Located in the southern fringe of Ouagadougou, Ouaga 2000 was originally built for the 1996 French Africa Summit. It is a very beautiful area with many lovely and expensive hotels, embassies, courthouses and other government buildings, including Kosyam Palace, the seat of the Burkinabe President. He called the trafficker on the phone and told her his friend from Paris in France had arrived Ouaga with plenty cash and would want to see her. “She’s a trafficker but she’s still a prostitute for wealthy clients,” he told me.

She sometimes sleeps with big clients from Paris, London and other European countries. He asked her if he could bring me home. She said we should meet first at a restaurant nearby. But I told Ouédraogo to take me to her house first. “I like beautiful houses and I would like to see where she lives at Ouaga 2000,” I said. Her house, a beautiful bungalow, was surrounded by other beautiful houses and was located not far away from ‘Complexe Scolaire Naaba Yemde’, which was situated in Saaba at Ouaga 2000, Ouagadougou. “This is the kind of house I would like to have,” Ouédraogo told me.

“I really want to know the people she knows so I can supply my own girls,” he said. “By the grace of God, I will make it. I will one day live in a house like this,” he said as we rushed to meet the trafficker. He told me he lost his father when he was two years old and his mother died when he was 19 years old. His elder brother, an architect, has been saying that he has already failed in life, but he will prove to him wrong, he said. “I will do all I can to also build something like this,” he said.

•Kenu border in Kwara State

Not far from the trafficker’s house was another beautiful house Ouédraogo described as being owned by the trafficker’s friend. “Her best friend lives here,” he said, pointing at the beautiful house, bigger and more beautiful than the trafficker’s house. As we approached where the trafficker was, he warned me: “Do not speak English with her, if you do, she will become suspicious. She will also pretend not to speak English, but she does. She is Nigerian and she speaks English.” I agreed because I speak fluent French. We finally met the trafficker at a highbrow brothel with many girls under her. She gave me a name I could barely understand. Ouédraogo told her she should come and get the 14 year old girl who had been crying all day. I listened to their conversation patiently.

A day earlier, Ouédraogo was invited to Petit Ouaga, where I had met him, by the manager to talk to the 14 year old girl. She had been fighting other girls and crying, he was told. I asked the trafficker if she could supply some young girls to me. She said that would not be a problem. After a conversation, a drink and some pictures, I left with Ouédraogo and scheduled an appointment with her the next day, 14 January. From the way it looked, it appeared as though, the trafficker’s friend in the other big and beautiful house, was a bigger trafficker. “She’s not just a prostitute. She’s still sleeps with big men at night and day time, but she’s also the one placing the girls,” Ouédraogo said of the trafficker.

•The burnt National Assembly in Ouagadougou

The next day, the trafficker was busy with some shopping in town and I used the opportunity to discover Ouédraogo’s house in Somgande area of Ouagadougou. He had been telling me about a house he had just built and I was curious to see it. With his motorcycle, we sped up and quickly arrived at Somgande, an area with mud houses. It appeared to me like the worst part of town. Before getting to his house, he showed me his brother’s house in Kossodo area, a beautiful area with lovely buildings.

“I will one day build a bigger house,” Ouédraogo said as we passed by his brother’s house. Once I understand the business, I will have my own girls and build a bigger house in Ouaga 2,000,” he said. He told me his brothers had been inviting him to church, but he had refused to go because he can make it on his own. In his house, the pictures of Thomas Sankara, Burkina Faso’s ex-president who was assassinated on 15 October, 1987, were everywhere. “He was a great man,” he said, “he was our leader.”

Ouédraogo took me around Ouagadougou and we made a brief stop at the National Assembly that had been set ablaze two months earlier following nationwide protests that ousted long serving leader, Blaize Compaore, the man believed to have masterminded the killing of Sankara. “I was among those protesting,” he said. “We chased him away.” During the looting that followed, Ouédraogo got two bags of rice, he said.

•Sinawu-Kenu Road

I joined Sawadogo and Otoba on a visit to Touwego cemetery in Ouagadougou where two Nigerian girls had been buried two months earlier. “Elizabeth and Mary died about two months ago. They were from Calabar and were about 16 years old,” said Sawadogo. “Mary was raped and fell sick and died. Both used to sleep at Dapoya in Ouagadougou here.”

Sawadogo said the Nigerian Embassy in Burkina Faso had not been helpful in supporting NGOs that combat human trafficking. “We need assistance to do this job. We need to create more awareness. We need to be able to rescue these girls and travel back with them to Nigeria and re-unite them with their families. Those who cannot go back, we need to be able to equip them here,” said Otoba, President of Lutra-Jeune in Ouagadougou since 2007.

The next day, 15 January, Otoba took me to the car park on his motorcycle at 4 o’clock in the morning and I began the long journey back home. I arrived in bustling Lagos in the afternoon the next day, 16 January, after 28 hours on the road, totally exhausted.

–This report was accomplished with the support of the Wole Soyinka Centre For Investigative Journalism and the Embassy of The Netherlands