In December 2019, while the madam was away, Blessing finally got the courage to escape.
As part of a months-long investigation into sex trafficking and the gold mining industry, The Associated Press met with nearly 20 Nigerian women who said they had been brought to Burkina Faso under false pretences, then forced into prostitution.
Burkina Faso is likely to be downgraded in this year’s Trafficking in Persons Report, an annual report issued by the US State Department, according to two people familiar with the discussions who were not authorised to speak on the record.
Salofou Trahore, general director for Burkina Faso’s regulatory body for small-scale mines, said he was unaware that women were being exploited at the sites.
Prostitution exists in a legal grey area in Burkina Faso as it is not illegal, but soliciting it is.
The limited available figures show an increase in reported trafficking cases in recent years.
In Secaco, a makeshift mining town tucked behind uneven dirt roads deep in the brush, trafficked women live and work in tiny, ragged tents with plastic sheeting.
A 27-year-old called Mimi said recruiters told her she’d have a job to support her three children when she arrived in Burkina Faso.
The madams confiscate the women’s passports, phones, and money, then force them into sex work in brothels in makeshift mining towns adjacent to the small-scale mines or larger towns near the mines.
Women are bound to the madams until they pay off their debts which often approach $2,700.
Some of the women were recruited by the madams themselves, approached randomly on a bus or in the market in Nigeria, and asked if they wanted to earn a better living.
Once recruited, the women travel for approximately three days with the traffickers.
Human trafficking experts said abuses will continue until the mining industry including buyers atop the supply chain, such as jewellers and electronics makers take responsibility for where the gold originates.