Black Sisters' Street can be seen to defy exotic 
notions of black female identity and community, notions which define the four women when they 
are at work in the public space in Antwerp. The chapters entitled "Zwartezusterstraat" render an 
account of events that occur in the present, and are geographically situated in the city of Antwerp - 
more precisely in the house in Zwartezusterstraat. These chapters are interwoven with chapters 
focusing on the individual life stories of the women and bring into view their separate, idiosyncratic 
pasts and futures. Eventually, Ama and Joyce return to Nigeria, Efe stays in Belgian prostitution but 

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moves up on the social scale as she now employs African women. Sisi's ghost leaves her body and 
travels back to Nigeria too. Their individual stories follow the on-going movement back and forth 
between Nigeria and Belgium. Similarly, the basic story line prioritises circularity and ends where it 
begins, with an account of Sisi's death.

Female trafficking and Sexual exploitation appears to be the central themes of the novel as it focuses 
on the exploitation by Senghor Dele who 'exports' the girls abroad for his 'personal gain which has no 
negotiation, thirty thousand euros; which he makes very clear to all of his girls (commodities). "No 
try cross me oooo. Nobody dey cross Senghor Dele!"(268). The girls are denied their freedom by 
Oga Dele assisted by Madam until they pay the money used for their 'export". The Madam also 
benefits from this exploitation as she is in charge of the girls in Belgium. The girls have no holiday at 
all, except for period breaks. And it is seen in the moment when Madam goes into Sisi's room to find 
her lying down instead of preparing for work like the others. She questions, "What's going on Sisi? 
Shouldn't you be leaving for work? Everybody else has gone!" (272). Sisi tells Madam she is on her 
period. Madam doesn't believe her but agrees still. This depicts the kind of bondage they're in and the 
exploitation involved.

The four girls happen to be victims of sexual exploitation, but that of Joyce happens to be worse, as 
she is sexually violated and raped at age twelve by the Janjaweed militia. Also, in the case of the other 
girls, Oga Dele informs them of the reason for going abroad, but in Joyce's case, he tells Polycarp that 
she will be taken to Belgium, 'Make you go look after people. Nanny work,' Dele tells her. 'Yes. Look 
after children. Dele will find you a job as a nanny in Belgium.' She bears that in mind, until she gets 
there and finds another different job altogether. Joyce's only mercy is that Polycarp pays her debt to 
Dele for her, so she gets to save her money. And unlike the other girls, "she enjoys a level of 
favouritism from Madam. The female characters are considered unfortunate victims of the actions of 
prurient men and their exploiting advances.

After the death of Sisi, they realize that they know basically nothing about each other especially late 
Sisi, despite having each other as their only family in Belgium. This unfortunate incident causes 
them to recount their different stories to each other, starting with Efe. Efe is the head of the 
three......The skin on her neck looks burnt, flaky ochre with interspersions of a darker shade of 
brown. It is her neck that hints at the fact that at some point in her life, she was darker than she is now 
(38). Ama calls her the Imelda Macros of wigs, as high-heeled shoes and wigs were her trademark. 
Sisi teases her after she complains of the pain in her feet from too much dancing with high heeled 
shoe.

'But you always wear high heels! You'll complain today and tomorrow yow will be in 
them again,' to which she replies, 'With my height, if I no wear heels, I go be like full 
stop on the ground.' And Sisi replies her again 'You're not short You just like your 
heels high.' (11)

Unigwe's description of her is not really short. At least, she's not much shorter than who described her 
height as 'average'. 'Average' translated in her passport to five feet seven. But of all four women, Efe 
was the shortest and this gave her a complex (ii). Efe begins by narrating how she first discovers sex 
at sixteen at the back of her father's house. She had felt cheated, in her own words, like pikin wey dem 
give coin wey no dey shine at all at all (49). Efe loses her virginity to Titus, a man old enough to be her 
father, in exchange the basic necessities of life for herself and siblings; denied them by their father 
after the untimely death of her mother. The reader learns of the pedophilic nature of Titus through his 
wife on the day Efe goes to show him his son, a product of their love affair. Titus fools and deceives 
the naive Efe into believing that his wife is old and has creaky bones.

