HIV and ARVs in the SADC area.

I have just read an article on Zimbabwe HIV patients and have felt I need to air my views on the subject. This is a note I sent to the writer.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-aidsdrugs30dec30,1,1992841.story?track=rss

"Zimbabwe's AIDS patients in an endless line for drugs"
By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 30, 2007
"Zimbabwe's AIDS patients in an endless line for drugs"

Dear Robyn
I am responding to your article about Zimbabwe. I am not as educated as you are nor will I have the chance to make progress, since I am also HIV positive. I have written many articles about ARVs. My view is that they make the situation a lot worse. You see, the government, the media, the medical profession and indeed the public, must all fight for compulsory testing and issue of cards. Red card for positive and green card for negative, followed by three monthly testing for all green card holders.

ARVs are useless unless the whole nation starts working together to change attitudes about the spread of HIV. An invigorated male (ARV) will start again to have unprotected sex, because he has the energy to do so. His attitude is the same and there is nothing to stop him. HIV is spread by men in Zimbabwe and its them who need to know that there is a system in place which can categorically determine that they had HIV before the wife did. A three monthly test will pick that up. It will also make people think about HIV more.

If this was Ebola, we would all be having tests. What is the deal with HIV? Its killing up to 4000 per week each week. Look at the cemeteries and family grave yards. What nation allows that to happen? I was a sex worker in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia, Namibia, UK, USA, Australia. At times I have had more than 15 men per day. You can not begin to calculate how many men I have had sex with and at least 20% or so refused to use condoms. Imagine the figures when I found I was HIV positive.

Now imagine it if I had had a compulsory test at adulthood and carried a red card. All a man had to ask for is my card and then decide whether to have sex with me or not.

I am sure you understand what I am getting at and you know I am right. Before that can happen, all talk of ARVs or any other medicines, traditional or not, is a total waste of time, and the graves will continue to increase.

You work in the media, you can help formulate a sensible approach to HIV. Bill Clinton agrees with me, Ask him is you do not believe me. Governments must regulate sex in all its forms. Mbeki was criticised for refusing to intervene with ARVs, I have always thought he was right. Either regulate and treat or do nothing. Those are the only two options and he chose the cheaper. I am on ARVs myself but I pay for them myself. I have a very healthy bank account and an income from property I bought while working.

The tax payer should not foot the pleasure bill for someone who is likely to keep having sex with no protection. That is not good national investment.

I thank you for reading
Sincerely

Instant
Have a happy New Year.

Merry Chistmas all you who can read

Merry Christmas!!! Happy New year!!!. For me it will be good to see 2008. I always believed I would be dead before 2008. I am healthy and strong so if I do not get run over before then, or have another kind of accident, I should see 2008 and it will be a happy New Year for me. I hope you are happy as well.

I might travel to Zimbabwe at some point. If I do, I will go by road. I will stretch the journey to a week. I know a lot of good people in Botswana so its good to call on them and catch up.

My boyfriend will be home today for a few days. He hates Mugabe so will not come with me to Zimbabwe, especially if I am taking more than a week.

Enjoy yourselves

Truthfully now. Why does your husband come to me?

You are free. You are in the house, presumably available. You are his wife. yet he leaves you at home and comes to me to pay for sex. Why. The answer is you no longer bother to excite him. Its the same when you feel like having an affair. Its because he no longer bothers to excite you.

Before you blame him or me, look at yourself.! I wish I had recorded men talking about their wives and how boring they (the wives are in bed) It would make you think.

Can a man be weaned off sex workers?

Once a married man visits an experienced sex worker, he will have to visit again, and again and again. Sex is not just a matter of inserting a penis into a vagina and shafling about for a minute or two like he does at home with his wife. Once a man pays, he is led into an experience lasting a full half hour or an hour depending on what he paid for. The idea is to make sure that when he leaves the sex worker, his mind cannot settle till he comes back for more. Its his mind, not his penis, that the sex worker works on.

It is common to find a client falling in love with you and developing and obsession about it. A good sex worker usually has several men, maybe ten or more, begging her to marry them at any time. Their minds are convinced that she is the right girl for them for a wife. They do not appreciate that she is just doing her job.

