I was not pondering motherhood on the afternoon of Friday, November 6, 2020; I was pondering the heat. The other storey buildings around my Lagos home made the flow of air impossible. The security personnel downstairs were playing loud music and arguing goodnaturedly in a language that switched between Arabic and Hausa. I was annoyed as I scrolled through Facebook and WhatsApp, loading statuses and ignoring messages. Then I saw an interesting status update that piqued my interest. “Egg Donors wanted, the pay is reasonable,” it read.
Until that point, I never knew egg donation happened in Nigeria and so, naturally, I had questions. What did it entail? How much was a reasonable payment? How did anyone become an egg donor? There was only one way to get answers so I responded to the status. David* wouldn’t tell me much except drop the number of the woman I was to text. I don’t like texting anyone I’m not familiar with, so already we were crossing invisible boundaries I had set for myself but I was curious. I gave in and sent a text.
I got your number from David’s status about egg donors?
I waited for a response for about thirty minutes and dropped my phone to face other tasks. She responded two hours later. By then I was already questioning whether or not this was something I would do. I found nothing online that told me exactly what the egg donation process would be like, the drugs I’d take, and how my eggs would be extracted. Most of the information I found online were fertility clinics in places outside Africa extolling the virtues of egg donors. When I typed in How much does an egg donor make? Google said, “$5000 – $10000 per cycle.”
I knew there was no way Nigerian hospitals were paying that much. The woman—who turned out to be a former donor seeking new donors for a cut—asked for my name, genotype, blood group and a picture of me. I sent the details. My curiosity had won me over and I decided to go through with it. I’m not sure why, only that it felt unfair that nobody else had done so. The woman asked if I was a virgin. I said no, wondering what that had to do with anything. She told me she’d forward my details to the nurse at a clinic and signed off from the conversation. It was only then I remembered she’d never told me her name and I hadn’t asked.
She texted me four days later with more follow-up questions. Was I done with school? Yes, I was. What were my educational qualifications, B. A or B. Sc? I said it was an LLB. How old was I? Twenty-five at the time. Did I know Festac? No, I didn’t. Lagos traffic typically discouraged me from sightseeing. She told me I would be going to a clinic in Festac in four days for an interview with the head nurse. I was hesitant. What did an interview entail? Now that I was going to a clinic, it dawned on me that I still didn’t know anything about the process. Yet I had been given an address and ordered to show up. The woman encouraged me to ask my friends if they might be interested in donating. As doubt crept up on me, I summoned the courage to air my questions.
What did the process entail exactly? How much was I getting paid? I was on oral birth control at the time – Levofem – that I had stopped taking as soon as I decided to be a donor. Were there going to be any issues? She answered via voice note to say I would be given injections and scanned three times. After the third scan, I would be given 5,000 Naira (around $13.15 at the time) for transport and my eggs would be harvested. The injections were not painful, she insisted. The entire process was mostly painless and stress-free. Heranswers didn’t put my mind at ease. The fact that I was going to Festac, an unfamiliar place, made me even more uneasy. She assured me that all would be fine. I was to be paid 120,000 Naira ($315.78) but she would take another 10,000 Naira ($26.31) and the nurse – this one functioned as an agent and worked in the clinic – whose candidate I was would take 10,000 Naira ($26.31). That meant I would only be getting a 100,000 Naira net payment, a far cry from $5,000 for sure.
At this point, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to chicken out, but in for a penny as my mother would say, so I went to Festac . I had been warned to dress well and speak well. I was not to tell any lies to the head nurse because she could sniff them out. I did my best to fulfil these requirements. I donned a burgundy jumpsuit that both clung to my curves and was modest. I borrowed my sister’s wig because it was more “professional” than my unstyled Afro. I took a cab so I wouldn’t be sweaty and stressed when I got there.
I had with me two passports, my ID card and a pen. I was told to be there at midday. It was hot, almost the end of the year and no harmattan in sight. Thankfully, Lagos was slowly emptying out so the traffic I feared never showed up. I got to the statuesque-looking hospital. It was situated in a gentrified area and had other similarly elegant houses as neighbours. There was no clear sign it was a clinic aside from the notice on the gate from a health-related government agency. I hesitated at the gate. Was I in the right place? I squared my shoulders and pushed the smaller section of the gate open. It opened; nobody stopped me so I walked in. The compound was medium-sized. There was a gate that led to another building and a fence separated the two buildings, which convinced me that they were linked. The buildings were painted a matching beige and they had the antiseptic auras most hospitals do, but they also exuded money.
