Sex slavery: The living hell of underage girls at the Coast

It is minutes after 5:30pm on a Friday in 2016. Petite, light skin and about four-inch height N* stands along Nyali Road, at a busy trading centre in Bombolulu area, which is in Nyali Sub- County in Kenya’s coastal county of Mombasa.  

We shall call her N because she worries that it could impede her plans to become a TV journalist if we use her real name.

She is noticeable. The tight short blue dress that exposes her cleavage, draws the attention of interested passers-by.

The 17-year-old is tensed up. She, however, brightens up every time a man passing by glances at her.

About 20 minutes later, a man who could be in his 40s approaches her. “Vipi? (Hi),” he greets her. 

“Ni ngapi (how much)?” he asks.

“Sh100 ($0.81),” she responds.

“Twende (let’s go),” he leads her without asking her name or age. They go to a four-storey guest house behind a row of shops.

At the reception, on the ground floor, he asks for a room, and they get one on the second floor. 

He pays some money. N can’t recall the amount.

She isn’t paying attention anyway. Her mind is wild with questions on whether she should run away or just pretend she is dead and only resurrect later. 

He pays and the woman at the counter renders a silver door lock key attached to a wooden holder without asking for their details. Up they go.

As she ascends the stairs, a filthy sweaty smell soils her nose. He opens the door and the first thing she notices is a used condom on a bamboo chair beside a mini bed in the tiny room. 

He closes the door, and she feels nauseous.  He turns on the electric fan raised on the wall. All the while, N is standing near the chair; stiff, frightened and not ready for the eventuality.

“Kuja. Unavyofanya inaonyesha unanipenda (Come. Your reaction is a sign of your love for me),” he entices her.

“How can I love you? I don’t even know you,” she wonders in her head.

The next six minutes of her life are hellish.

“He was rough. I felt so much pain and I screamed. He said he will go soft on me,” she says. She says from his intonation, he was a Mijikenda.

He pays her Sh100 ($0.81).

That day, her walk back home is agonisingly painful. It is a day she will live to remember.

On the usual days, it took her less than 30 minutes to get home. But that day she took an hour or so.

She went straight to her bed and slept. In the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep, she pressed her private parts with hot water.

The following day, she bought two tablets of painkiller, for Sh10 ($0.081) and took both at a go.

Two days went by, and the pain subsided. She resumed.  This time, she carried along a sexual lubricant to ease the pain. 

What this man put N through is commercial sexual exploitation which is a worst form of child abuse. It is a situation where an adult converts a child into a sexual object and in return, rewards them in cash or kind.

Giving her monetary consideration in exchange for sex, amounted to child prostitution under Section 15 (g) of the Sexual Offences Act (2006), which punishes a perpetrator with not less than ten years in jail without an option of a fine.

So why do we tell this story?

N underwent the worst form of abuse and there are thousands of girls who have or are currently undergoing the same. Although the prevalence of these cases are unlimited to Mombasa; the coastal region being the heartbeat of Kenya's tourism sector, puts girls at a greater risk of exploitation by domestic and foreign tourists under the watch of hospitality enterprises.

Age of consent for sex in Kenya is 18 years. Therefore, sex with a child is considered non-consensual and as such criminal. 

By virtue of the existence of the law to which every Kenyan is bound, puts responsibility on everyone to stop sexual exploitation of children and protect them from the same.

A staff at a business premise such as the guesthouse, therefore has the power to ask for an identity card before they can allow anyone access to their property. They are at liberty to report a case of abuse of a child to a police officer in the child protection units at the police stations or do so through the toll free child helpline 116, or the national gender-based violence hotline, 1195.

It is criminal for any person to fail to protect or  report a case of child abuse, an offence punishable by up to five years of jail term or Sh2 million ($1,6173)  fine, or both, under the Children Act(2022).

Over three quarters of children in Kenya (76 per cent) have experienced at least one type of violence-sexual, physical or emotional- prior to age 18. 