There are clients who pass by a sex worker once or twice per week every week over a long period of time yet they are married and go back to the wife and live seemingly happily. Sex work will always be a booming business as long as the wives remain lazy.

It is not possible to wean off a man who has visited a good sex worker at least once.

My greatest fear now

Since I discovered I had HIV, I have always wondered if I will see my 30th birthday. Most people in Zimbabwe die between 30 and 40. So maybe I have a chance. The one thing I fear is to lose weight to a point where I look really bad before I die. I have seen some of my friends struggle and I do not want to be like that. I am sure that when the time comes there will be apoint when I will have to do something.

My chance of reaching 30 is high now.

Have I ever betrayed confidentiality?

Yes I have but only in extreme circumstances. Sex workers do not betray clients in normal circumstances. I remember a sex worker called Monica who betrayed President Clinton. In her shoes I would not have done that. There is more money in silence. The difference between priests and sex workers is that sex workers are paid for their silence. You give a service, you get paid and you forget about it completely. It is very bad for business to talk about your clients’ names.

There is no merit in bringing a prominent person down. People just look down on you for nothing. Remember the prostitute who:
Reported Zuma for rape
Was paid to be filmed with Bishop Ncube

Where are they now. Even their sources of income could stop because they went public. Experienced sex workers keep their mouths shut till death. To get more money you pick the phone up, and call the client and tell him so and so was asking questions but I know what to say. Within a few hours the client will turn up with more money and no time for sex. I will get regular calls and regular money for nothing for a few weeks till the crisis boils over. After that I might get one large payment, a holiday or both. It is worth keeping silent both for the client and his wife.

I betrayed a man who beat me up. I hired two men to beat him up and ask him to pay. His wife was told why.

Question and answer session

Question asked via Email are answered here. Forget the scientists. They do not have HIV and they are funded by profit oriented firms. You are already capable of avoiding HIV.

[1] In your own opinion why do men seek prostitutes?

Men who seek prostitutes are usually

• Men with a low self esteem


• Men who think their penis is too small to please a woman


• Men who hate women including their wives


• Men who are not confident about their sexual performance with their wives


• 99% of men who go to sex workers are married. I hardly ever saw single men in 8 years

They want a bit of praise for the one thing a man should be able to do. From what I hear from these men, wives do not peptalk their husbands during sex. The man does not know whether he is good or bad. Sex workers share ideas and we do pep talk clients, even some really rubbish ones. It raises their estimates of themselves.

[2] Is it possible for a man to seek the same prostitute several times.

Yes if you live in the same area for long enough, you will have certain men visit several times and they even start to express love to you. I had a few begging me to marry them. They do not understand that it is your job to have sex with them. They think you are doing it because you love them. You play along because they pay more that way. Men are not sexually very bright.

[3] What percentage of men do use condoms?

Most non-black men have no problems with condoms. Its just black men whether they are in Europe or Africa. They find condoms intimidating and try not to use them. I would estimate at maybe 15% of black men will offer you more money to avoid using a condom. They also tend to be men who overrate their sexual skills verbally, and try to sound confident, when you just know they are here because they either have no regular girl, or if they have one, they have no idea whether she is satisfied or not.

[4] Is there any use of drugs in sex work?
The reason why most sex workers, especially in Europe end up with no money at all after earning so much is that they use drugs. Drugs are introduced in two paths. The first is that the person already using drugs becomes a sex worker to raise funds to support the habit. The second is that the pimp introduces a young sex worker to drugs so that she is compelled to obey him as he supplies the drugs and she hands over the money she makes to him in exchange. Both these paths are very common. In SADC drugs are not that popular, but some sex workers use them. Other sex workers are drug dealers and sex workers at the same time.

[5] Do sex workers have any other jobs?
Some women do it part time. But once you start earning from sex work, you will notice that it is not worth going to any other job because the earnings are high. In London you can easily earn over GBP 600 per 4 hour day.

[6] Is it possible to have a steady boyfriend and yet one is a sex worker?
In SADC pimps are not that popular though you find men who pimp their girlfriends or wives. This is because the biz is lucrative. There are many men have girlfriends or wives who are sex workers. So yes in Africa, Europe and elsewhere you find many married women who are sex workers. I have worked at boarder posts at Chirundu, Beit Bridge, Plumtree, there were married women who worked with us with the full knowledge of their husbands. In Europe that is common. Some men marry sex workers after meeting them on the job. These remain sex workers after marriage.