I tried calling my contact—the former donor—to tell her I was at the hospital but her number was not reachable. I went into the first building and instantly knew I was in the wrong section. This lobby was filled with middle-aged women, some with army escorts and others dressed in their Sunday best, swaddled in expensive laces and chunky gold accessories. Some of the women sat next to similarly middle-aged men who shot me an appraising look. The air was heavy with perfumes that made my nose runny and my throat itch. I tried once again to reach my contact but her number was still unreachable. The receptionist was nowhere to be found. I panicked. Was my trip here for nothing? I quickly shot off a text to her, telling her I was at the hospital. When she didn’t respond in fifteen minutes, I called again with shaky hands. It rang. I exhaled a sigh of relief so loud that the woman next to me gave me a questioning look. My contact said she was sending someone over to me.
In a short while, a frowning nurse came looking for me, butchering the pronunciation of my name as she scanned the crowd. When I figured out that she was looking for me, I stood and followed her.
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to be here?” she asked.
I resisted the urge to point out that there was zero indication of where I was supposed to be, no helpful arrows pointing me in the right direction a la “Egg Donors Please Go This Way.” She wasn’t the only one with a right to be irritated. I followed her until we showed up at the back of the first building. She pointed at the connecting gate and asked me to walk until I found a door on the other side. Then she warned me sternly to always go there until I was told otherwise. I wondered about that.
The women in the first building were the paying customers, the ones who came for treatments and would use our eggs. If I were in their shoes, I would have liked that. I would have liked to have a brief glimpse into what my child might be like, look like or sound like.
I walked to the other side and while trying to find the mysterious door, I wondered briefly if my lack of a birth certificate would be a problem. I had been asked to bring it along but I didn’t have it. I walked a huge circle around the second building until I found a door. As I pushed the glass doors open, the first thing that hit me was a blast of cool air; the second was the knowledge that I was in the right place. There were girls seated on all the chairs. Some of them even shared seats while they slept and waited for their turns. As I walked in, they made room for me and I sat down. The curious questions began to trickle in.
Was I here for the donation? Did I know any of the nurses? Which nurse was my sponsor? (I had been told to say a certain nurse was.) Have I ever donated my eggs? Did I know what it took?
I had answers to only a few of these questions as I got to know the girls. They were here for the money and perhaps some had the noble intention of helping women in need of babies. It seemed to always be the secondary motivation though, never the first.
“I’ve done it before. At a hospital in Yaba. They only paid me 70k,” one of the girls said. “I came here before but the nurses bounced me. So I’ve come back with my sister’s ID card just in case she won’t recognize me.”
She was the head nurse and when she walked into the room, you knew that she was in charge. She reminded me of my home economics teacher from secondary school who always wore shoulder-padded suits. With her low-cut hair, broad shoulders and scowling makeup-free face, she gave the impression that she was a strict Christian. The room fell silent without her ever having to speak.
She scanned the room and pointed at two girls. The two girls followed behind the head nurse, who led the way into the other room as other nurses trailed behind them. The girls around me murmured. Why had she singled them out? In less than five minutes, one of the girls emerged from the room. She picked up her bag and left. She had been rejected.
Why? I wasn’t sure. She was dressed more casually than I was but it didn’t seem to be a disqualifying factor. I seemed to be the most dressed up. The girls were called in one after the other. Another girl was rejected. She was 19 years old, so too young to be a donor. Finally, it was my turn.
Another girl and I walked into the room and took our seats. We met a girl sitting already in the room. She was called in before us when the head nurse insisted we be up to three at a time. We began to fill out the forms before me. One was a three-page form that required details about my name, next of kin, blood group, genotype, body mass index (BMI), and if I had been an egg donor in the past, amongst others. I couldn’t take a picture of the forms as they supervised the entire thing.
One of the questions that stood out for me was “What do you know about egg donation?” My response: “I have very little information on it except the information I gleaned off Google searches and what I was offered.” I remember thinking it was an odd question but the head nurse insisted that the girl and I hurry up as we were wasting too much time filling the forms. I started to feel nervous. I didn’t know my BMI so I left that space blank.