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Everything Efe knew about Titus's wife, Titus told her. She was tucked away in their 
Ikeja duplex with five bedrooms and three sitting rooms. She was old. Almost as old 
as Titus was. He also said her bones were creaky, krak krak, and he needed someone 
with young bones to make him happy. He told Efe she made him the happiest man in 
Lagos, the happiest man in Nigeria even. 'I go to bed with a smile and wake up with a 
smile because of you, my Efe.' (54)

Efe discovers upon arrival to Titus's house that all she heard about the bones of Titus's wife were all 
lies, and her bones didn't creak, krak krak. After receiving her own portion of the insult as the five 
other women with offspring from their individual affairs with Titus before her, he learns of his wife's 
determination to not let any woman lay claim to the fruit of her patience. None would share the 
money she had waited so patiently and so good-humouredly to make. It was her right and her 
children's legacy, and so she guarded it jealously (74).  
Unigwe portrays Titus's prurient nature through his wife as the reader learns that:

From the day she married Titus and caught him ogling at her chief bridesmaid, his 
wife had known he had a roving eye. As long as women swayed their hips at him he 
would respond, like a drooling dog chasing a bitch in heat. It was not his fault; it was 
just the way he was created. She could live with it (71).

Also, his paedophilic nature is revealed as his wife narrates his "specs" in the girls he chose, as he 
slept around without a 'raincoat.' Titus had the sense to stick with inexperienced young girls, young 
women like the one who had disturbed their lunch this afternoon (Efe), stupid enough to think they 
could waltz into their home with his child (74). Unfortunately, what Efe had not known, for who 
would tell her was the sixth woman in as many years to come to Titus with an offspring from an affair. 
And all six the wife had dismissed in more or less the same way, marching them to the door with 
orders never to return, asking the house help to bolt the door behind them (71). Efe the naive under 
aged girl falls victim to the deception of Titus, with the untamed libido. She tries to transfer the 
aggression of Titus's denial on the baby. “Efe felt she ought to hate the baby; after all, she never asked 
for him. He kept her at home and was a visible sign that she was damaged goods” (75).

Refusing to let her past define her, without any help from her father, Efe is determined to provide her 
son with-the kind of life she had dreamed for him when she thought she would be able to get Titus's 
help. This pushes her to work two jobs in a day. Every morning, before she went to her cleaning job at 
an office in GRA, she whispered in her son's ear as he slept, 'I promise you, I shall get you out of here. 
I don't care how I do it." She had never been more serious about anything in her entire life (77). Efe 
worked two jobs and desperately prayed for a third job, just to save up more money for L.I's upkeep. 

“She finds an advertisement for a cleaning woman on Randle Avenue. Randle 
Avenue was close to the location of the second job and she was sure she could juggle 
all three. Three jobs meant more money, more bonuses, which equalled a better life 
for L.I. And a better life for L.I. totalled a happier life for her” (78).

She gets the job, which happens to be in Dele's office after a series of questions from him 
"interview". Dele turns out to be the most generous of her three bosses, giving her huge bonuses at 
holidays and even complimenting her. She secretly nurses the hope that Dele would one day ask her 
out. He never did, and it is not until seven months later when she starts to complain about finding a 
good nursery school for L.I., so that Rita could go back to school, that Dele asks her if she would like 
to go abroad.

'Belgium. A country wey dey Europe. Next door to London.' He made it sound as if you could walk 
from one to the other. From one door to the next (81). She accepts, and tells her father and siblings 
that she is going to work as a kitchen help for a rich family. Her siblings are of the belief that she is 

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travelling to go and make pots of money for them. On the day of her departure, she, upon the 
insistence of Rita to not take L.I. to the airport, takes him as the only luggage of worth in her head. A 
strong memory of L.I. holding on to Rita, crying as Efe walked through security at Lagos airport. She 
wanted to soak in the smell of his skin. And right up until she had to hand him over to Rita, she had 
had her nose in his hair where the scent was the Strongest. She wanted to take the smell and store it 
where she could have easy access to it (87). Unfortunately for her, without spending up to three 
weeks in Belgium, she struggles to remember the smell amid all the other ones that were suffusing 
the space around her. Unigwe points out that she only gets to remember the smell and see her child 
before her eyes which pushes her to cry in a way she believes she would never do again.

