Tinuola

Story of Mary ex trafficked girl from Nigeria

This is the story of Mary, born on 2 May 1994 in Mushalash, a small suburb in the city of Lagos. Her grandmother called her Tinuola, in the Yoruba language "full of wealth".

After a journey of more than 4,000 km that took her from Lagos to Benin City, Kano, Agadez in Niger and finally to the port city of Zuara in Libya, she arrived in Sicily in October 2014 and shortly afterwards was transferred to Florence. Following the end of one of the hospitality projects, she was transferred once again to Chivasso, a small town near Turin in 2017. Mary is a guest of the Mary Poppins association, a non-profit organization that works with trafficked women.

In 2019 Mary leaves the project and starts a new life. A life not easy and full of difficulties, made of mistakes, steps forward, passions, pain, humiliation. A long bureaucratic path to regularisation on Italian soil and the search for a job.

This is a small tale of the world around her and her incredible story.