[7] Ever experienced any violence from men during your trade?
Violence from the men themselves, from their wives, from other sex workers for taking clients off them, from the pimp of you got one, is common. When I had a pimp in UK, he insisted on being the last one to have sex with me each day. If I tried to refuse, I got threats and he demanded more money from me. It can be very violent.

[8] Condom use-is it possible for a condom to wear off during intercourse?
They do not wear off as such. They can slip off or tear. A condom an easily slip off and remain inside the vagina, requiring to be pulled out with fingers.
It can also burst so that the tip is open and semen flows into the vagina but the condom is still on the penis.

[9] Can a sex worker have more than one session with different clients in one night?
A sex worker has sex at any time of the day, night or day. It is possible to have as many clients as can come. It is not uncommon to have sex with more than 15 men in a day.

The only time you have sex with one man is when on hire. You can be on hire the whole weekend or sometime when the man who hires you is on a business trip. You only have him during the trip.
[10] The femidon or female condom, is it widely used? If not why?
The femidom is better for women. It is stronger and most sex workers wash them and reuse them. This means that the clients can infect each other without affecting the sex worker. That is why I like them. They are a bit more fiddly than the male condom to put in place, and they are a lot more expensive which is why some people reuse them. I always advise young sex workers who may still be negative to use femidoms.

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Men’s attitudes to women

In Africa, if you want to insult a boy or a man, you insult his mother or his sister. If you tell any man or boy that you saw his sister or his mother having sex in the local bush with someone of low class or an unauthorised person, you may be the one to bear the brunt of the man’s anger.

Mothers are respected to the highest level, but that is as far as respect for women goes. The same man who thinks his mother is the most revered woman on earth does not in any way shape or form imagine that his children’s mother deserves the same respect. He does not think that other men’s mothers may deserve the same respect. The Southern African woman is only second to the Islamic woman in how badly she is treated by the men.

The stupid thing is that the men’s attitudes towards women are caused by their mothers. The Southern African mother breeds her sons to be the prime enemy to women. Women have total control of their sons during the children’s formative years. They could give the boys any attitude they with them to have, but they choose to steer them towards this path. The reasons are complex but put of it is because the boys are traditionally bred to be the family breadwinners. Having a good attitude to women bred elsewhere may threaten the boy’s willingness to give his mother some money.

Buy the time he gets married, the mother still wants his money and thinks his wife and children deserve less than she does. The wife and mother in law fall out but when the wife has her own boys, she gives them the same attitudes that caused her to suffer. The cycle of poverty of reason goes on.

Then the women started biting back in the form of HIV. For the first time in the culture of Southern Africa, it can be shown that the man is weak, devoid of reason, vulnerable and not that protected by his mother. He can pretend to be all powerful and menacing, but just one sex session with a positive sex worker, whom he can insult, beat up, refuse to pay or even chase out in the middle of the night, can change his whole life, that of his children, and best of all, that of his mother, the woman who gave him his attitudes.

HIV is an equaliser, but it only affects the arrogant man with a bad attitude towards women. Those moderates remain unaffected. Almost all clients will always tell the sex worker the wife does not understand them, meaning, “ I cannot lower myself enough to talk to the mother of my children nicely”

HIV has been a good tool for biting back at the arrogant man. Those who remain will hopefully teach their children respect for women. For the women who die in the process, lets treat it as a worthy crusade, a price worth paying for the folly of those women who breed this kind of men.

Christmas and STI infections

Sex workers always worker much harder in December and January. However, the type of man the get is different. During the year the majority of clients are married men. very few if any single men report to sex workers, and those who do, usually do so thinking they are getting a girlfriend. This is because sex workers tend to look better than other women in that they take care of how they look. Its part of the job.

At Christimas, the number of single men goes up a lot. These are the men who for the rest of the year are in the community with younger single girls.

Should sex workers take part?