The head nurse frowned as she flipped through the forms. “You even studied Law. I don’t go easy on graduates. I asked what you knew about egg donation,” she said as she rolled her eyes at me. I was confused. Did I not answer the question appropriately?
“I don’t know anything about it [egg donation] besides what I found on google,” I said.
“Is that what I asked? What is egg donation?”
“Well, it’s where a woman donates her eggs for another woman to use for conception.”
“So why didn’t you write that?”
“Because you asked what I knew about egg donation. Not the definition of egg donation which would have been phrased more like ‘What is egg donation?’” I said. The head nurse stared at me with her mouth open as if I had suddenly grown two heads.
I decided to ask the question that had been on my mind since I got to the hospital.
“I take an oral contraceptive, Levofem. I stopped taking it about two days ago and I’m wondering if that would be a problem?”
She frowned. “Why are you taking birth control?”
“Because I want to prevent any possible pregnancies,” I said. I wondered why it wasn’t obvious because she’d asked if my periods were regular and I said they were.
“So why don’t you want to be pregnant?” she asked.
“I don’t feel my partner and I are capable of financially catering to the needs of a child right now,” I said. “It would be ill-advised to have one.”
“My dear, forget that thing. Children are a gift,” she said. “You see these women who come here, they very desperately want that gift more than anything in the world and here you are throwing it away. Let me tell you, just have the children. Money will come from God.”
She continued, “When I first had my baby, my husband and I didn’t have any money but somehow we survived. In fact all these contraceptives can lead to infertility. Do you think the man you’re taking this thing for will want you if later in life you’re incapable of giving birth to children because of these things? Just give birth. Don’t worry.”
It wasn’t good advice at all. I joked about it with my partner when I got home. I told him we should have children; our strategy to raise them will be the same as free-range chickens: have them, let them roam the streets and hope someone will throw a few seeds of rice in their direction. Months later, I still find myself flummoxed at that conversation.
After the interview and her words of ‘wisdom,’ the head nurse ruled me a viable donor.
“Follow that nurse and go to the lab. They’ll test you to confirm your genotype and make sure you’re healthy,” she said. “After the blood test, you can go. We’ll call you if you’re eligible for the donation.”
I nodded and followed the nurse out with two other girls. The blood test didn’t take as much time as waiting for the interview did. The lab techs were friendly. I was done by 3:40 pm that day. I remember thinking I had a vague dislike for needles and feeling relief that it might be the last time in this process I’d be poked. I was wrong.
I have always questioned my willingness to have children. Growing up, it was never in doubt that my mother wanted children; I simply knew that she did. My mother had her children straightaway after marriage but even that was not fast enough or good enough for my grandmother.
One of my earliest memories of my grandmother was her, old and disapproving, staring at my baby sister swaddled in her crib with my mother seemingly cowering in a corner. The house was an old building in Port Harcourt that smelled of baby powder, baby soap, methylated spirit and dusting powder. I had just returned from school and three-year-old me was excited to meet my baby sister. My grandmother was less than enthusiastic and I couldn’t figure out why until she spoke.
“Na girl again?” She sighed. I do not remember if my mother responded at all. I remember looking over at my sister in her crib and wondering, What was wrong with girls?
It took me two decades and some years later to figure out what was wrong with girls. I discovered, to my chagrin, that society believed it was the woman’s duty to bear children of the right sex; that bearing children was how we measured femininity as a society.
There were church programs to help “barren” women bear “fruit of the womb,” prophetic declarations on women spiritually getting pregnant, seminars held and talks moderated on just what to do to achieve that state of fruitfulness. It was something to aspire to and even though it takes two to make a baby, it was still somehow the sole responsibility of the woman.
As I grew older, I pondered on that glorious moment when I would actively want children. Could I even bear children? Did I want to? I had never felt this maternal instinct that my mother claimed came naturally to all women. I might not have had it but I saw a lot of women who did. So what happened when kids were not forthcoming after years and years of marriage? What did one do?
*Names changed to protect identities
This story is the first in a two part series on egg donation in Nigeria. To read the second part, click here.
Edited by PK Cross, Caleb Okereke, and Uzoma Ihejirika.
This is so beautifully written! Intrigued to see what happens in the next part. Special thanks to the editors. Well done!
I’m looking forward to the second part. Kudos son sharing your experience