Hosting a Prostitute

During my days as a taxi driver, we used to say that the Nairobi nights belonged to three groups of people. These were security guards, taxi drivers, and prostitutes. They were the people who remained in town when everybody else went home. They were privy to a lot of activities which the rest of you only here about in the media. Earlier on in my career, I learnt to respect these fellow “people of the night”. Those who failed to know this found work and life in general, rather difficult in the city.

There is a famous place in Nairobi known as Koinange street. It is rather “innocent” in the daytime. However, at night it becomes the Kenyan red light district. The ladies of the night start streaming in from 8 p.m. when most “ordinary” people have gone home. While Koinange street is the most famous, it is by no means the only street patronised by the twilight sisters. There is Muindi Bingu street which runs parallel to Koinange, and City Hall Way which cuts across the two. I came to learn that these ladies are highly territorial and nobody dares to venture into another’s turf. I also heard that night-time Nairobi has its owners in the form of parking boys (or parking men since many are all grown up now). The ladies have to buy their spots from the parking men using the same services that they offer their clients…Eeeeel!

As I continued learning about the city, I also came to discover other roads outside of the CBD with the ladies of the night. A particularly notorious one was a road known as Westlands road within the affluent suburb of Westlands. The amazing thing was that the number of these women was constantly increasing with each passing day. This by extension increased the length of road covered by the skimpily dressed girls.

While I found all of the above places occupied by the time I came to Nairobi, there is one territory that I personally witnessed being established. When I moved to Babylon base, the area was quite “decent” even at night. One day as I was driving back to base in the dead of the night, I noticed the shiny legs in the shadows at a bus stop. At first it appeared as if it was somebody waiting for the bus, but at that hour, it was improbable. I didn’t think much of it until several days later I saw the same girl at the same spot. By now, my colleagues had noticed her too. After some weeks there was a second girl a few meters away, then a third, then a fourth. Several months later, the cooing girls lined the whole stretch between Hurlingham and Yaya center.

Since there were no restaurants open at night outside the city center, there used to be some women who served tea and bread by the roadside at night. They would bring in their kerosene stoves to keep the supply constant throughout the night. This ensured that us “creatures” of the night did not sleep cold and hungry. Initially these creatures had only been taxi drivers and security guards, but now we also had our sisters. The tea women really detested the prostitutes and they used to treat them differently from the men. For instance, they did not serve them tea in cups. Instead, they used to fashion out disposable cups from the empty milk packets. They did this because, as they put it, “You can’t tell where that mouth has been or what it has just done”.

With time, the regular girls became part of the community and on “slow” nights we would chat as we willed the hours away. These women had interesting stories on how they ended up doing what they did. Some did it out of poverty while others were in it for fun, like one who had once been married by a Japanese expatriate. Whenever he was out of the country, she always went to the street. One day he came back unexpectedly and he could not believe his eyes when he saw his wife trying to hook up with him as he was driven past in a taxi. As expected, he divorced her allowing her to get back on the street on a full time basis.

Some of the women were permanently high on drugs and would do crazy things. Like there was this one who, when business was low would charge 20 shillings for a “peek.” I remember one time when some of the crazier drivers were idle on base and wanted to be shown. None of them had the required twenty bob and so they had to do an impromptu fundraising. When the money was enough, the beautiful but heavily stoned girl stepped on the nearest car’s bumper and did her thing. It is a sad picture when I look back now.

There used to be many crack downs when the police would come and arrest the girls. They would then be put in a police cell and arraigned in court the following day. Those with rich friends would be bailed out during the night. The police would take advantage of the younger and more attractive ones making them to buy their freedom in kind. The rest would have to appear in court. During one such breakdown, one of them came running to me and tearfully begged me to let her hide in my car. I was touched and let her in. During the time that the crackdown lasted, she narrated to me how she had been forced into prostitution. She had been raped by her teacher back in the village and got pregnant. Her father kicked her out of the home and she did not know what to do until a friend induced her into the old profession. It was a very sad story.

As she left my car early in the morning, one of my colleagues remarked that I was not wise to let a “dirty person” into my car. I was offended because I was thinking; any of those women is somebody’s sister, daughter, or even mother!