Commercial sex enterprise in Mt Kenya region has evolved to be a bustling sin industry that is creating wealth and what local elders are calling “curses” in equal measure.
In some parts of The Mountain, as the region is popularly known, it has reached a point where a town's cash flow is measured by the number of sex-trade spots and the ages and looks of the women and men on offer.
According to Kung'u Muigai, the national patron of Kiama kia Ma , a council of Gikuyu elders, "we have reached a point where we have wrongly accepted commercial sex as a normal business".
As a result, he contends, “our women continue to flock to twilight life in their thousands as our men become loyal customers, and we all remain with our eyes closed, hoping that by ignoring the vice, it will go away on its own.”
But in an economy that creates no meaningful stable jobs, a country whose marriage institution is ravaged by violence, alcoholism and drug abuse, the illicit sector has become a sort of safe haven for both men and women.
"I am not in this trade because I love it...I detest it. You have no idea how hard it is to have casual sex with multiple strangers in a day where there are no love passions but a need to earn," says a 32-year-old sex worker in Makutano town, Meru County.
She says on a good day she can have 15 brief engagements that can fetch Sh5,000 and an overnight client who will part with at least Sh1,000.
"On a bad day, I will have less than Sh5,000. This is a hard job that in a month will give me a net earning of Sh80,000.”
Her expenses in the trade include brothel rent, protection (since the government no longer supplies free condoms), protection fees to gangs and police as well as her meals and other personal effects.
And some of her expenses are generating big business for others, especially dealers in the real estate sector.
According to Kabiru Kanene, the investment director at Rwathia Investments, a real estate company, sex trade has created a huge business opportunity for realtors.
"We don't call it sex trade, rather it is entertainment industry...That industry has made many landlords break even and become millionaires by selling bed services," he says.
Rwathia Investments are reputed lodgings operators in Nairobi and Murang'a counties, and part of their investments include Sabina Joy entertainment house in the Kenyan capital.
"We have been making good money from women who come to the streets to entertain men. Without these women, our lodging businesses would slump by over 90 percent.”
Kabiru says "many women have taken up commercial sex as a profession where they rent our rooms and wait for their customers. Many lodging investors are even offering discounts in major towns to lure sex workers. I know of a developer who has all of his 130 lodging rooms occupied by sex workers.”
He adds that sex workers do not necessarily mean women "since there are men who are on offer in those establishments".
Joseph Kamau, 72, a member of Rwathia Investments, confirms that sex trade is a big driver of bars and eateries.
"Men have a way of flocking joints that are patronised by sex workers and in the process, a man who would have spent on himself only ends up making orders for a woman, or several of them before he settles on one," he said.
Kamau says male sex workers are stigmatised "and though many, they keep a low profile as compared to their female counterparts who are accepted as normal happening".
Despite being illegal, commercial sex work is big enterprise in Kenya, and leaders, including President William Ruto, recognise workers in the ‘sin sector’.
During the 2022 presidential campaigns, Dr Ruto publicly promised sex workers at Mtito Andei in Makueni County Sh1 million as they planned to set up a welfare kitty.
According to Ms Anne****21, who offers sex services in Thika town, commercial sex workers have a network where rules of the trade are set and adopted.
Through the network, the men and women who sell their bodies also agree on matters rates and run safety campaigns.
"For instance, as of today, a brief sexual service costs a client at least Sh200. However, there are exceptions; whereas ageing sex workers compete for business with Gen Z colleagues, the price can go down to individual concession," Anne says.
She adds that overnight services are a contractual agreement, with standard pay being at least Sh1,000.
And it is not all pleasure, with some clients coming out of sex dens bearing life-long financial and reputation dents.
A former senior leader in Kirinyaga County tells of a blackmail plot that befell him and left him with Sh400,000 poorer and fighting a financial crisis.
"I ventured into the life of the streets after one too many in Thika town...It was one of those adventures that lured many men. I did not know I was known in that sector including my political position," he narrates.