The focus moves over to Ama, another victim of the paedophilic act of her step-father. Ama allows 
her past control her as a person, to the point of attitudinal changes and mood swings. Ama is 
portrayed as an aggressive character with a short temper, which can be understood by the reader as a 
psychologically, mentally and sexually abused character. Even her flat mates complain about this, 
especially Efe, where she confronts her, after Ama picks up a bottle of Leffe beer and starts to drink. 
After drinking, she flings the bottle onto the floor. Efe eyes it as it rolls, slows down and finally stops

'Isn't it too early to be drinking, Ama? Day never even break finish!' Efe tells her. 'It's 
early and so fucking what?' Ama burps. Tugs at her crucifix. 'You dey always get ant 
for your arse. Every day na so so annoyance you dey carry around.' 'Fuck off (25)

Apart from the face-off with Efe, there are other instances of such arguments with the other girls. For 
instance, during the preparation for lya Ijebu's burial party, Efe's "supposed grandmother", she 
engages in an argument with Sisi, which would have led to a brawl but for the timely intervention of 
Efe. 'How could you burn the rice, Sisi? I can't get the fucking pot clean!" 'I don't know what's eating 
you, Ama, but I don't want any part of it. Whoever sent you, tell them you didn't see me, I beg of you.' 
She flung the dish towel she had been using over her shoulder and raised her hands in surrender. I 
don't want to fight abeg (6).

'Fuck off. Why don't you fuck off on one of your long walks?' Ama's voice was a storm building up 
(6). She picks another in Efe's comment about telling her to dance in the sitting room in a bid to 
appease her. 'I can see you don dey ready for the party Ama. Ooh, shake that booty, girl! Shake am 
like your mama teach you! (7). The mention of her mother clearly annoys her as she recoils, 'Oh, shut 
it! What has my mother got to do with my dancing? (7) Ama moved away from Efe. the crucifix 
around her neck glinting. Every now and then, the reader sees instances of her, frequently tugging at 
a crucifix on her neck. The reader finds that the crucifix is given to her by Mama Eko, her aunt, who 
seems unconvinced and uncomfortable about Dele taking her abroad. Mama Eko sneaks a tiny gold 
crucifix into her hand. 'May God go with you, nwa m.' Ama was touched. Nobody had ever cared for 
her in that way, given her a sense of totally belonging.....(170).

The reader follows a series of events that happen in Ama's life, that brings about a relationship with 
Mama Eko begins and progresses before she travels to Belgium. After her eighth birthday she is 
sexually molested, by "her holier than thou father', Brother Cyril, who is the assistant pastor at the 
Church of the Twelve Apostles of the Almighty Yahweh, Jehovah El Shaddai, Jehovah Jireh, one of 
the biggest churches in the city. He belonged to a church where everyone was sister and brother. 
According to Ama, her father didn't give her a chance to dance to her desired music; he would have 
none of that. ''It's the Devil's music; he said. 'They do not edify the things of Our Lord. The Devil 
shakes his waist and sways his horn when he hears music like that.  He claps his hands and stokes his 
fire for the many souls that he's winning (128).

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So for Ama, instead of the kind of music she heard from across the street, their house was infused 
with music from Voices of the Cross, the Calvary Sisters, Jesus is the Saviour Band, Ndi Umuazi 
Jesu. Voices that grated on her nerves. She never thought of telling her father that the voices irritated 
her. She knew what would happen if she did. The things of the Lord were not to be Abused. Nor 
Slighted. Nor Ridiculed (128)- She would be flogged with 'Discipline', the cowhide cane. Brother 
Cyril is portrayed as a self-righteous man who uses his self-righteousness as a yardstick for 
determining a good or bad person. For instance, whenever he sees a lady whose cloth didn't cover her 
knees, the sight would throw Brother Cyril into a righteous coughing fit, coughing out curses on 'the 
daughters of Eve who destroy the reputation of women", and always ended with him calling for his 
wife, 'A woman fit for Christian eyes," to soothe him and get him a glass of water.(130) He always 
insisted on wearing white safari suits and dashikis which his wife Rose had to always boil, in a pot of 
water just to ensure that the cloths' whiteness glowed and this is, because of his anticipation to meet 
the Lord, at any given moment. (131)

