We are Catholics, Pentecostals, Muslims, Adventists and Charismatics. But we don’t go to church. We hear the Good News from commercial men of God who mount wooden speakers by the railway tracks to deliberately judge us:

“You lie with men who are not your husbands. Although their wives may not find out, God sees you and he will punish you. You must forsake your sinful ways, and be faithful humans!”

We shut our windows, highly amused at the divine insult, feeling that we have heard it for the last time. What can come can come!

There come the occasional raids by undercover police officers who pose as clients. They point guns at our heads and tow us to the police station. They ask us many questions and they enter in their wrongdoers book and we continue nodding or shaking our heads to all. They tick some boxes and leave others. They finish by repeating the fake information we have given about our names, age and backgrounds to check whether they have taken our information correctly. We continue saying yes to all the information. Hahahahahaha! They watch as we sign. We hand it to them and watch them sign too. They put the book with the rest of the files on the table.

Before they put us in their cells, our ministers and big men of God arrive. The police salute them.
“How long are you going to keep them? These girls needs more than just physical care. How big are the facilities here, and how do you keep them?” they ask the officers.

That is how we end up back on the streets, either at the same place or somewhere else.

Sometimes illness leaves us out of business for days. We do not go to a hospital. Instead, we go directly to vendors who dispense drugs as though they were ice cream. Our pockets tell us it is a good bargain when we buy what seems to be an efficient medicine just by the road. After that, we regain our power and return to the sex ring, winning one money after another.

We are now thirty-something years and still things are not getting better. The city is awake. The day is for sleeping; the evening and night are for business. We are fast asleep in our rooms until the night calls again with its charging demands. Then a knock comes, gbam gbam gbam gbam…

“What do you want?” we ask.

“We are Jehovah’s Witnesses,” an old man replies, with a young boy by his side.

“Please, we are busy indoors.”

“According to the Bible we must have time for the Creator,” they say.

“Can you pass by another time?”

They won’t leave till they drop a Watchtower. Hahaha! They leave and we lock the door and sleep.
One day a cracking headache takes over us suddenly. In about half an hour, we are stretched on a mat with a blanket on us. Under the blanket, however, we are cold and our teeth are chattering.
The next day we are down again and on the third day also. Our caring neighbours give us paracetamol to stop the headache. Vomit splatters at our feet.

The next day we are feeling very weak and have no appetite.

We develop a white spot on our tongue that persists. Whatever we do to ourselves for more than a month, we do not get better. A phone call goes to our village.

The next week our sweet mothers come for their first visit. When they come, they look faded by old age, hard work and poverty, but hopeful that they have precious children in the money-rich city. In the night, we give our flat mattresses to them while we spread one sheet on the floor and then lie down and cover ourselves with the other sheet. They ask us why we are shriveled to skin and bone and our cheekbones are high but we don’t answer. We make them cry overnight. At dawn they pull our shivering body up and bath us and fiddle through our belongings and put them in a bag, put their arm around us and our friends grab our wrist and lead us to the lorry station.

We visit a doctor. We sit before the doctor, our hands between our legs. The test suspects we have HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. When the news explodes our mothers glance at us with what we can only describe as pity. When we finally reach home we sit sadly in our fathers’ house, our hands between our legs. Our fathers come to look at us. Our gaze meets theirs and lingers on their faces and that of our to-be orphans. Only our mothers don’t despise us. They give their beds to us while they spread one sheet on the floor and then lie down and cover themselves with the other sheet. We beg for a chamber pot and toilet paper. By the time they come we smell of urine and toilet. When the news starts circulating, clusters of childhood friends enter the compound. They like to come and see us and go and talk in low voices. Soon, everyone in the town is saying we have AIDS.

For the rest of our days till we are called to eternity, we lie on the floor, peer up at the ceiling, and wonder. We never stop wondering about the fate of men we slept with, their innocent wives at home sitting on a bombshell. But what we remember very often is our dear girlfriends. We look for the pieces of paper on which we scribbled their numbers and beg others to call the numbers for us. Switched off! Then we remember that on the street, nobody comes back to tell. And for those who don’t come back, nobody knows what happens to them.

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