Donning a baby-blue t-shirt, is a bespectacled bubbly 55 year old woman feeling young enough to compete with the ama2000 who are plying the sex work trade, the oldest profession in the world.
By Kuda Pembere recently in Beitbridge
Widowed, left a pauper with four children, the tinted short-haired Winnie Phiri was advised by a neighbour to venture into sex work as a way out of poverty.
As a sex worker, she thought unprotected sex would please her clients as she did her husband. Coupled with the gang-rape, Winnie was to be tested HIV-Positive.
“I am Winnie Phiri. I would like to share my life story as a sex worker. My husband died leaving me with four children, penniless. So you will be seeing what happens next door and it so happened my neighbour was a sex worker.
“This neighbour advised me venture into sex work claiming it was a lucrative business. She showed me a bus terminus named 20 Rand but didn’t tell me about using protection with a client. I ended up using mbanje.
“So at my house, people I stayed with saw the CeSSHAR people moving around and they approached me. The CeSSHAR people helped me till stopped smoking weed. So they encouraged me to teach other sex workers and I became a peer educator in 2012.
“As a peer educator, I dissuaded people from smoking mbanje. I mobilized my friends to be part of the program. I participated at the 2015 ICASA program,” she said.
She learned of her HIV status after being gang-raped close to the Beitbridge Hospital and tested positive. Ashamed, Winnie could not seek post-rape services but through counselling, she then accepted her status.
CeSSHAR informed her the advantages of economic empowerment through starting her small businesses and doing revolving cash cooperatives known in Shona vernacular as mikando. The organisation impressed by her mobilization of other sex workers to their clinic her a job as a cleaner. The advice proffered by CeSSHAR has miraculously worked for her as she bought a residential stand on which she built four rooms. She also sells bathing products and drinks. Winnie also bought herself a small vehicle used as a taxi cab in Beitbridge.
“They were impressed with my workings of referring people to the clinic for health services. I am working with them as a cleaner. We were told to do revolving cash cooperatives (mikando) as there are times when the sex work business is not giving us desirable incomes. This has helped me. I am now 56 years old and cannot be seen competing with the 16 year olds. I bought a stand and built four rooms and a small taxi vehicle,” Winnie says.
From Winnie’s joyous mood, narrating her somber story is another bespectacled Precious Muwanzi donning a black dress. As if she is in mourning, her story appears to have more downs than ups. At dusk, she leaves her children under the assumption that she is selling some thick porridge (sadza) at the border post, yet there are other wares she will be selling.
From an abusive marriage, to being a widow, then the scornful remarks from her family and her deceased husband’s family, Precious’s life is akin jumping from a frying pan into the fire.
Precious was initiated into this sex work trade in Beitbridge by a woman whom she met in Harare, a Beitbridge based sex worker based after disclosing her poverty situation.
Out of desperation, she resorted to sex work just to fend for herself and her brood of six children.
“I met this woman in Harare, at the Fourth Street bus terminus who stays here in Beitbridge. I told her my issue and she offered to travel with me here in Beitbridge while I stay at her house. She said she was a sex worker here in Beitbridge and due to desperation, I did not mind. She taught me about the truck-stops where we see men who would have left their wives at home,” she says.
As a novice, she did not know how to charge her clients as they promised to return with the money. Despite knowing how to charge for her services, she still finds the sex work industry in Beitbridge a competition.
It so happened that a roving Centre for Sexual Health and HIV AIDS Research Zimbabwe (CeSHHAR) team in the district found her at the truck-stop and then tested her for HIV where she was found without the virus.
“So, I started saving up and then met CeSSHAR workers. They told me they had to test me and if found negative they would give me PrEP. So I was found HIV negative and got to take the PrEP which are refilled every three months. They told us that it was important not to rely on income from sex work because those clients are married.
“They advised us to save money and start our own projects. So I am doing a project of selling sadza during the day and at night I go to the truck stop. There are times when we have so much money and so little. So these men when they get to know you, they won’t like you. What they do is when they are at work or amongst themselves, they show each other pics.
“They call me magirazi(the beglassed). So I got called by one of the CeSSHAR to come here and I also sell avocadoes. So I am now able to take care of my children and I found myself a place to rent. So I am growing up, aging and not able to get into trucks. So there are these youngsters, who are our competition. So I would like to have my own house in my name in the rural areas,” says Precious.
Her past was gloomy as well being raised by an abusive father entering into an abusive marriage. Married at the age of 14, Precious thought this was the only way out of the beatings she couldn’t endure anymore at the hands of her father. She eloped to her husband aged 27 at that tender age following her neighbours’ advice.
“I was married at the age of 14. My father did not stay with my mother. I stayed with my father who was a pervert though at I didn’t know at that time. So he would beat me oftentimes saying I should go to school. He would find me a place to go while he used the house with his girlfriends. Whenever I told my mother what was happening, he would beat me again. In these beatings, my next door neighbours were sex workers, now aged who advised me to get married. Due to the pain, I found it better to get married,” Precious says.
Beitbridge District Aids Coordinator, Mr Edward Mulaudzi said the district has between 400 to 800 sex workers with 350 sex workers being on ART.
Mr Mulaudzi said NAC working with CeSHHAR and the Ministry of Health and Child Care through the drop-in centre were offering services to the key population of sex workers.
Mr Mulaudzi said the intervention was in a bid to ensure that sex workers engage in safe sex in order to stop the transmission of HIV.
“Beitbridge is one of the busiest ports of entry in the country. We have some of the sex workers coming from as far as Mutoko, Murehwa and Victoria Falls. That’s why we chose this model to give services to our key population. We have CeSHHAR here offering services to sex workers such as PrEP and condom promotion.
“We are also working with other organisations such as ZHI so that young sex workers are empowered through short courses. If they’re not empowered and don’t have money, they won’t be able to negotiate for safe sex as they will be desperate for money.
“If the sex workers are empowered and have their own source of income outside sex work, they will be able to make objective and responsible decisions,” he said.
Mr Mulaudzi noted the high HIV prevalence and incidence rates in Beitbridge are driven by sex work.
“The prevalence rate in Beitbridge district is 11,7 percent with the incidence rate being 0,30 percent,” he said
CeSHHAR Beitbridge outreach worker, Mr Tonderai Rupiya said the drop-in centre also serves a safe space for sex workers to support each other in economic strengthening, sharing of experiences and successes, interactions alongside resilience building.
“The interaction among the sex workers here at the drop-in centre helps them to learn and comfort each other. They’re able to build one another and the experience helps them realise that they’re not alone. We’re also able to give them clinical services such as PrEP, STI screening, adherence counselling, HIV testing, use of contraception and education on practicing safe sex.
“We’re also working with ZHI under an economic strengthening programme where young sex workers are being equipped with skills to embark on income generating projects and conduct internal savings and lending schemes. We also support our older sex workers to do self-groups where they work together to build capital and start income generating activities,” he said.
Mr Rupiya said they move around hotspots in order to identify sex workers and enroll them under the programme. He said they also have sex worker cadres identifying their peers and encourage them to take up the services on offer.
