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.
But she said we would have to pay for the time we spent talking to the women. The Mama introduced us to a year-old woman who works at her establishment. The woman spoke fluent English and was eager for her story to be told. Her story moved me. When I published the story , it garnered an array of reactions on social media.
