Shopping for a prostitute

As mechanical as prostitution may seem, it actually isn’t. It requires a deep level of psychological stability. It’s not for the weak at heart. It’s like a task that gets easier the longer you do it. The sad bit is I learnt that most prostitutes don’t get into it with plans to stay long. Most of them do it to survive so they can make some quick cash, get out and move on to pursue whatever their dream job is.

But you know how employment goes; years later, you realise you are still doing the same job. That wasn’t the plan; you are now stuck with something you hoped would jump-start you to a better place. You are addicted to the monthly salary and are scared to leave because that’s the only way you know how to get by; yet the money isn’t even enough. This is how it is with employment; and a career in prostitution is no different.

Some prostitutes do get the money they had hoped for and move on, but as inspirational as this may be, that is a number so small and insignificant to write about. When it comes to prostitution, it’s important to remember that the ladies who do it were once ordinary girls that played with dolls and probably had a sweet, innocent crush on a boy in the neighbourhood. What is even more shocking is that after the job, they are still ordinary girls – at least on the inside. They dress for church on Sunday mornings and cry when nobody is looking.

In the madness of it all, I tried to understand what would make a young girl trade her innocence for a bottomless, painful night of meaningless, demeaning and probably brutal sex. Just as I was trying to understand it all, one prostitute put it to me in well spoken English: “The most important thing in life is life.” Her name was Sheila, at least that’s what she told me. She wasn’t exactly good looking but her hair was long and she spoke with such humility she made me feel inhumane.

There are two main types of prostitutes; common street and bar prostitutes. Street prostitutes are the commonest and most despised kind. They stand at the roadside with heavy makeup and the coyest pickup line in the world: “Hi.” Bar prostitutes are a bit more subtle, at times more sophisticated and obviously more expensive; they prefer to think of themselves as a bit high class.

Posing as a client
To truly write an insightful article about prostitution, I dragged some friends along. The plan was simple; to pick up a prostitute or two, maybe even three. In one car, the four of us drove to the road along Speke Hotel in Kampala. Every time we slowed down next to one, she would come and say, “Hi.” I had always imagined they would ask, “Long or short?” an expression used to ask whether the client wanted a whole night with her or a quick session. The thing about street prostitutes is that most of them aren’t exactly pretty, but we had to shop for one. She wore a skirt somewhat longer than what I had expected. Trying to act like I had done this a hundred times before, I got to the point.

“How much?” I asked her bluntly.
“All of you or just one of you?” she asked calmly.
“All of us,” I said.
“Where are we going to do it?” she asked.
“Right here, right now,” I told her.

“Bano tebali serious (these ones aren’t serious),” she told an approaching consort, who, on seeing a group of men in a car, had probably assumed we would need an extra girl. She bent to take a closer look at us and I smelt marijuana on her breath. When she told her friend we weren’t serious, it hit me that prostitution wasn’t as mechanical as I had imagined; it required a somewhat animal instinct to tell who was or wasn’t a serious client. Our cover had been blown, so we headed for a bar in Kabalagala; a place we had heard is crowded with bar prostitutes.

It was a Thursday night and the place was dim and poorly lit even for a bar. There was nobody behind the counter and some of the girls were dressed in oversized jackets. There were no signs of prostitutes except for one girl at the bar who had heavy makeup and blood red lipstick. We agreed that she was probably one of them. To dig information out of her, I pretended to be from outside the city and one of my friends acted like he was taking me out for a crazy night out. I sat about four paces from them.

They talked for about two minutes, then he came over to me and said, “Make your move, I told her you want her but you are shy.” At first I hesitated like any shy person would, then I made two steps toward her, barely lifting my shoes. It was time to act shy. I spoke with my head bent, constantly avoiding eye contact and repeatedly rubbing my fingers, pretending to stutter (not stammer).

“Why are you shy?” she asked in a dominating but soft tone. I told her I was sorry – showing little confidence. You should have seen me out there. I told her she was beautiful and she blushed. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know prostitutes could blush. It was hard to tell whether she was faking it or not. I like to think she wasn’t, but she probably was. I was growing soft, the girl was doing her job (getting a client) and I had to do mine. She spoke English with a decent accent and had a pretty baby face that made sticking to my job somewhat difficult.

She asked me for a beer and I bought it. As we talked, I saw a prostitute grab the hand of a white man passing by. He stopped, looked at her and pulled away. It hit me that the girls preferred white clients to African ones. We conversed for almost half an hour but she didn’t bring up the topic of sex. It wasn’t till I told her I wanted to go back home with her that she asked for Shs60,000. I acted shocked and asked her if she was a prostitute. There was a deep awkward silence. “Are you a prostitute?” I asked again.

“If you don’t have money, don’t waste my time,” she said sourly. In a split second, she had turned from a sweet, almost beautiful girl, to a rude ugly thing. I told her I would give Shs10,000 if she would continue speaking with me for an extra 30 minutes. She didn’t reply. I pulled out a Shs10,000 note. She still said nothing but gracefully pulled it out of my hands.

Like most businesses without definite price tags, prostitutes charge their clients according to how much they (the prostitutes) assume the client might afford. I later learnt that that the standard price for most clients is Shs5,000 to Shs10,000 for quick sex and it could go as far as Shs30,000 for overnight sex, depending on the distance to the location the client is taking her. Bar prostitutes usually do overnight sex, it’s almost like a thumb rule, a way to communicate their standards.

The work of a prostitute flourishes side by side with bars; their clients are scarce on Mondays and Sundays. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays are their best days - at times they sleep with up to seven people on these nights. Based on this, their monthly income borders the Shs200,000 mark in a good week.

