‘It was survival’: How motherhood pushed one woman into sex work
Millicent Ochieng', 45, during the interview in Kondele, Kisumu, on December 6, 2025.
What you need to know:
- Millicent turned to sex work in 2014 to pay for her disabled daughter's hospital care after losing her husband and two other children.
- She has survived four near-fatal attacks, including rape and stabbing.
- Now a peer educator, she helps protect over 3,000 sex workers in the city.
For 45-year-old Millicent Ochieng’, known locally as Nyar Sudan, sex work became a means of survival—driven by loss, poverty and a mother’s determination to protect her child.
Her story traces back to 2012, following the death of her husband and a cascade of family tragedies. Living in Ndhiwa, she endured cultural stigma for not bearing a son, while the loss of her first two daughters plunged her into profound sorrow. Only one child survived, her daughter, who lives with a disability.
In 2014, tragedy deepened. After her daughter was severely injured in an accident, Millicent found herself at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital, Kisumu, with no money for medication, food, or even the smallest comfort.
“I could not afford medicine or even a soda for my daughter. Sex work became my only option to provide for her,” she recalls.
Each night, she paid another mother Sh200 to watch over her hospitalised child while she went out to earn whatever she could. By dawn, she returned with whatever was needed, diapers, food, medicine, fuelled by exhaustion yet anchored by duty.
“Nobody recruited me or coerced me. It simply became what I had to do,” she says.
Millicent explains that while sex work can sometimes bring quick earnings, up to Sh5,000 on a good night, it comes with brutal risks. She says she has survived at least four near-fatal attacks.
In May, she narrowly escaped death when a client drove her to a secluded area near Mamba in Kisumu, locked the car, and assaulted her in the bush. “He raped and stabbed me. I survived miraculously. Regaining consciousness with my phone nearby, I contacted a colleague who took me for medical care,” she recounts.
The violence has forced her to change how she works; she no longer accepts clients at night. Instead, she urges her peers to adopt strict safety measures, sharing their location with trusted colleagues and avoiding intoxication that could cloud judgment.
As a leader in the Kisumu Sex Workers Alliance, Millicent now serves as a peer educator. She documents cases of violence, supports survivors, and helps maintain an emergency response network that tracks the whereabouts of members.
Despite holding an early childhood development and education diploma from Tambach Teachers College, she says formal employment has remained out of reach.
“Over 3,000 of us do this work in Kisumu. It sustains my family. I take pride in being able to provide,” she says, her voice steady, her resolve unbroken.
