Darker Side of Prague

15. 3. 2010 / Fabiano Golgo

Their story is similar and even their daily lives. Most try to make some extra cash before the Sun is down, sitting at pubs like Zulu or Ridgeback, Žito or right in the streets Žitná and Ječná, also around IP Pavlova and Pamovka, selling mostly bad marijuana or a white powder they insist is cocaine, but is more like a mix of analgesics and metamphetamines, pseudoephedrines. The trend among teenagers is not to snort the coke, but to smoke it, like crack.

For 300 Czech crowns (250 if you are a constant client) you can get a small bag with less than a gram of skunk (a more potent cannabis, grown through selective breeding and often hydroponics) or for 1500 CzK a gram of the cocaine-immitation.

Most of them are even against drugs, especially those that come from Muslim areas. They sell it just as a business, often making comments about the users among themselves, condemning them. Some make use of the drugs they sell, but mostly their interest is just in the money it can generate.

To get to Prague they often accept the offer from people that work around those cabarets, to whom they work for sometimes over a year exclusively to pay their debt over the tickets, the corruption around getting a visa, the first weeks of living expenses. For about 10 thousand euros they can have all that. Then, for another 10 thousand, a Czech wife. Mostly with a local, mixed-race kid being born from the relationship, so as to make sure the permanent visa is not cancelled after divorce.

Kelis has a 9-year old son, Miro, born in Prague. "In the beginning, I was with her only because of the visa, but the sex started to pick up and she learned English, so we ended up really wanting each other", he remembers. "But in less than two years we were already almost killing each other", he laughs. Too many cultural differences, he explains. "She was always cleaning, which is fine with me, my mother and sisters were always cleaning as well, but she couldn't just do it, she had to spend the whole time complaining about having to do it and trying to engage me to help her out". In the upbringing of their child there were the biggest fights, with Kelis defending a more free approach, like letting the boy get dirty clothes when playing in the garden or allowing him to stay up until 21h, instead of 19h30. Simona, his Czech now ex-wife, wanted the kid to clean his toys into some box already from the age of 2, he exclaims with disbelief. Kelis never did drugs, but he is not from a Muslim part of Nigeria. It is because of the violence and lack of opportunity in his homeland that he decided to bet everything and come to Europe.

He had never heard of Prague or the Czech Republic. He understood from his cousin that there was a man recruiting street cruisers "to catch mainly British drunks and bring them to bars where they will spend their last pounds and not remember", he jokes... "All I knew was that it was Europe, which is not as good as America, but is the second best to get a life, which in Africa is not possible, unless you are part of some corrupted elites".

At first, he did the night job he was brought here to, for free, to pay the debt created to be able to come to Czech Republic, so he learned the others, who came before him, survived from the money they were able to do before the evening. "That is why many go out sell drugs, but many also just pay their debt and then leave these shadow business and get a simple job as a cashier or the person weighing the fruits and vegetables in a supermarket", explains Ibrahim Abi, a sociologist who has been observing the Nigerian community for his doctorate. He continues: "their connection with the underworld is not some sort of tendency, because they are from Africa, where business perspectives differ a lot from ours, but just the consequence of their need for a means to stay alive in the first year or two, before they get rid of their debt".

Kelis confirms that the first couple of years are very difficult, with almost no money to spare. Then, comes the time to find a wife or go on Britain or Germany, where there are more opportunities, although lately, thanks to the global economic slowdown, this has become increasingly difficult. So they stay. "I like my life here, I would move only for money", Kelis opens up. "Prague is for me home, I will never go back to Nigeria, other than on holidays", he says. "My son is Czech, so I will always be connected to this land", he concludes.

