Today we had a meeting in the office with some CSWs (commerical sex workers). We’re trying to encourage them to join a microfinance scheme called Wema - the idea is that CSWs can join together in a group and keep savings with Wema, giving a little each month. Then once their savings have built up they can take loans with low interest rates to help them do things like buying a plot of land to farm or starting a business. The women seemed a bit suspicious at first but Pastor Mbaluka was able to explain it to them very clearly so by the end of the meeting they were fairly keen. I imagine it will take a while for momentum to build but I think it’s a good thing to be encouraging the women to do. Drawing women out of the sex trade requires a holistic approach - looking for alternative employment, enabling them to save and manage money, helping them break addictions and negative behaviour patterns, caring for the wounds and trauma that have been caused by years of abuse in the sex trade and accepting them into the community…so complex and so much patience required.
In the afternoon we started to brain storm approaches to Fuhomi, the CSW programme and begin to think about a presentation that the team will give in an extremely large church a week on Sunday. They want to challenge Christians to stop judging CSWs and to start loving them - to end the stigma surrounding CSWs and to encourage people to live out their faith through actively loving these women. It’s great stuff - will be a real revolutionary thing to do in church as there is SOOOO much negativity and judgement surrounding prostitutes…it is such a taboo thing to address - but the team are going to take the bull by horns and really show the congregation the realities of life as a sex worker.
Later on we headed to the house of an ex CSW, Damaris, who lives in Kabati slums and has just had a new baby called James. The kid is so cute…a real stunner. I’m pretty sure he’s mixed race…probably has a European father as he’s very fair…although Dama doesn’t know who the dad is for obvious reasons. We sat and chatted to Dama for a few hours…I remember meeting her 6 months ago and being quite intimidated by her as she was quite abrasive and difficult to talk to. But she seems to have mellowed a lot…she’s less sharp, more relaxed, gentler in a way…I think the love that the team have shown her over the past year has begun to rub off the rough edges…Dama was telling us how despite the fact that Kenya has free primary school education, she’s really struggling to send her children to school due to corruption in the local primary school. She’s been asked to pay 1500shillings for a desk for her son and everytime he completes an exercise book she has to pay for him to have another. This along with uniform costs, the cost of other books and stationary…it’s a lot for someone who only earns 7500shillings per month! She was telling us that some teachers are asking for bribes of up to 10,000shillings in order to allow a child to move on to the next academic year. Dama was full of stories…apparantly there is a trade in babies in Naivasha - children are being bought for as little as 50,000 shillings (£500) by people who can’t have children. Adopting orphans can be expensive - with lawyers fees and lots of paperwork so people just offer poor people money for their children. Pretty sobering really…it’s amazing what you find out if you spend some time with people…
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