A lot of uninformed people think that sex workers should take part in the effort to limit the spread of HIV and other STIs. My own view is that sex workers are not even a factor in the equation. In the SADC region, most sex workers are women who have nothing when they start sex work. They do whatever their clients ask of them. They are not assertive enough to allow themselves other that the assumption of victimhood. By the time they have gathered enough confidence to influence the process, they themselves are HIV positive, and a large number of their clients are also positive.

The only way such a new entrant to the biz would be in a position to control how fast the virus spreads is if there is a school for sex workers, which there will never be such a thing in the SADC region.

What are the incentives to sex workers?
As far as I have found out in 8 years, there is no personal incentive to a sex worker to participate in limiting the spread.
1. She is already positive
2. She has no time to implement any of the requirements without losing income.
3. She will never get recognition from anyone for her efforts.
4. She is not a paid primary health worker
5. Men frown upon her if she seems overly difficult, and would just go to someone else.
6. She would not actually reduce or even limit the actual statistics.

Society understand sex workers and know that they are a high risk group. What society does not understand fully is that the HUSBAND is the link between the high risk group and the at risk group (the wife and children) It is there that all attention should be focussed if any results are to be realised.

Sex workers are not a factor and should be left well alone unless they are going to be given financial incentives. Ironically, the people who waste their time by approaching them for discussion, are usually highly paid academics or primary health carers. It seems unfair that these receive money and the people whgose time they waste receive none.

Stigma: what we have been through.

I will be brief here. HIV positive people are victimised for one reason alone, and that is because the government is reluctant to force compulsory testing and the publication of an HIV national directory.
If this was done, there would be so many of us positive that nobody would feel it necessary to stigmatise anyone. Most of the people who victimise others, are themselves positive. That is FACT.

I personally do not think you should keep silent if you are picked on. If you can afford it, higher some thugs and have the person picking on you sorted out once and for all. Never allow a person, who could be positive himself/herself to victimise you for something that the whole of the the SADC society allows to spread unchecked.

Virginity for ever

Men will always pay more for a virgin. Men view a virgin in the same way as they view a new car or a new suit which nobody else has driven or worn. It pays a sex worker a lot more if she can pass as a virgin. Men have no idea what virginity really is.

It is common practice to use certain mixtures to shrink the vaginal muscles in order to give men an impression of virginity. A sex worker can be a virgin as many times as she wants in one day and each man that has sex with her will not know that she as had thousands more before him. This is because men think virginity is indicated by how tight or loose a vagina is.

There commonest method of achieving the virgin effect is to wash down below with a weak solution of sodium cyanide. This is found in areas where gold mining takes place in Southern Africa. Areas around Johannesburg, Shamva, Mazowe, etc. If you go to any gold mining refuse dump, you will find it fenced off to prevent wild animals or farm animals from drinking water on the dump. That is because it contains cyanide, a quick poison. You will also find holes in the fence where women have gone through to get the sludge in buckets. They take this home and let it settle, leaving clear water on top. The water is then carefully scooped and used to wash the vulva area shortly before sex. It does not matter what stimulation is given, the vagina remains dry.

Dangers:
Cyanide is a poison. If the woman has small cracks in her vaginal walls, she will absorb cyanide into her blood streams and poison herself. She could also poison the man who has sex with her. There is no danger of oral poisoning because African men do not like to give women oral sex.

When I worked in Zimbabwe We used to visit Shamva or Mazowe from Harare to get buckets of the mine refuse. We sold some of it to other girls. The solution is weak but if you use it often, it can damage you. As far as I know, this practice is still going on.

Wives lack understanding of men

I have had wives attacking me because their husbands have paid me money for my services. This is the same as a mother attacking a shopkeeper because her child bought sweets in the shop. It makes no sense to anyone but that is the mentality of a woman who has become a wife.

When I get a client, I treat him as a client. I do not ask his marital status, nor do I care. My services do not depend of his marital status, but more on how much money he will pay me for what I do. I have no relationship with the man. I have no vested interest in any part of him apart from his money. If he gave me his money and walked away with no services I would take the money and bank it. I am not even interested in giving him services. I just do it to get him to give me the money. I am no in competition with this man’s wife for this man.