Nearly one in three girls and one in five boys have been victims of at least one episode of sexual violence before the age of 18.  And among girls aged 18-24 who experienced sexual violence prior to age 18, about seven per cent have received money for sex.

N, now aged 23 years, was born in Mghange Dawida, a sleepy village in Taita Taveta, a coastal county in Kenya. The third born in a family of five, N was raised by her mother, a woman who hawked soap to raise her children. N doesn’t know who her father is but wished she did and that he took care of them.

“Nimemelewa maisha magumu, yakungángána (I was raised with difficulties. A life of struggle),” she says.

Sleeping hungry was the norm.  Her mother prioritised having a roof over their heads. She saved the little she earned to clear the rent. 

Her mother later moved to Bombolulu in Nyali Sub- County and rented a double room in the dingy compound behind a row of shops.  

With her income from selling dera, she saw her through primary school in Kisauni Sub- County. She sat her final primary school examination at Grade Eight in 2015, at the age of 16.

She says she failed. But she never went to fetch her transcript to tell her score. She explains that she didn’t bother to visit the school because she had fees arrears.  Throughout her primary school, her heart was set on becoming a television journalist.

She wasn’t ready to give up the fight.

Deep down her heart, she still wanted to accomplish her dream of becoming a journalist. She loved English and Kiswahili while in primary school.

In 2016, she sought work at a local salon as a hairdresser to raise fees to join Gumbaru, anon-formaleducation system in Kenya offered to individuals aged more than 16 years but who failed to complete their either their primary, secondary, vocational, tertiary or any university college.

Earlier in her childhood, she learnt the skill of plaiting hair from her mother who did her friends’ hair on Sundays as a recreational activity.

She then enrolled at an adult education facility in Bombolulu paying Sh5,000 per term. The pay wasn’t sustainable.

Her little commission was stretched between fees, personal and family needs - her mother often turned to her when she was penniless. Her business drew little income to afford them a regular meal and cover rent.

She felt exploited by her employer when she weighed her efforts vis-à-vis the commission she received.

“I’d plait three to four customers in a day, each paying Sh400 ($ 3.23) to Sh500 ($4.04), only for the employer to pay me Sh150 ($1.21), in total,” she says.

“Some customers, pleased with my work, tipped me. That’s what motivated me to continue working at the salon until I reached a point where I said ‘the exploitation must come to an end. I’d rather quit than work here.’”

She quit after three months. And that was the end of her schooling.

N did not have an alternative source of income. She rolled over to dire straits. Her way out: get into an intimate relationship but with mixed feelings and expectations. 

“My first relationship was a mess,” she wiggles in the blue plastic chair, looking straight into my eyes, as I sat directly opposite her. 

The cool breeze would occasionally freshen the air roasted with the, 33 °C temperatures, giving me some sort of relief while we conversed in the front yard of their rental stone house.

Having to fan myself with my notebook amid a pulsing headache induced by the hot weather, wasn’t exciting at all.

The unpleasant smell in the neighbourhood neither made the situation any comfortable.

N was easy and relaxed, but once in a while she rested her arms on her black denim jeans or flapped away a fly buzzing near the collar of her white blouse.

There was this man-she cannot tell how old he was, but seemed to be in his 30s, who hung around shops along the road linking her home to the main Bombolulu-Nyali Road. 

Any time he saw her return from her then workplace, adult school or shop, he winked at her or licked his lips, signalling his interest in her. She would ignore him.

Luck befell him when she gave up with the hairdressing job. The idea of finding love-and perhaps get married- and money weaved in. 

“Since my childhood I believed your first love would finally marry you. It turned out, I was mistaken,” she avows.

“He turned me into a sex slave. I expected him to give me good money, but he didn’t. He’d give me Sh50 ($0.40), Sh100 ($0.81) or Sh150 ($1.21) every time he slept with me.”