Miro says he sometimes is made fun of in school, because of his African origins, but that in general the biggest problem is with the teachers, not with classmates. At 9, he doesn't know how to answer the question "what is the difference between his father and his mother or between him and his classmates". Kelis is proud to make sure that his son understands he is Czech. A black Czech or a Czech with African blood, but not a Nigerian. The problem is, both Abi and Kelis tell, a black kid is seldom considered Czech. Not even TV Nova's black news reader Reynolds Koranteng, who is a common feature in the mainstream scene, is perceived as Czech. He is well accepted, likes by most, "but when we asked 136 people if they considered the news anchor Czech, 72 answered that no", according to Abi.

Kelis ex, who doesn't want her name published, explains that the 10 thousand euros promised (she never got more than 6) was the main motivation to get married to Kelis. "Not that I would just get married to anyone for money, I am not a prostitute. But I was introduced to him, we went out to pubs a few times together and I was attracted to him physically. Very attracted", she says, balancing her head in disapproval. "I was 23, so my hormones were boiling", she justifies. "But then I started really liking him, so I went for the marriage and even the kid, which was my idea, so he would not be hostage to our relationship surviving the years before a citizenship can arrive".

But life started to become difficult when she realized how diverse they were. He was used to women being less active and "all that male thing they have in Africa", she synthesizes. Kelis believes that most marriages get to the same level of animosity they reached, late in the second year living under the same roof, but that his African traits just intensified it. "She could not see me as a man, with this and that as personality traits, she had to categorize everything, to fit me in an African box that made her feel like the civilized one, thus the one right in any disagreement we had", he protests. "But when I looked at her father, he acted almost the same way, her mother was an exact copy of her...", but she would not see her dad under the same dark light, like his skin.

Peter is 28 and he left a wife and 3 kids back in Nigeria to come to Czech Republic make money. He has been here for almost a year and his debt is almost paid. From the day of his arrival he has worked every night trying to catch clients crossing Wenceslas square. While he is boasting about making about 800 Czech crowns per day, a Czech man without any uniform shows him a badge and a card that meant he was being controlled and fined for having been caught giving a visit card to a passer-by. The amount of the fine is immediatelly paid back by the brothel manager, after collecting the official paper that shows how much he had to give away. "Sometimes there are some special actions, where we are told to stay home, because the police or the controllers from the city government will bother you dozens of times, so better to not provoke", Peter openly admits. He sees it as "just actions to get propaganda, probably some politicians need to look like they are cleaning the center from those niggers", he attacks.

Peter's roommate, who shares accommodation with him at the board-housing hostel Hloubětin, prefers to not tell his name, but says that it is thanks to a system of high bribes towards local officials, government beaurocrats and politicians, the Nigerians are, for now, here to stay. "The alcohol, games and tits trio are as Praguer as the horse statue [at the top of Wenceslas square]", Peter's fellow countryman pokes fun.

The groups of Nigerians walk around all evening and through the night or stand up at corners throughout the crossing points of Prague's most important boulevard. They whisper to tourists offers like "weed? Coks?" or "marijuana, white powder" and other variations of what they are trying to sell. They try to catch male foreigners with upfront "wanna fuck some nice Czech girls?" or "do you like pussy? Wanna try some Czech pussy?" and start telling in more detail the pleasures just awaiting for them around the corner.

Apparently, there is no dark crime scene going on in those places. It is not like women are being forced to become prostitutes or people are having their noses forced into cocaine plates. It is not as dangerous and obscure as in the time Russian mafias ruled the casino scene in the same Wenceslas square. The new owners are generally not Nigerian. Some have British ties, most have obscure, paradise-island official origins.

In one of those side streets where the brothels are located, an attractive white Czech girl even crosses the street to fish any male pedestrian after the night sets in, to contrast and compete with the Nigerian groups. "This can mean a new tendency, where the owners realize that, instead of the cheap and active labor imported from Africa, they can get not that expensive work from more effective good looking girls, which would already serve as an attraction to sex-hungry late-night tourists", ponders the sociologist. But with at least a few hundred of them having Czech kids, the tendency is that, even if the fathers end up leaving and not having much contact with their European offspring, a new color may start becoming Czech.

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