The man comes to me on his own accord and he pays me voluntarily and he either wears a condom or not as he wishes. As long as he pays me, I have nothing against him. The man knows whether or not he is married. He has a choice of coming to me or going to his wife. I do not influence him in that choice.

So for the wife to attack me is totally out of order. I used to run away and hide, but one day I chose to stand my ground. I asked this woman in Kadoma, Zimbabwe if I was married to her or if she knew me from somewhere. She just wanted to fight me and kept accusing me of having an affair with her husband. I do not do affairs. When she attacked me I made sure she never thought to attack any other sex worker again in her life. She came off worst.

I have had so many attacks in Africa, but never in Europe. European wives understand that the argument is between them and their husbands. If your husband does not get what he needs from you, he will get it from someone else. A sex worker is just incidental to your problems with your husband. She does not add to them or anything. She does not even need to know that they are there. She is simply making a living.

Morality, Ethics and Compassion in sex work.

As a sex worker, my clients and I operate outside the moral code as defined by religion. There is no such thing as morality outside of religion such as Christianity or maybe some sections of Islam. Morality begins and ends with religion. Once outside this boundary, the only limit is the law of the land. There is no law of the land that limits sex work. This means that a sex worker and her clients are free to do anything they please, and indeed they do.

Sex workers do not pay any income tax
Sex workers do not have to insist on wearing condoms
Sex workers are not subject to any trading laws that other businesses are subject to
Sex workers are not usually named in divorce cases as third parties. They remain anonymous
Sex workers have no Guild, professional body or compulsory skills audit or standards commission.
Sex workers do not have to take exams or show anyone any qualifications.

So in essence sex workers have total and absolute freedom of the law and of morality.

Ethics, like the law and morality must be written down. As far as I know there are no professional or incidental or even human ethics governing the work, conduct or practice of a sex worker. All these mean that you cannot approach a sex worker and start telling them to use condoms basing your view on matters moral, legal or ethical, because their business is outside all three.

If you invoke compassion, for example I was forever asked if I should feel sorry for the wives and children of my clients who get HIV after the man has been with me. My view was always that the man knows his family very well, and he does not believe that they should be safe from HIV. Who am I, an outsider, to interfere with that view. If the man thought his wife and children were worthy of freedom from HIV, he would not come to me at all. He would nurture his relationship with his wife, or if she was sexually incapacitated, he would beg me to roll a condom onto him. The fact that he pays me more to agree to have condomless sex means his family are not important. So again compassion does not come into the matter at all. If it did it would come through the man himself.

An HIV positive sex worker has very little to lose compared to a married man with children and whose wife is still young enough to have more children. If compassion was an issue, he would have it towards his wife and children. He doesn't, so it isn't. A sex worker's focus is money and money only.

After all the virus is an intruder in my body. I do not control its activities. I do not own it. I do not want it. It does what it wants to do. Writing a law limiting my activities just because I happen to be host to an independent virus is a bit unfair on me. After all humanity passed the virus to me by force. At least I offer condom to all my clients. Those that refuse are simply expressing a preference for HIV. I cannot be expected to lose income over someone else's decision.

Does the condom actually work in preventing HIV?

The short and most truthful answer is a resounding NO. The use of condoms does not prevent HIV transmission totally. It only reduces the rate of transmission. If a man frequents sex workers and uses condoms all the time, he will eventually catch HIV. Condoms are made in a variety of ways and users are usually unaware of this fact. They just think one condom is as good as the next. They are also made for different reasons such as safety, contraception, reduction of premature ejaculation, fun in sex, etc. When you ask an average man what type of condom he has brought, you often see him show a confused look. Condoms can rip, even when used by experienced users. When one rips, do you catch HIV straight away or not? How many times do you have to have a ripped condom before you can catch HIV? Nobody really knows the answer.

HIV and other STIs is transmitted because men do not like their wives. Condoms were invented to try to make it seem like men are protecting themselves when out there hunting for sex outside the home. Ask any sex worker how many times a condom has burst on them and listen to what they say. It is more common than you think. Now most sex workers prefer to roll on the condom themselves to make sure it is done properly. A man with a hardo is not exactly capable of thinking about anything else and assuming he can correctly roll on a condom is foolish.