She doesn’t what he did for a living or where he lived. The only thing she is sure about is that he simply wanted to “use me.” He slept with her two to three times a week. Since she didn’t have a phone, he would sit on a bench outside a shop near her home where she would easily notice him.

He would take her to a guesthouse and used no protection. Instead, she spent Sh50 ($0.40) to buy Postinor-P2, an emergency contraceptive pill to protect herself from conceiving.

At primary school in Grade Six, Seven and Eight, she was taught about using a condom for double protection - avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. 

But the child was in love, so she believed.

“Ni mtu unampenda. Hiyo ilikuwa haiko kabisa. Nilishai mwambia lakini akikuja hana, nitafanyaje? (This is someone I love. We never used it at all. I’d tell him to buy it but then he comes without it. What was I supposed to do?)” she throws back the question.

For the three months they were in the relationship, N showed up three times in local public dispensaries to receive treatment for a sexually transmitted disease. Lucky she was that treatment was free of charge. 

Had a cost been attached to it, N would have gone without it, she says. She says she would have used hot salty water to kill the “bacteria” that had infested her private parts and self-medicate herself with Sh10 ($0.081) worth painkillers, even though her kind of ailment would require an antibiotic.  

Her boyfriend didn’t care about the pain her lower part of the body endured and the smelly brownish discharge. He neither gave her extra money to take care of herself.

The end of the relationship with her boyfriend was the beginning of another phase.

She resorted to commercial sexual work and her first encounter was with the man who sent her to hell for the six minutes he defiled her.

She started positioning herself in the busy trading centres along Nyali Road. Here, she competed for clients with older women. 

Friday was her business day. She left home at 3pm with a handbag, dressed in a dera. She told her mother she was attending a vigil at their local church.

At home, N was a well-behaved girl. Obedient, humble and most of the time quiet.

Her mother never restricted her mobility. She knew she would take care of herself wherever she was, N says.

So, as she left home, her mother assumed she had carried a Bible and water in the bag. But inside, she had carried a short tight dress. 

She returned home at 5am on Saturday -14 hours later - and her mother never bothered to ask how the vigil went.

By the break of the day, four men would have slept with her. The older women got jealous of her because she was young and pretty - she was snatching away their clients.  

Four months later, they chased her away. 

“By then, I had been accustomed to the trade,” she says, pushing back the multi-coloured hijab from her forehead.

All her clients took her to a guest house. They paid her Sh50 ($ 0.40) or Sh100 ($0.81) for a five to six-minute sexual exchange. This time round she used a condom. Her earlier experience had made her sharp and wise.

Her clients paid for the room. And the rooms were in high demand. As she walked into the room, a queue would be forming on the waiting bay. 

If they extended beyond six minutes, the guesthouse administrator would knock on the door, shouting “toka, mumekaa sana (get out. You’re taking too long).”

“I suffered in the first few days. I met men who were so rough. I was left nursing excruciating pain.”

Soon, she learnt how to numb her senses and pain. In the first month of the sexual exploitation, she made friends with three other underage girls, also in the sex slave trade along Nyali Road. They had started earlier and were more experienced.

They introduced her to the remedy, smoking bhang and chewing miraa. 

“Mimi nikifika kule hata akifanya kitu siskiii chochote yaani (I would get into the room and feel nothing regardless of what they did to me),” she says.

In her early days, two clients took advantage of her age and refused to pay her. When she insisted, they threatened to strangle her or beat her up.

One client traumatised her. He didn’t pay her immediately. Instead, he told her to meet him the following day at a Mombasa city hotel to collect her pay.

“When I arrived, he started shouting at me that I’m a prostitute and a thief. That hurt me so much,” she heaves.

From then on, she learnt to negotiate beforehand. Whoever wanted her service had to pay her before they would proceed.

When she was chased away, she shifted base to coastal beaches and a club in Mombasa city centre. 

Her earlier interaction with the three girls acquainted her with the happy hunting grounds.

She slept with young and old men-Africans, Asians and Europeans.

“When you’re in this business, you don’t care about the age of the client. What matters is the pay.” 

