AFRICA – Welcome to resident prostitution. Last week The Big Issue team dared several chilling night patrols through many estates in the city to uncover this new face of prostitution. We established that in a complete departure from the past — where prostitutes had a remarkable preposterous behaviour towards their clients — those in the estates pretend to lead an ordinary lifestyle during the day. People who seek their services shower them with praises for being ‘honest’ because, during the day, they pass as shopkeepers, tailors, hairdressers and hawkers. Some are even in mainstream employment as shop attendants, school cleaners or even day house helps.
Source: The Big Issue, Nairobi-Kenya
Source: The Big Issue, Nairobi-Kenya
Traders across the globe are struggling to bring goods closer to the consumers. And operators in the oldest profession in the history of mankind, prostitution, are also keeping the pace — taking their services in all places where they are needed.
They are a common feature late at night, outside bars and nightclubs, but not in town or city centres, where the trade in known to thrive.
Hurdled together in unspoken unity, they wait for their customers. They know most of them by name. This is good, they say, because they do not have to fight over the clients, unless occasionally when a new one appears seeking their services. There is a new breed of prostitutes operating from the city estates and suburbs, The Big Issue can reveal.Search for clients
One of them, Mary Edith* of Umoja estate, does her normal businesses until 10pm when she switches over to the oldest profession. During the day, Edith runs a grocery kiosk in the populous lower middle class suburb.
From her mien, Edith can pass for any ordinary shopkeeper doing business to be able to put food on the table for her family. But when the night falls and her four children are fed and well tucked in bed, the single mother hits the road in search of clients. She is, however, different because she does not have the glamour that is usually associated with common hookers in the centre of other major towns.
Edith and others of her ilk hang out in strategic places and entrances of popular bars in the city estates and suburbs for the better part of the night. She offers services to any man willing to pay anything ranging from Sh50 to Sh200. The time of the month, frequency of the customer and the bargaining skills determine the amount that would exchange hands when the deal is sealed and service rendered.
Income generating businesses
The other conspicuous difference between Edith’s group and the common call girls in the towns and city centre is that Edith and her counterparts normally engage in some income generating businesses during the day. They are mostly single mothers and residents of the estates in which they operate. Most of them easily confess they go to "look for unga (flour)" for their children to supplement the little earning from the small businesses they operate during the day.
"We work full time," said one of them.
Jane is a tailor, Judy bakes mandazi and chapati, which she sells just outside her house, while Juliet runs a fast food kiosk in the same estate.
Probably Maria is the best endowed (economically), having inherited a housing block from her late husband. The block has four double rooms, whose rent she pockets every month on top of her other earnings.Twilight women
People who seek the services of these women include students, bored and jobless school leavers, newly employed bachelors and drunk philandering husbands, whose wives may be just a few hundred metres away in their houses.
About two kilometres away, Joan Nina Kido is among hundreds of other "twilight women" who lead the double life in Dandora.
The difference between the two sets of commercial sex workers is the approach that each uses in wooing prospective clients. For instance, unlike Edith and her colleagues who visit bars in the estate, Kido slyly meets her clients in her barbershop. Using the shop as a rendezvous, Kido also manages a string of other women in the same business. Her clients pay her a fee for linking them to the women, while she also pockets a percentage of the women’s earnings for doing the marketing job for them. The couples sort themselves out after satisfying each other’s lust in places of their choice. Kido serves her clients in an interior room, in the barbershop. There are many more women in other city estates using the method used by Edith and her group in Umoja. Mainstream employment
Welcome to resident prostitution. Last week The Big Issue team dared several chilling night patrols through many estates in the city to uncover this new face of prostitution. We established that in a complete departure from the past — where prostitutes had a remarkable preposterous behaviour towards their clients — those in the estates pretend to lead an ordinary lifestyle during the day. People who seek their services shower them with praises for being ‘honest’ because, during the day, they pass as shopkeepers, tailors, hairdressers and hawkers. Some are even in mainstream employment as shop attendants, school cleaners or even day house helps. It was at first difficult to get an interview with any of the commercial sex workers in Eastlands.
However, after several consecutive visits to their base, familiarity did the trick. After parting with modest tips during each trip, a few of them opened up to us.
Said Edith: " Each client pays us anything between Sh50 and Sh200 per session and each of us can serve as many as 10 customers on a good night, especially at the end of the month. On a bad day, earnings can go as low as Sh100."
Sadists and brutal
She says her ‘night work’ helps to supplement what she earns from the kiosk business.