In the SADC region, there is an added practice of married men having shared concubines. Most men have another woman they have regular sex with in exchange for groceries and rent for her house. They are not proper commercial sex workers, but they are social sex workers. Each of them usually has other few (three to four) regular men she also gets income from. Men usually do not use condoms with these women. The idea is once you have been having sex with her for a while, you start pretending she has no other men and condoms are no longer used. A concubine like that usually has children and each of the men thinks the child is his so they all pay a voluntary maintenance. If she catches HIV from any of the men, all the others, their wives and their subsequent children will have HIV.

While I was a full time sex worker I had men who preferred to treat me like they treat a concubine. They pay me a portion of their salary at the end of each month, the pay my rent and they pay the shop where I get my groceries. I could have several paying clients during the day, and have a regular man staying for 4 or so hours during the evening. Such men are usually rich businessmen who call their wives on cell phones just before or just after having sex with you.

Wasting time insisting on condoms in such a society is just a waste of money, because the sex workers already have HIV, the concubines will catch HIV, men will necessarily have HIV and the wives almost must catch HIV. In the mean time they also catch other STIs. A wife may never be unfaithful, but she will still catch an STI. It is more dangerous in the SADC region to be married than to be single when it comes to the rate at which people are infected. The number of freely available condoms in the region is not relevant to the equation. The organisation of the society is what needs to be changed before condoms can work. The condom has been a nearly useless quick fix. However, you need to use condoms all the time whether you are married or not. Look carefully at how they should be used.

I have always suggested that the young women who want to get married (stupid thing to do) should undergo a rigorous training programme, paid for by the government, and run by former-sex workers, to give them the sexual skills that they will need to keep the man focussed. The men also need a system of immediate and severe punishment if found to be unfaithful. These would only take one generation before attitudes change. As a former sex worker, I may seem to be talking my fellow sex workers out of a job, because if men do not stray, sex workers cannot work. I think that sex workers could be paid for by governments to do useful social work. The men in prisons, the men in barracks, etc they all need sex.

What is the income in sex work?

Income depends on how you run the biz and where you are. In Zimbabwe I was earning a lot less than my clients, while in the UK I was earning several times more than each of my clients. Being a sex worker in Southern Africa is not that profitable but you do earn more than an average worker. In the UK the first thing you notice is that other girls tell you you need a minder. These are not very good people but they protect you from bad clients. They also take a large proportion of your earnings. On most evenings, my minder whose street name was Stick, was always the last one to have sex with me after I had been working most of the afternoon and evening. The only time he did not do that was when I was booked for the full night.

He tok all the money from me and gave me back around 20%. this would be about 200 Pounds per night. What used to annoy me was that he would know that I had had a tip from a client. He seemed to know everything. He took my tips off me.

When I became more confident, I stopped having a minder, moved to East London from Slough and carried on on my own. The earnings were not much for a while but after about two months I was earning as much as I had been with a minder, for less hours

By the later part of 2003 I was earning at least 6000 Pounds per month easily. I have never paid any form of tax in my life. I also found out that Arabic clients pay a lot more than others. There was a time when I was hired to go with a client to the USA for two weeks. I earned nearly 15000 pounds during that time.

In South Africa you work harder and the clients are much more crude and unrefined, but you can make over 50 000 Rand per month. Also clients recommend each other to you so you can easily have more than ten clients from the same friendship group.

Overall, if you do not use drugs you can save you money very quickly.

What is the cost

I have been physically attacked by the clients when they tried to avoid payment but still wanted sex
I have been attacked by the wives of clients when they discover the husband has been paying family money to me.
I have been arrested more than once
I have been in scary situations
I had to buy a large supply of condoms
I had to buy expensive clothes
I have been with some very dirty and smelly men for a fee.
I have met some sexually ignorant married men
I have listened smilingly to some rubbish from men as they justify coming to me to themselves.
I had HIV before I started so disease does not count as a cost in my case.
I have been treated like a queen only to be normal again when I get back to my appartment.

