Crime of Need

By MERCY OMWONY
Published August 19, 2009

HIV-positive commercial sex worker in Kenya

It is a beautiful Saturday morning, the kind of day you want to laze around in a nice spot with good food and company. As I stroll from my house into town humming a merry tune, I can see the golfers taking advantage of the striking day at the golf course. I think the Kisii golf course is one of the most peculiar; it has patches of maize gardens dotting it.

I have a date with Florida Kerubo, a girl I met one rainy evening on my way to the office. We had shared my umbrella and chatted along the way. Kerubo was dressed in a short black skirt, a pink spaghetti top, with some pink sandals to match. In her hand was a small brown coin purse. Judging from her soft skin and baby face looks, she could have easily passed for a 16-year old. It was 6:30 p.m. as we parted. “Ninaenda ma-works!”(I am headed for duty) Kerubo told me when I asked where she was headed.

Today, she will be spending time with her son, shop for her mother who also baby-sits for her before she resumes her night duty. We are meeting at the Nakumatt supermarket. A small boy of about three tugs at my dress, he points to a smartly dressed lady with a sunny yellow hat that matches her yellow and black dress with a yellow belt round her slim waist.

Clutching a huge black handbag, I can hardly recognize Kerubo who is standing tall in her beautiful high heeled peeping toes shoes. “These shoes are killing me, let’s sit here,” she pulls me to the chairs outside the supermarket. She plunks herself into one of them and immediately proceeds to kick off her shoes, unaware of the stares she is receiving from people around us.

I take a moment to study this graceful girl whom I met a week ago looking so naive and lost. Today she has transformed into a butterfly. I tell her so. She gives me a smile. “This is my son Maina Nyamweya,” she introduces me to the young boy who called me. His outfit is one of the latest fashions from the stalls. Maina is busy enjoying his ice-cream and is not bothered with the introductions.

History has a way of repeating itself they say. Kerubo’s mother, a single parent, conceived her when she was in form two and has been struggling to make ends meet since. She has been a pillar of strength to Kerubo, supporting her financially and emotionally from the time Maina’s father walked out on her and her unborn child. She was only 14 then.

But Kerubo regrets having given his son his father’s name. “It’s the only legacy he will ever have of his father,” Kerubo affirms stubbornly. But how does Kerubo support her child and herself?

Kerubo is a sex worker. Her mother has no clue what she does for a living. “She thinks I work in a club or something like that and she doesn’t like it one single bit,” she says. She is shielding her only true friend – her mother – from the truth. “It could break her heart if she knew I am a prostitute, but I have no choice, do I?” Kerubo posses the question as she reaches out to receive her phone, a sleek handset complete with a camera and FM radio.

Cupid has struck! This client met her while she was on duty and is aware of her ‘job’ but still insists on making her his wife. I wave at them as they walk up the stairs to get a bodaboda (motorcycle taxi) home. Kerubo does not even posses a national identity card; she will get one in five months, the same time when she plans to start her wedding arrangements.” I will be ‘legal’ then!” she jokes.

Prostitution is illegal in Kenya. Thousands of girls and boys are involved in full-time child prostitution due to poverty and unemployment. Many families see the sex industry as the only way of putting food on the table. The Kenyan government has tried curbing this trade by haphazard arrests but it has always looked fighting a losing battle. This is because of the escalating unemployment, poverty and famine in the country.

The risks sex workers go through while on duty are inhuman and life threatening. Some of Kerubo’s clients are weird and demand for abnormal activities with her, sometimes involving their pet dogs. One of them beat her up unconsciousness after refusing to do his bidding and she had to be rushed to hospital by a watchman. They pay the watchmen a small fee for protection from street gangs, scalawag clients and sometimes the cops.

HIV-positive commercial sex worker in Kenya

Kerubo says that the best clients are the elderly men who are looking for company and an easy night. Their worst nightmare is the cops and Asians. “One can approach you and you think he is alone, only to be gang raped on the car’s bonnet by more than five men before throwing KES 1,000 ($13) at you and driving off,” Kerubo reveals. It happened to a friend of hers who has a phobia for Asians to this moment! “They are the ones who will ask you to copulate with their dogs, they are just crazy and don’t care, they are inhuman.” Disgust mixed with bitterness is written all over Kerubo’s face.

As she recounts some of her episodes, it becomes clear how cruel and unfair life can be; one small mistake and you could pay with the rest of your life. With the HIV and AIDS prevalence, one wonders how the prostitutes protect themselves. Kerubo has taken an HIV test more than five times since she got into the trade two years ago, but she has to travel out of town because the Voluntary Counseling and Testing centers in town have staff that could recognize her. Mercifully, the results have been negative in all occasions.

“I don’t render services to anyone who doesn’t want to use a condom; I cannot afford to die now. I have to prove the world wrong,” she says with great conviction and teary eyes.

Services rendered by Kerubo are rather graphic and have to be updated from pirated pornographic clips and dirty magazines she buys from the streets. “When do you watch them and where do you keep them?” I ask her keeping in mind that she stays with her son and mother.

Her explanation was simple: “At a friend’s place when ‘work’ is light, which is usually mid-month.” She has a clique of girl friends, three in number and one of them actually is not a lady of the night. She works in a salon in town while the other two are sex workers. They look out for each other. I asked Kerubo if any of them is HIV positive. “Such matters are private and we usually don’t talk about our status,” she says. Ironically, they have all visited a VCT centre.

Kerubo has grown into a bitter young lady who sees her condition as something that society has fueled by condemning single ladies. With prostitution illegal in Kenya, she is committing a crime every night she takes to the streets to earn a living from the merciless cruel hands of some people.

On a good night she can make up to KES 1,000 (about $13) or more depending on which kind of clients she will get, some are more generous than others. But there are those who will haggle for a lower price and on bad days Kerubo will succumb to such clients and will go home with between KES 400 (about $5) to 700 (about $9). Some clients will afford a room; some will take you to their cars or trucks but for those who cannot afford, the corridors and shaded areas in town will have to do for a ‘quickie’, she says.

Most of the money goes to paying bills and buying food. She also spends KES 200 (about $2.6) a week for protection fees and up to KES 500 (about $6.6) a week to buy mitumba (second hand) clothes and accessories. “You have to look sharp to be recognized, it’s a competition,” she says.

From Kerubo’s story, there are those who go through worse experiences in this trade. Kerubo says some of the ladies are as young as 12 years. “They don’t even know what monthly periods are, they are that immature!” exclaims Kerubo, “but you see some men are stupid and perverted like that, it doesn’t matter where they get their satisfaction from.”

On the queue at the supermarket, I see other buyers and can’t help wondering which one of the men is a regular with the twilight girls! It takes two to tango and if we have to take care of prostitution, then the ‘feeders’ will have to be cut too. But for a government which has several issues on its table yet to be dealt with, that’s a tall order. In the mean time, young girls such as Kerubo feel the only option they have is selling the only thing they feel they own to eke a living in these hard economic times.

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Tags: Kenya, prostitution