However, something puzzled me; prostitution is not legal in Uganda, so I could not help but wonder why the police do not arrest these girls. When I asked Sheila, she intimated that they have an “understanding” with the police, though she did not offer any more information even when I probed further.

That is not to say that they do not face other challenges. Some clients rape and batter them, like in the case of Sheila’s friend, who was in hospital even as we spoke. A client had tried to force her to have anal sex and being naïve and new to the streets, the girl had refused, upon which the man, a Sudanese national, raped and beat her to a pulp. She was found lying unconscious in a seedy hotel room in Bwaise and taken to hospital. She could not identify the man because according to her, all Sudanese looked alike and she did not know his name.

“Sometimes clients use us and do not pay us. Usually, these are the responsible and classy-looking kind, driving posh cars and evidently married. In such cases, we have no choice but to keep quiet, but we have been known to gang up and attack such men on next sighting them. This has taught us to ask for our money upfront, before having sex,” Sheila said emotionally.

The reason I had taken my friends along was that I expected this assignment to be a lot of fun; I was wrong, it turned out to be sad. I later learnt that many of the bar prostitutes around Kabalagala and Kasanga are students from Kampala International University; it’s a more dignified form of prostitution. But when all is said and done, regardless of whether it’s done in a muddy corridor or at a top hotel, it is what it is – prostitution.

As I sat with Sheila, I learnt that prostitution is not an idea; it’s not something you can truly understand because you read it in a newspaper article. It is the mouth, the vagina, the rectum, penetrated usually by a penis, sometimes hands, sometimes objects, by one man and then another and another.

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What is your take on prostitution?

Major General Kahinda Otafiire Minister of Trade and Industry. I am not a prostitute and therefore have absolutely nothing to do with it. Excuse me and ask those who are involved.

Grace Nakimera
Musician
I am very sensitive when it comes to girls who sell their bodies to earn a living and give up on life just like that! A woman is a woman because of the positive role that she is supposed to play in society, hence I find prostitution ridiculous. If a lame woman without legs can humbly sit by the roadside and sell groundnuts to earn a living, then what excuse does one with both legs who simply chooses to sell her body to survive have? If the girls who indulge in prostitution can buy a pair of expensive shoes just to impress a man, as opposed to investing it in something constructive, then I cannot help but say that prostitution is a ridiculous, stupid excuse to earn a living.

Brenda Nanyonjo
Style Editor, African Woman Magazine
I think prostitution is a luxury job and a lame excuse for one to earn a living. When you get the chance to talk to some of these girls, they give all sorts of reasons to justify their cause. Many will say things like, “I have a family to take care of, responsibilities, I need to go to school etcetera and when I get some little money out of this habit, I sure will quit this job,” but they never do. And then there is that bit of working at night and sleeping during the day which I think makes it a luxury job. I have seen people who have started with as little as Shs100,000 or Shs500,000 and had it mature into a normal business from which they can earn a living. It surely takes hard work and determination, which I believe every human being has the potential to emulate, thus to me, nothing can justify prostitution.

Desire Luzinda,
Musician
Society should stop being judgmental as far as prostitutes and prostitution is concerned because there are various reasons that can push one into this habit. I once talked to a very pretty prostitute and from the outside, she looked happy and contented with life but on the inside, she was a sad, destroyed human being. After our chat, I realised that while it is Bobi Wine,
Music artiste
I am indifferent when it comes to this habit. True, prostitution is immoral and because Africans are moral people who did not know about the existence of such habits. It is bound to affect us in one way or another. However, I am not out to lash at prostitution. Circumstances can cause one to arrive at different conclusions. Just like a young man would get involved in hard crime, a young woman can be driven into prostitution. I do not believe in or support it but look at it as a simple societal immorality problem or issue that can be addressed.

Pastor Robinah Ntambi,
Kasenge Miracle Centre
When I look around, prostitution is on the increase and I think it mainly has to do with poverty and family upbringing as far as different homes go. In a bid to earn a living, many young people move around in search of what they would call the easiest means of survival, hence are easily whisked into prostitution. In other situations, some parents neglect their duties and responsibilities in a home, so the children end up living a life with little or no guidance at all; indulging in prostitution can be a way to satisfy what they have lacked in life. All in all, it is not a good habit but it can be addressed by society with God’s guidance.

Connie Nankya

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The rules of the game

It must be a slippery and ugly storm for one to slip and fall into prostitution. Every prostitute has their own sad story but somewhere, it sounds like a script they all rehearsed, except that it isn’t a script. It is real life.

Every one prostitute, whether common street or bar, must claim her territory. On the streets, they all stand an agreed distance from each other. It’s a mechanism of claiming territories. They need some kind of organisation or they’ll kill each other. It’s the law of the “whores”.
In the bars, it’s bad prostitution etiquette to attempt to pick up a client that has/is being chatted up by someone else. A stunt like that can get prostitutes ganging up on a culprit; it is unacceptable.

As a prostitute, there are only so many tears one can cry. Even when they can’t take any more, they can’t afford to break down before a client. For some reason, a lot of women are allowed to cry, but prostitutes aren’t. When they are in doubt or when fearful, there is no space for hesitation; they either spread those legs, or go home and starve or worse still – their children starve.

When one is in the prostitution business, they do not have tomorrow in their mind, because tomorrow is a very long time away. No prostitute can afford to be so stupid as to believe that tomorrow will come, so they turn to alcohol, drugs and vaginal lubricants to help them deal with the pain night in, night out.

In the same way that sales people in boutiques will usually tell a prospective buyer how good they look in a dress or shirt, prostitutes must do the same. Prostitutes go as far as whispering all sorts of fake compliments during sex to cause the client to climax quickly. It isn’t personal, it is business.

Arnold Kintu