Why the African man is promiscuous:

• An African wife is an accessory, not a person in her own right. So there is no need to be loyal
• Children, to an African man, are not as important as a new vagina on a sex worker. He only wants them as proof of his verility. An African man with children will kill another man over a sex worker without a thought about what will happen to his wife or children, when he could have just waited another half hour for the other man to finish the transaction with the sex worker so he can have his turn. In London the men meet as one is going out and another is coming in, or is waiting in the hall, and no fighting takes place. Africans would have to fight.
• Sex is always described in violent words most of which give the impression that the man is doing something violent to the woman, and the woman is just an incidental victim of it. There are very few used words that describe sex in gentle and soft terms. As a result, sex identifies very easily with violence and you find violence in the home, violence in relationships, etc. In Zimbabwe, the men insist on dry sex, (that is to say if your vagina gets wet during sex, the man thinks you are useless in bed) This has caused women to use all sorts of chemicals to stop themselves from getting wet when excited. A man can send his wife back to her family to be taught manners, if she keeps getting wet during sex. The fear of getting moist is a real fear in Zimbabwe.
• The number of sex workers is increasing in Africa.
•

When I wanted to kill all men on earth.

In the few days following my very first rape, I was raped several times. The man, being my and my three siblings’ carer threatened me with turning us all onto the street if I refused. After he finished each time, I would be in tears and all he could say was “It was not that bad was it?” and walk out of the room with a smile on his face. He was already HIV positive and very thin. His wife did not look as sick but she was. They both were dead within two years of my rape.

From the first day, my instinct was to kill every man I came across. I became very angry with men for a long while after that day. However, I soon discovered that I had no choice but to treat men nicely. I ran away from home after maybe six rapes. I found myself in Harare where I could not go to the houses of anyone I knew in case they send me back to being raped. I decided to make my own way. I slept behind a petrol station and fed on bread and thrown away fruit the first three days. I did not have a wash because I had no soap or towel or anything. I just washed my face with water. All my belongings were is a small overnight bag. I was sitting on this bag at the petrol station, on the early evening of the fourth day, when a man driving a big Mercedes car on his way from work spotted me and spoke to me. I smiled and answered him back. He stopped and we exchanged a few more words. I agreed to go in his car and by the end of the evening I had had sex with him with a condom that he carried in his pocket, I had been fed well, and I had enough money to last me a week. I also had been moved into a room in one of his properties. I had a form rubber mattress and two blankets. When I look back now, that is the evening I discovered that sex pays money. The man listened to me and was very sympathetic to my plight, but he still wanted sex, and lots of it with me. I was 18 and he was in his late fifties. I later found out that he had children older than me. I met his wife and his children when they came to collect rent from the tenants.

My hatred for men continued for a few years, and only subsided when I had some counselling in England around 2003 after I found out I was positive. I had been carrying so much hate for men for over four years. I also had depended on men for my income for that long.

Estimated number of my men by country:

Men I have been with by country
Over the seven years that I was fully in the biz, I estimate the following:
Click on the table to make it bigger


In the UK it was mostly black men who refused to use condoms. The rest of the races were always ready to use them. Some even brought their own condoms, in case I did not have any. Everyone was offered condoms.

There were a number of burst condoms in the early years, but these reduced as time went on.

Age range of men overall = 25- 65
About 9 in 10 men were married and the wives available at home nearby or in the same town. I have often wondered why a married man leaves his free wife in the house, who presumably married him because she is willing to have as much sex with him as possible, and he goes out to pay a sex worker to do what he can have for free at any time he wants. He also uses family money to which she is entitled to 50%. I have often wondered why societies condemn sex workers for the actions of the married man. Why do they not condemn the married woman for her inaction.

As a sex worker, I never actively advertised my trade to anyone. I only told the men that they had to pay after they approached me for sex. If societies were logical, they would understand that if they consider this to be an undesirable trade, then they should stop their husbands, brothers, sons, fathers, etc coming to us. If they come, we will earn our money and provide a service.

I can not sit here and honestly say 10 000-35 000 men in seven years were wrong. That is a large number of men. Many of these were in honourable professions and leaders in their communities, teachers, community leaders, doctors, lawyers, judges, grave diggers, drivers, businessmen, priests, church workers, etc. People from all walks of life use sex workers.

