Where prostitutes hobnob with cheap clients

It is derogatively called Ki-Mombasa, a name said to have been acquired many years ago, perhaps decades, after two prostitutes from Mombasa made it their business centre, attracting men from all corners of the country. Today, the place which passes for a slum, is a brothel with an estimated 200 prostitutes making a living and raising their families.

On a guided tour of the area at about 7p.m, we observe three children below 10 quietly seated on a bed with their feet folded up. The floor is too muddy to step on. A metre away in another small room, their mother is preparing dinner.

To the left is a blaring television set with a few tattered chairs in front of it, creating a bar of sorts. The stench is unbearable! Just after the filthy trench adjacent to the house is a latrine. Similar dilapidated structures separated by grimy trenches that have a mixture of sand bags, polythene bags and papers are a common sight in this slum. “I have to make the children sleep early because I start work at 8p.m,” the mother later tells us. “When the children sleep, I place them on a mattress in this small room and do my business in the big room,” she goes on.

And such is the domestic setting in Bwaise’s Ki-Mombasa slum. A house triples as a home, bar and lodge. Toddlers and youngsters are brought up in such an environment with their mothers hoping that they will never realise what is really going on. As if to disguise their trade, the prostitutes don’t dress up skimpily as one would expect. In fact, it is difficult for an outsider to know their trade. Many position themselves in strategic corners or verandas and pretend to hold conversations with each other. When a client arrives, a tête-à-tête is held before the pair walks away.

A “short”, the measure for their pay, goes for as low as Shs1,000 and rarely does any encounter go beyond Shs10,000. The prices are set according to the status of the lodge the client chooses. “Our clients know us, we just stand on our stages where they find us, we have no problem with the job it is like any other,” our guide Lillian, a 25 year old prostitute, says. Lillian who has been in the business for the last 11 years like many others joined the trade to make a living to cater for her children although they stay with their father.

“I can afford to pay my house rent, school fees for my children, I can buy for them anything they want, at least I can stand there as a mother. But my children live with their father, we could not live together because I was a prostitute, but the truth is, I need the money,” she says.

Ironically, although prostitution is a crime according to Ugandan law, the police take advantage of the trade in Ki-Mombasa. “They normally come here and want to arrest us and when we do not have the money, they say we should sleep with them,” Lillian says.

On a bad night, she says they can encounter about five policemen each wanting about Shs10, 000 bribe which the sex workers cannot afford. “When we fail to give in to their demands for free sex, they arrest us for being idle and disorderly. It is very unfair. Ki-Mombasa is not insecure as perceived by people; it is the police who fail to perform their duty appropriately,” says Juliet Katongole, a 26 year old prostitute.

The District Police Commander Kawempe Moses Ochieng however says that the fight with prostitutes is a long battle not about to end as even when arrested, there is no clear charge placed on them. “Most of these prostitutes’ customers are thieves, but even then, it is the prostitutes that steal from these thieves. It is when a theft has occurred and a person is left stranded naked in a room that police comes in but ofcourse I cannot rule out that no policeman goes to buy their services,” Mr Ochieng says.

“We are currently investigating the prostitution in this area but fighting prostitutes is not easy , even when we arrest them, there is no clear charge against them,” added.

Police Spokesperson, Judith Nabakoba was not forthright when contacted about the police involvement in the trade in the slum. She claimed not to be aware of the state of the trade in the slums and said she didn’t have the data. However, Action for Fundamental Change and Development, an organisation based in Bwaise trying to give support to prostitutes in Ki-Mombasa, in their findings, report that there are child commercial sex workers as young as 16 in this area. Of the 200 sex workers, 50 were students, over one third of the sex workers are tea girls and bar maids between 17 and 25 while a few are 25-40.

According to the Secretary General of the Organisation, Tarzan Nyombi, this high risk behaviour among youth is driven by poverty and perpetuates the rapid spread of HIV/Aids and vulnerability, especially among youth and women.
“We used to give the women condoms and teach them how to use them but we realised that they wanted something more beneficial and income generating, poverty here is a major issue,” Mr Nyombi says.

In addition to counseling, the organisation gives the women soft loans of Shs100,000 each to start up a small business. But while some start up fruit stalls, sell sweets, and weave baskets, others never return.

For the two years of its operation, the organisation has only succeeded in getting 10 girls off the streets. The women are now organised through a group called Crested Crane Lighters through which they counsel themselves and receive condoms from government and Non-Government Organisations like UNFPA.

“We finally decided to come up with our organisation to bring us together and share our problems to avoid rape, drug abuse amongst ourselves and police harassment. The organisation is funded by UNFPA which provides condoms, 10 boxes every month, and once we run out of stock they send more,” Lillian says.
As the trade flourishes in the filth of the Bwaise slum, the women have decided they only have each other to rely on.