He says he does not know how he ended up recorded as he consumed his purchase...only that three days later he received a strange phone call.
"The male caller called me by my then honourable name and proceeded to ask me how My family was faring," he says.
Alarmed that the caller was not known to him but appeared even to know his wife and three grown-up children, he listened keenly.
"We need to talk...it is urgent. It is about the woman you took in for the night...She is plotting to blackmail you. You need to appease her. Her bill is Sh500,000," he remembers the conversation.
Believing playing tough could straighten things, the politician threatened about police and jail.
"But a small audiovisual clip was sent on my WhatsApp number showing me in an extremely compromising position complete with several angles of my nude...there was no way I could deny it was me, who I was with and what we were doing," he says.
He adds: "To cut a long story short, I bargained hard...Was granted a Sh100,000 waiver...I paid".
And while the government has been cracking down on the illicit trade, it has emerged that its officers partner with the would-be criminals whenever it is convenient.
Long-time provincial administrator Joseph Kaguthi says security agents will readily confess that it (commercial sex work) informs a huge part of their work targets".
Lodgings and brothers are hideouts for serious criminals "and serious investigators, including those in journalism, have invested heavily in networks within this trade to come up with serious arrests as well as stories".
“Commercial sex has also hit back and handed reckless security officers and journalists with lifetime stories, especially in being lured to death or serious harm, loss of job equipment as well as cash," he says.
Former Thika West administrator Mbogo Mathioya agrees. He says "this is a sector that is well organised and can communicate countrywide within 10 minutes".
According to Mathioya, while the face of the sex trade is mostly poor men and women, the sector has godfathers and high-stake beneficiaries.
"Once arrested, the twilight girls’ cases immediately attract a litany of responses where the stations holding them receive all manner of serious parties enquiring about their fate," he said.
Mathioya said community-based organisations, non-governmental organisations, politicians, businessmen and even some security officers place calls seeking release of the arrested.
"Even when we defied the calls and processed the arrested women to appear before court, they would end up getting bailed out immediately the magistrates pronounced the fines," he says.
“The sector is an organised gangland where the money that changes hands in it on a daily basis is phenomenal, the criminal activities that use it as conduits and camouflage being in their hundreds as well as criminals who hide in it posing as sex workers being many".
But Kikuyu Council of Elders ChairmanWachira Kiago dismisses the sector as "home to curses and family institution's annihilation".
“This is a sector where grandparents, parents, children and grandchildren are eating from the same sex plate hence inflicting us with cultural curses,” he says.
“We have many unmarried young men who have found a cheap way of accessing sex without the bills of marriage, hence killing opportunities for new marriages". This trade is a big trap for unfaithfulness that in turn is killing marriages and relationships".
Faith Ndung'u, who is Aids Healthcare Foundation (AHF-Kenya) Programmes development and advocacy manager, contends that sex workers have proved to be a societal challenge that is going nowhere.
"Instead of dreaming about how to end the sector, we were better off discussing how to make it safe from diseases. For instance, I would love to see a mechanism of stemming the acute shortage of condoms that now has become routine in this trade."
AHF Murang'a chapter coordinator Beth Kamau says efforts to salvage the situation are on and need multi-agency cooperation to succeed.
While the Kenyan law criminalises commercial sex work, it has not been possible to define prostitution, which is the common denominator in the trade.
Geoffrey Kahuthu, an advocate of the High Court, says the law contemplates two types of sex work: living on the earnings of prostitution and soliciting or importuning for immoral purposes.
But he added that “it is practically impossible to arrest two adults of either opposite or same gender and prove that they were engaging in sexual crimes especially if they posture as two in consensual relationship and courting in the public".
Prosecutors, he says, have in the past used terms like "scantily dressed and parading body parts in the streets" as proof of prostitution "but nowadays you cannot criminalise dress code and right to be free even in the streets".
“Unless men complain of women of commercial value flock the streets to entice them into sex against their liking, the government has got no choice but to treat the sector as a necessary evil".
