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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