After Anna's eighth birthday party, which was the happiest day of her life, Brother Cyril floats into 
her room in his white safari suit, which scares Ama to the point of screaming. He covers her mouth 
immediately. He has a carnal knowledge of her, and the only thing she talks to are her pink 
walls.(132) Unable to tell her mother about Brother Cyril's wicked acts, Ama consistently keeps to 
herself and the pink walls. She stops eating pap because of the sticky whiteness which gushes out of 
him. It's warm and yucky,' she complained to her walls. 'I'll never eat pap again (132)

Unigwe portrays the wickedness of the self- righteous Brother Cyril in the way he quotes the bible 
whilst forcefully having sex with her. Whenever she stiffens her body, her father would demand. 
'What's the fifth commandment?' 'Honour thy father and thy mother,' she would reply, her voice 
muffled by the collar of her nightgown in her mouth. And then she would relax her muscles, let him 
in and imagine that she was flying high above the room (132). This evil act of the righteous Brother 
Cyril continues right until she turns eleven, when her period starts. As she gets older, she begins to 
think that her mother walked around in a deliberate state of blindness otherwise, she should have 
seen right through her. This event makes her confront Brother Cyril after he insults her for failing her 
JAMB examination twice and then he kicks her out of his house, with the support of her mother and 
reveals the truth about not being her father. Her mother disbelieves her, ignorantly slaps her and 
throws some crumpled naira notes at her as her bus fare to Lagos the very next day. She leaves, after 
taking a bath, without food to the park. Her journey to Lagos turns out to be stressful as all she thinks 
about is her father and all the possible lies she must have been told, on an empty stomach. She finds it 
hard to believe that her sinless mother bears a child "out of wedlock. She lives with Mama Eko who 
treats her like a daughter until she meets Dele. She initially refuses his offer to take her abroad, but 
after giving it much thought, she succumbs, after all, Brother Cyril takes it from her without her 
permission and it wouldn't be in Nigeria.

It pains Mama Eko to watch her leave, and for that she gives her that crucifix which Ama holds so 
dearly to her heart. In the end, Ama, would be the one to open a boutique. She would take Mama Eko 
as its manager. Mama Eko would tell her she always knew she would make it. They would never talk 
about her years in Europe. Unigwe has a deep understanding of poverty and its hungers. She portrays 
her four major characters as cool-eyed gamblers, not passive victims, as women willing to play "the 
trump card that God has wedged in between their legs" (26) in exchange for the material goods they 
crave, the chance of coming home rich enough to buy their families cars, apartments and businesses.

Unigwe conveys both what is miraculous about the West to foreign eyes and what is awful, how 

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people live and die alone, unmourned, without the sustenance of family and neighbours. And she 
shows her readers how the women who survive their pact with Dele choose to deploy their hard-won 
wealth. While Efe stays put, running her own brothel, Joyce and Ama prefer to build their businesses 
back home. On Black Sisters' Street also pursues a nuanced construction of identity. Here, we have 
four women, living the same life but all with different personalities, background, biases, emotional 
baggage and different futures. Sadly, to the western men, they are just objects much like Westerners 
have reduced the identities of Africa.

Conclusion 
The incidents in On Black Sisters' Street are portrayed as happening all at once. The novel 
simultaneously divulges the backgrounds of the four women, how they got into sex work and how 
they collectively cope with Sisi's murder. This method is effective in that it reinforces the 
prominence of the women's past in their decision-making. For example, Sisi's decision to become 
involved with sex-work is very much tied to her parents' inability to fulfill their dreams, whilst Efe's 
is in a bid to provide a bright future for her son and siblings. Though the reader knows the death of 
Sisi beforehand, the circumstances that lead to her death are also the conflicts of the themes of the 
novel. In the novel, Sisi's demise is an image about what may have gone wrong with the lives of the 
characters before their arrival at Antwerp. The novelist gives four faces to two corrupt systems, the 
sex industry in Belgium and the hierarchy of dishonest wealth in Nigeria.

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