In the high seasons, she hopped from the beaches in Mtwapa in Kilifi County, to Casablanca, a club in Mombasa city centre, 17km apart.

In the low seasons – January to April - she shifted base to parading herself on the busy sections of Nyali Road, in the areas of Kisimani and Bombolulu, separated by 1.2km distance.

At Casablanca, the earnings were enticing.

“Kule kuna Wahindi, Wazungu…sio watu hivi hivi. Hata ukimwambia elfu tatu, elfu moja ama elfu mbili per shot anakupatia (There are rich people there like the Indians and Whites. They are willing to give to pay Sh3,000($24.23), Sh1,000($8.08) or Sh2,000($16.16) per shot).

She describes clients in Mtwapa as those in the middle-income scale while those in Casablanca were the highest fetchers. The Bombolulu and Kisimani ones were mere hustlers. 

In Mtwapa, the rates ranged from Sh500 ($4.04) to Sh1,000 ($8.08). The Bombolulu and Kisimani tagged from Sh50 ($0.40) with the one who parted with Sh200, being the best catch for the day.

In August 2019, N met an acquaintance, a woman, on her way from the shop. 

A local non-governmental organisation devoted to saving girls from sexual exploitation in travel and tourism sector had assigned her to reach out to girls in Nyali and Kisauni sub-counties. 

It was launching a life skill programme for current and former victims. N enrolled. And that is how she was rescued from the three years of sexual slavery.

“They taught me that a note on the floor can be picked, dusted and turned into valuable money,” she says.

“Yaani niko na rights. Hata mwanamume kama sijampenda na amenishika mahali ambapo hapahistahili niko na uwezo wa kumfunga (That is to say, I have rights. If a man touches me inappropriately yet I don’t love him; I have the power to have him jailed),” she says.

Poverty is the main contributor to trafficking and exploitation of women and children. 

And the family members often aid the abuse by pushing them to raise an income through the exploitation or link them with the traffickers with or without knowing that they would be enslaved. 

In other instances, such as N’s, the lack of essentials and alternative source of income, forces them to sell their bodies.

Mombasa, Nairobi and Kisumu are the hotspots of sex tourism and commercial sexual exploitation of women and children.

Often, they are trafficked internally and externally before being forced into sex for pay with domestic and foreign visitors.

A situational analysis by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection estimates that more than 50,000 children are involved in sexual exploitation in Kenya.

By 2020, an estimated 19,000 children were in sex tourism with most perpetrators being Kenyans.

This, however, does not mean nothing is being done to end sexual exploitation of children. Various anti-human and sexual exploitation laws and policies have been enacted. 

Through the National Plan of Action Against Sexual Exploitation of Children 2018-2022, the government has sensitised hotel operators in tourist destinations.

It has not only established child protection units in police stations to respond to crimes against children but continued to partner with counter-human trafficking non-State organisations to create awareness, rescue and reintegrate the child survivors. 

Courtesy of the partnership, 12 cases of suspected child trafficking were reported through 116 child helpline, jointly managed by Childline Kenya, a child rights organisation and Department of Children’s Services.

The Ministry of Tourism has also developed a Tourism Child Protection Code binding hotels to protect children from sexual exploitation and 40 hotels in the country have signed it.

Back to N.  The rescued girl now works as a cleaner at a warehouse in Nyali, a wealthy mainland, north of Mombasa city centre. She earns a monthly wage of Sh10,000 ($80.78).

She also does freelance cleaning at Sh1,000($8.08) a day.

She supports her mother and hopes to save enough to return to school and complete her studies. 

Although she plans to enroll for a training in hospitality, her hopes of becoming a television journalist are still alive.

“I want to host a programme on a television channel,” she lightens up.

N* was used to protect her identity.

This is the first instalment in the three-part investigative series on sexual exploitation in the travel and tourism sector. In the second instalment next week, we tell you how a woman trafficked a girl to Tanzania.

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