Sex Work and rapes in the SADC region

From my experience, the number of sex workers in the region is increasing. This is more so because of ladies from Zimbabwe moving into other countries. It is clear to anyone what is going on with new Zimbabwe arrivals in Windhoik, Gaborone, Francistown. Joburg, Cape Town Durban, Lusaka, Blantyre, Nairobi, etc.

In addition, the rates of rape seem to remain very high and if you are arrested for working in the streets, you can be sure to have sex with three or more police officers before you are released. This is the norm in all the countries I have been arrested in, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe.

My sexual history.

I was raped at age 18 by a man with HIV. I did not know then that I had been infected. Him and his wife died within 18 months of the rape.

I was already working in the sex trade and continued to do so till I was nearly 26. During that time I had sex with or without a condom depending on the men's preference. I found black men more resistant to condoms. In my live, I have been with maybe 20 -30 men per week for nearly 8 years. That is 8320 -12480 men in total. Each of these could have chosen to risk HIV or other STIs. Although I have always offered condoms to men, I did not turn them down if they refused. The job of a sex worker is to earn money. No sex worker I ever knew could give back the money and let the client go because of condoms.

I currently live with my partner who is also positive. We have become faithful to each other on and off. When we do have sex with others, we know who has done what and with whom. We are both on ARV treatment.

HIV Epidemic in Southern Africa.

I feel that governments in Southern Africa have not fully understood the impact of HIV on such as Training costs, Economy, taxation, medical costs, family structure, etc. This epidemic was very easy to stop and still is but nobody wants to be seen to be doing anything about it.

A reasonable government should introduce compulsory testing for all citizens and those who choose to visit the country. each should then get either a green card for negative or a red card for positive. All red card holders can then occupy a certain part of the country while the green card holders occupy another. The Red card holder should not be allowed to reproduce. Only the green card holders can reproduce.

If it found the people with mismatching cards had sex between them, then both get punished but the Green card holder gets more punishment because he/she has something to lose and should not take the risk.

Seeing that in Zimbabwe for example, the number of HIV positive people is very high, The economy will not be affected at all. The HIV town will just run smoothly by HIV positive people.

Before anyone can marry, they must satisfy the registrar that they are both negative or both positive and sterilised.

All green card holders must be tested once every 6 months and rellocated as necessary. The data is then published in a National HIV Negative directory which is dated and valid only for six months. If you fancy a boy/man/girl/woman, you would be required by law to first check that their name appears on the list and that the directory used is less than six month old.

This scheme would please a lot of women in the SADC region seeing that it is men who spread the virus through promiscuity. Working as a sex worker for many years, I found that most clients were married. Most did not just visit me, but visited other sex workers as well, so if they did not get the virus from me they would get it from someone else. A much higher proportion of sex workers in the region are positive campared to the general public. Also most black men hate condoms, even when the condoms are freely available.

The government should give financial incentives for young people who marry early for example whan they are at university or college. They can then start serving up for their house. If one of the couple should test positive after receiving money, then they must pay it back.

All pregnant women and newly born babies must be tested and recorded.

Those who develop full blown AIDS should be cared for in terms of food and other supplies to manage their pain, but should not be given ARV treatment. I have been on ARV treament for seven years and you cannot tell that I have the virus. Left to their own divices, the men will continue having sex even in the protected towns. Without ARV that group will be the last to be infected.

The result would be that the men stop going with sex workers or other women.
This with HIV would stop visiting the country
The use of condoms would go up.

Within 8-9 years there would be no HIV in the country.
The cost of the scheme would be a lot less than the cost of the deaths of 4000 per week in Zimbabwe added to the cost of training replacements for those who have died,

This scheme would force each and every citizen to take direct responsibility for their sexual safety, and not leave it to chance as they do now. With that everyone over the age of 15 for boys and 14 for girls would be required by law to go and collect a free pack of condoms every week. If you are found at any time without a ready supply of condoms on your person, you would be subject to a fine.

Rapists would automatically qualify for a sex change operation, to make sure they can never infect anyone again.

That is what a responsible government should be doing.
But instead we have (Zimbabwe)
4000 deaths per week
56% of the army and police infected
35% of the teachers infected
23%-25% of the whole population infected

Lesotho and Swaziland and Botswana are a lot worse.