While many financially-crippled women are going into prostitution as their easiest way out of destitution, 25 sex workers have called it quits.
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| Regina Mbela readying for customers in the restaurant |
They have since ventured into entrepreneurship and they intend “no turning back”.
When thinking about trades that have been around for centuries prostitution is not one that normally comes to mind yet it is claimed to be one of the oldest of professions. And there are many reasons forcing women into sex work.
Some women have gone into sex work due to economic needs like poverty, emotional neediness and susceptibility to pressure from friends.
Some prostitutes have explained that joined prostitution having gone through sexual abuse, grown up without love from the significant adults in their lives, being enticed by a male of female friend or by peer pressure from a group of friends, and needing money.
But one Regina Mbela, 38, of Zalewa Village, Traditional Authority Symon in Neno district; divorce trapped her into ‘this immoral business’ 23 years ago.
Prostitution became her only surest means of survival as she is illiterate and so prospects of securing a job became uncertain; or so she thought.
“I needed money to feed my children left behind by the ex-husband,” Mbela said in an interview with The Sunday Times.
She launched her nocturnal profession at Nchalo in Chikhwawa before migrating to other districts such as Blantyre and Lilongwe where she used to entertain lustful men in pubs. At one time, she went as far as Johannesburg, South Africa where she stayed for two years just selling her precious body.
Difficult circumstances have forced many others into this “much detested immoral means of earning a living” including Mary Tendayi Moyenda. Moyenda, 37, who comes from Zimba Village in Mangochi dropped out of school at a very tender age because of pregnancy.
The man responsible for the pregnancy accepted to marry her, but she refused. She, however, married a few months later to an army officer.
While the family was at the peak of love, the husband died. It was a time when Moyenda had just given birth to their fourth child.
Upon man’s death, his entire death gratuity was accrued to the wife and children. It was a big chunk, and Moyenda accepts that, but since money can be “perishable to others”, she could keep it long time. Today, the widow suspects superstition played a part in her squandering of the money.
But her failure to keep the money did not mean she is done with financial challenges as well.
“When I finished all the money I was paid, more problems crept into the family. I had responsibility to fend for my children in the midst of unemployment and destitution,” Moyenda explained.
“Prostitution looked the easiest way. But people didn’t know I was a sex worker because I used to sell airtime during the day,” she added.
The turning point
One day as she was selling airtime, a seemingly prospective customer availed himself, saying he needed her services. Moyenda was reluctant to follow him because, then, she would shame herself to people who held her in high esteem.
However, what the man offered was somehow irresistible. He told her he had everything she would need in life.
“But I told him I couldn’t go because I didn’t know him. Again, I didn’t know where he was coming from,” Moyenda recalled.
The still man insisted until she could resist no more. But when they arrived at what was supposed to be a ‘room’, Moyenda was surprised to be ushered in a well-decorated office where many sex workers, including Regina Mbela, who were chatting aimlessly.
“Then I realized this man was cheating me. He didn’t need my services, but was up to something else,” she explained.
The man disappeared for a few minutes only to appear with public address to them women. First the man told them where they were: offices of Development Aid from People to Poeple (Dapp).
Moyenda does not remember the name of the man who tricked her into his office, but mission on them will remain with them the rest of their lives.
In his address to the women, the Dapp official said his organization was looking for women who need economic empowerment; and that Moyenda and company were suitable. The organization pledged financial support, but asked each one of them to identify four sex workers each and coax them into entrepreneurship.
Birth of Mtendere Restaurant at Zalewa
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| Former sex workers narrating their stories to Watipaso Mzungu |
In January 2008, Partners In Health (PIH), a partner organization in Neno, began collaborating with Dapp, an NGO that was operating a health centre at Zalewa, to work with a group of commercial sex workers in an effort to strengthen health services and help them find alternative forms of employment.
In February 2009, the centre hired 15 of the women to work as community health educators in three busy trading centers. The centre provided them with ongoing training focused on counseling commercial sex workers and their clients on sexual and reproductive health, making referrals for HIV testing and counseling and, more recently, cervical cancer screening.
In the first few months after establishing this partnership, HIV testing at the centre is said to have increased by over 125 percent. The number of commercial sex workers in the catchment area who have started antiretroviral treatment at PIH-supported sites also increased substantially.
On October 2008, Dapp unexpectedly closed the Zalewa centre citing lack of funding, despite acknowledging the success of its programs.
PIH/APZU stepped in and assumed the salaries of the former Dapp employees, as well as all other operational expenses. In January 2009, the centre began offering daily adult literacy training in three sites along the trucking route.
The classes were open to all commercial sex workers in the area; 56 women enrolled. In February, APZU held intensive 7-day training on business management. Based on the training, the participants developed a business plan for opening a restaurant co-operative in Zalewa.
“That’s how we opened Mtendere Restaurant through funding from Raising Malawi Project,” explained Chrispine Ntopola, PIH Program on Social and Economic Rights (POSER) programme assistant.
“Our research indicated that most sex workers face many challenges, which drive them into prostitution where they are at high risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections. Entrepreneurship, therefore, could a necessary tool for empowering the women to become financially self-reliant and thus reduce the number of new infections,” said Ntopola.
The arrangement is such that the women working in the restaurant are sharing dividends at the end of every month as their salaries.
And now two years after retiring from sex work, Mbela does want to remember the days she used to sell herself to men. Today, she believes she sinned against God and her own person.
“I don’t still feel proud that I was a prostitute at one time in my life. But one thing I have to accept is that there some circumstances, which are just too much that you cannot run away avoid committing a sin even against your own self,” she told The Sunday Times.
As an illiterate woman and a mother to two, Mbela solely relied on her husband for everything. Separation from her breadwinner, therefore, was not far from death sentence or life imprisonment passed on her by the highest court on the land.
Although this arrangement seems to have helped Mbela, Moyenda and several others gain some economic independence, the women think time is ripe for them to venture into personal businesses.
“Yes, we take pride in that they have registered a tremendous improvement in our lives, but still something is missing. We’ve done this group business for far too long. We think it is time we started personal businesses now,” said Florence Kapanira, another group member.
“We’d like to cease this opportunity to appeal to money-lending institutions to provide us with individual loans. We’ve to move on so that new comers can find space here,” complemented Nester Chitete.
According to PIH e-bulletin, the organization hopes to develop the Zalewa site as a women’s empowerment center that gives commercial sex workers in the region the tools to find safer ways to support their families by addressing the women’s medical, social, and educational needs.
In addition to strengthening women’s health services, including family planning and risk-reduction counseling, antenatal care, HIV care, prevention of mother-to-child-transmission (PMTCT) of HIV, STI detection and treatment, and cervical cancer screening, the site plans to increase opportunities for adult literacy, vocational training and small-business development.
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