26/02/2023
S*x worker’s tale of love
By REBECCA KUKU
I was walking into a shop to buy my son’s school stationeries when I bumped into a woman I had met a couple of years back when I was writing about prostitution in the city for the local newspaper I was working for.
We greeted each other and she said that she was trying to get stationeries for her siblings too.
We met again as we both were leaving the shop and I couldn’t help but notice how people were whispering and laughing as she walked past, some snickering while others made nasty comments.
She was a pr******te, everyone in her community knew, but despite the rude remarks and the whispers she walked with her head held high. Her little brother flanked her, ready to do battle, but she said let it go, they’ll never understand why I do what I do.
Upon hearing that I was curious. I know curiosity killed the cat but I asked her anyway why she chose prostitution as a career. The worse that could have happened was she’d tell me to mind my own business or scream at me to bu**er off but she smiled and commented on how reporters were so full of curiosity.
She invited me to have lunch with her so she could tell me why she became a pr******te. I knew it was sort of a challenge, to see if I would take the offer or drop it out of shame to be seen with her.
But I did take up the offer, and I cried through the whole lunch date I had with her.
This is her story, the pr******te’s story but we’ll change her name as she does not want to hurt her siblings. Will call her Elaina.
She was young, beautiful, had manners and was kind and generous. In fact if you met her for the first time you wouldn’t even know she sold her body for money.
She was only 15 when her parents were in a car accident. Her father died and her mother survived but both her legs were paralysed, her younger brother is studying law at university and her little sister is doing Grade 11 at a secondary school in Port Moresby.
“When my father died I was doing Grade 8. I was accepted into a secondary school but we couldn’t afford the K600 project fee that was charged, so I stayed home and helped Mama sell food on the road sides so that we could provide for my younger siblings,” Eleaina said.
“My little brother was doing Grade 7 then and my little sister was doing Grade 4, the primary school didn’t charge any project fees for my sister but my brother was charged K150.
“My mother would cook food and I would sell the food on the roadsides and together we raised money and paid my little brother’s project fee, bought their uniforms and other things they needed,” she said.
“Things were going very well for us, however, towards the end of 2013 mother started feeling sick. We were living with my father’s sister at that time, though they never gave us food or anything. We slept under their roof.
“My aunt started fearing that my mother’s sickness could be contagious and told us to leave her house.
“We had nowhere to go; my mother’s siblings were long dead and the only brother she had was lost in Lae, Morobe. We had no way of contacting him.
“So we built a shelter made up of cardboards and a canvas bag in my aunt’s back yard. I continued cooking and selling food on the side of the road, to make ends meet.
“My little brother was the dux of the Grade 7 classes that year and my little sister came second in her class. My mother insisted that she wanted to see her kids get their prizes, so we went to their school to witness them getting awarded.
“Walking back home that afternoon after the speech day, mama just passed out, there is a pastor living in our neighborhood, who was kind to us.”
So we ran to him and he helped us take mum to the Port Moresby General Hospital emergency department.
“Luckily the holidays had begun, so I took care of mum at the hospital while my younger siblings took over selling food on the road sides.
“It was after two months, in February, when they finally discharged us from the hospital.
“We continued cooking and selling food as my younger siblings returned to school.
That year, her little brother received the Grade 8 dux award but by then their mother’s health was rapidly deteriorating. Things started going from bad to worse.
The aunt told them to leave her yard because their makeshift home was becoming an eyesore to her neighbours.
“We had nowhere to go, mum was really sick, but she (aunt) brought in the police and we had no choice but to leave.
“My little brother and I took turns to carry our mother on our backs as we just walked from one place to another not knowing where we were going. We finally ended up at a settlement and asked for a place to rent, the only one that was affordable was a tiny room that cost K50 per fortnight.
“The room was so tiny, you couldn’t stand up in it, but it was okay as long as our mother could sleep in it, we would make do with it.
“The four of us could not fit into the room, so my little brother and I slept outside.
“I started cooking and my little brother and sister would go out
