The feet of a sex worker in Bwaise, a slum in northern Kampala. Photo Credit: Prudence Nyamishana. If you asked me why I set out to write a sex worker diary on my blog, I would tell you I did it out of sheer curiosity.
I wanted to get a first-hand view of the situation, and maybe share the story with readers of my blog. So I called up my friend Joseph, a community worker who has worked in this area for years. Joseph was waiting for me when I disembarked from a commuter taxi one afternoon. After exchanging pleasantries, he led me through a narrow corridor.
At the end of the corridor, the scene suddenly changed: this was not the Kampala I am used to. I saw mud-walled drinking joints full of men and women at noon. There was rubbish everywhere and Lingala music playing in the background. To navigate, Joseph and I had to jump over streams of sewage.
We meandered our way through alleyways lined with wooden- and iron sheeting-walled shacks. I later discovered these were brothels, and that over women come to this area daily to sell sex, by both day and night. A woman in her late 40s greeted us at our destination. She invited us into a small room of about eight square meters, with a mud floor. In one corner was a run-down shelf with bottles of local gin. A double-decker bed and single bed were on the other side of the room.
A child sleeping on the lower bunk caught my eye. The Mama told us she rents out these beds to those that buy and sell sex. A bed goes for Uganda shillings per use. I told the Mama we were interested in raising awareness of the horrible conditions of sex workers in the Kampala slums so that decision-makers could pay attention and, hopefully, do something about it.