"I am only able to make a profit of at most Sh200 per day. This is only able to pay for the rent of the kiosk and where I live with my four children. Sometimes the profit may only pay the kiosk rent. I therefore need to get another way of making ends meet. I need to feed and clothe my children — and three are in school. My night work is therefore drawn out of sheer want and the need to cater for these lives and not necessarily because I am morally bent," she said. Before she parted ways with her husband some years ago, Edith explained that she was an ordinary housewife.
"Now that I am the sole bread winner for the family, what option do I have than do what I can to see my children grow up?"
Selina, another colleague of Edith’s, says commercial sex work in the estate is easier and safer than in the city centre, but it does not pay. Says she: "Our colleagues in the city centre meet strange men, many who may be sadists and brutal. They sometimes end up being killed.
Protection from pimps
But our customers are people we know and they are friendly. They are regular customers and we even give services to some of them on credit.
"They do not fail to honour their pledges because we can embarrass them by coming to the open about our relationship with them. And we do not need protection from pimps as is the case in the city centre. Here, we know most of the people we work with."
Joseph, a resident and owner of one of the bars where the women hang out in Dandora estate, says the women are a peaceful lot. "These are honest hookers. We have never had any complaints of people losing money or anything else after sleeping with them. Besides we know where to find them in case of anything.
We even know their children and the schools they attend. The women are like any other neighbours in the estate.
Joseph says the only fear associated with them is the spread of HIV/Aids. But again that is an issue in the public domain, he says, so every party involved is expected to take the necessary precautionary measures.
"These women are unlikely to commit any other crime apart from peddling their flesh," he says.
Honest prostitutes
In the middle of our talk with the barman, an apparently drunk youth walks to our table, uninvited. He makes himself comfortable on one of the seats and without warning declares: "Hey you! I know you are from the Press and want to know who may have slept with any of the women outside there? I have sampled several of them. And if I had Sh50 with me now, I would take another just now. Not to worry, though. They are a good lot and they do not hurry us up like those in town.
"They are also clean- you know- because they do not do this work all the time. They only come out at night and just work during the day. Besides they won’t steal anything from you. They are just good."
Indeed, most estates in the lower-middle and lower-upper classes have at least a joint from where prostitutes operate.
In Westlands, for example, there is a popular club, which many prostitutes patronise. In their dozens and dressed decently, the women serve men from the surrounding estates, including Muthaiga, Gigiri, Kileleshwa, Runda, Loresho and Lavington. This group appears to be strictly out on a serious business.
Responsible women
They, however, could not entertain an interview with us. In fact the mere mention of our being from the Press put them off. We overheard one of them complaining loudly that we were out to spoil their business as had been the case when the operations on Koinange Street were brought to the fore a few years ago through electronic media.
A waiter at one of the joints in Westlands said: "Although twilight women used to come to this place before, the numbers increased tremendously soon after the Press highlighted what happens on Koinange Street at night. Many well-to-do and high profile personalities felt their esteem was at stake if they continued visiting "K-Street".
Majority of them started seeking sexual services from women who come here. But there was a striking difference between the Koinange variety and prostitutes who come here."
Whereas those on Koinange were mainly young girls, majority of their counterparts in the area, explained the waiter, are responsible women either running small businesses or employed.
Discrete rooms
Many of them even drive and have children in high cost schools.
"The prostitutes in the areas have their known group of customers and they do not compete directly with their younger colleagues on Koinange Street," he said.
Off to Kilimani, bars near Yaya Centre form the hub from where commercial sex workers serve men in the surrounding estates. Residents of Southland suburbs are content with goods on display at Nairobi West shopping centre, while estates such as Thika road are well catered for by hangers on the numerous clubs dotting both sides of the highway.
Estate prostitution, like all immoral engagements, has its challenges. Edith says unlike her colleagues in the city centre who operate from brothels and lodgings without caring who sees them, many of her clients require a lot of confidentiality.
"Many of our clients are married men. Others are students or school leavers living with their parents and wouldn’t want what we do with them come to the open. As a group, we have rented discrete rooms from where we serve these men in turns. There are four well-canopied beds in these rooms. Some of us who have spacious houses take the men home." she says.
Protection fees
Wealthier sluts serving clients in up-market estate execute their duties in their vehicles or those owned by their clients. Majority of the women complained of harassment by law enforcers and officers from the provincial administration.
Kido says: "We are often arrested by police for loitering but they let us free after parting with a bribe. But our real nightmares come when we find ourselves in the hands of chiefs and their assistants, who brand us a security threat.
They sometimes incite our landlords to evict us if we fail to part with ‘protection fees’. Eviction is the most dreadful punishment that could be meted against me because it would be difficult to start off without going to the streets where life is definitely more difficult than operating from here."
In the informal settlements such as Pumwani, Kibera, Mukuru, Mathare and Korogocho, prostitutes offer their services in their shacks.
* Names have been changed to protect the sources.