Why I quit being a sex worker

At a young age, Latifa Nyagawa was desperate and had no income to sustain her life. Both her parents died when she was young, life was difficult. She didn’t have any sort of education that could earn her a job.

Upon looking for job options, Latifa couldn’t resist the temptation to become a sex worker.

“I engaged in sex work in 2015. I could serve up to 28 men per week. My clients were businessmen and truck drivers,” she tells Your Health.

Now at 22, Latifa who is a resident of Igwechanya village in Njombe region, recalls that she could earn up to Sh3000 per man. “Sometimes, it could go up to Sh10,000,” says Latifa.

The sex work eventually became the only option she had to earn money as sometimes she travelled long distance to look for clients.

“In 2016, I moved from Njombe to Tunduma. My friend lived there,’’ she says.

While in Tunduma, Latifa continued with the business, and she recalls the day she escaped death.

“It was during daytime when I met a certain man; he was tall and muscular. He approached me and we agreed to meet up at night,” explains Latifa.

At that night, Latifa served her client under a condition that the client would pay her Sh5000 as service fee.

“After having sex, he refused to pay me and later he beat me. He said he would kill me if I continued to disturb him. I cried for help. Thans God, the good neighbours came to rescue me,” narrates Latifa.

She further recalls her controversial life and how she ended up in a troubled life, after she first developed black spots on her skin, a sign of HIV infection.

Latifa found her way into HIV outreach programmes and she was among the Adolescent Girls and Young Women (AGYWs) in Njombe who received testing and counselling services for HIV led by Jhpiego under SAUTI Project.

The project is funded by the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief through the United States Agency for International Development.

Since 2015, the project is working with the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children and the Tanzania Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS) to implement the national guidelines for a comprehensive package of HIV interventions for key populations. This is done by scaling up evidence-based client centered combination (biomedical, behavioural and structural) HIV prevention, and family services, with strong linkages to care, treatment and other services.

After receiving the testing and counselling service for HIV, Latifa was motivated to undergo testing and the result showed she was HIV positive.

“It was hard to accept the result. I was depressed and I lost hope. I had no interest to continue with the job,” recalls Latifa.

Latifa says until today, she has not been able to identify the man who infected her with HIV. “I wasn’t using protection especially when I was drunk. I therefore don’t know who infected me,” Latifa narrates to Your Health.

Adding, “Sometimes, I was forced to accept a client’s request of not using protection in order to earn sufficient money. I didn’t know I was putting my life in danger.”

Access to medication

In the initial days, it was really challenging for Latifa to access HIV medicine from the hospital.

According to her, many people living with HIV don’t have access to the medicine because they fear of being exposed and stigmatised in the public.

“It was at night when I found Latifa at the local bar in town. She was smoking cigarrate. I talked to her about importance of HIV testing. I was glad that she found the subject very interesting and she agreed to undergo testing,” says Esther Mloe, the Community Based Health Services Provider (CBHSP) working with Jhpiego.

To address the stigma among people living with HIV, Jhpiego has embarked on enrolling individual living with the disease in Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) through outreach services in the community.

“We instruct people living with HIV infection to form groups so as to make it easier when distributing medicine to them,” says Esther.

Last week during the Annual National Adolescent Girls and Young Women Stakeholders Meeting held in Dar es Salaam, TACAIDS Director of Monitoring and Evaluation Dr Jerome Kamwela described new HIV infections as ‘a huge threat’ to the country’s young generation.

He asserted that the burden was attributable to poverty, low literacy levels among parents, peer pressure and harmful cultural practices that expose children to sex early in life.

Her renewed hope

Though Latifa was tested HIV positive, she did not let that stand in her way of changing her life for a better future. It was a blessing in disguise for Latifa. After being diagnosed positive with HIV, Lafita stopped sex work and got opened a pub from her savings.

“Since I started my new business, my life has changed completely. I can now feed and clothe myself. I no longer practice sex work,” says Latifa.

“I now have only one boyfriend who is also HIV positive. We both are on ARVs. We live a happy life and we are planning to have babies in the near future,” says Latifa.

According to several health studies, the two HIV-positive parents can have an HIV-negative child. However, the studies indicate that HIV can pass from a woman with HIV to her child during pregnancy, at the time of birth, or when breast-feeding the infant, hence medical treatment of both the mother and her infant can minimise the chances of that happening.

Referring to the rapid HIV transmission among the youth in Tanzania, Latifa calls for more interventions to educate other girls particularly female sex workers who are exposed to new HIV infection and violence.

In Tanzania HIV/AIDS prevalence remains ‘a huge threat’, according to Tanzanian HIV Impact Survery (THIS) of 2016-2017. HIV prevalence rate in Tanzania has declined from 5.1 per cent to 4.7 per cent. However, in hotspots across the country and key and vulnerable populations such as adolescents, female sex workers (FSWs) and their partners still face a high risk. THIS further reports, FSWs are at risk of acquiring new HIV infection by 25 per cent and men who have sex with men by 26 per cent, drugs addicts by 36 per cent whereas, the HIV incidence still remains unacceptably high.