''I was a destroyer driven by vengeance against men'' - Nairobi’s dangerous commercial sex worker turned preacher confesses
Kenyan preacher, Jane Watiri was one of Nairobi’s popular
commercial sex workers in her heyday, earning close to Sh20,000 a night.
According to Watiri, she was a “destroyer,” driven by
vengeance against men. She was not on Koinange Street – the city’s
red-light-district — just for the money, but also for revenge. She says
she turned the heartbreak she suffered when she was betrayed by a man
into a personal vendetta against all men.
Now standing tall, slim and stylish, wearing a pricey
weave, her self-assured husky voice belies the naive girl who first
arrived on Koinange Street in 1997 at the age of 17.
“I was not the average prostitute,” she says, adding, “I
was quite dangerous. I used to steal from my clients. I would carry
everything; clothes, shoes, phones, keys and even wedding rings which I
sold for Sh3,000 in Eastleigh. I used to really mess up those men,” she
says.
Born 38 years ago in the capital city’s Huruma Estate, Ms
Watiri was the third born in a family of six children. Her parents
provided everything she required. Towards the end of her education at
Naivasha Primary School, her life took a wrong turn. She got into bad
company and refused to join secondary school.
“I had some friends who would take me out to clubs and reggae nights when I was 14,” she recalls.
The teenager then sunk into a life of clubbing and
alcoholism as her mother watched helplessly.
When she was 16, Ms Watiri
was arrested, charged with loitering and jailed at Lang’ata Women’s
Prison for a month. When she got out, she met a young man, fell in love,
got pregnant and got married.
“One day, he left me for an older woman and there I was, 17
years old, with a baby boy, no education and no job. I was very angry,”
she says.
She was in Koinange street seven years: “I wanted to hurt
men the way the father of my child did to me. Bitterness and
unforgiveness can really destroy your life.”
She says she would change her look weekly so as not to be recognised by clients she had stolen from.
The life of a sex worker, according to Ms Watiri, is
punctuated by dangerous clients, drug and alcohol abuse, arrests,
disease and death.
While majority of clients would pay for sex, others just
wanted to be in the company of a woman and have someone to pour out
their hearts to. Others demanded unusual activities and would threaten
with guns and other weapons if the sex-workers did not comply. Many of
her colleagues died on the job.
Some would be killed in hotel rooms and
others would get into clients’ vehicles and vanish or be found dead in a
ditch.
“I read many eulogies of my friends and attended so burials,” she says.
Getting arrested by police and city council askaris was
normal. She appeared before a particular magistrate so many times that
one day, he pulled her aside and counselled her but Ms Watiri was not
one to listen.
Her turning point was in 2004 when a man told her of God’s love, but she was too drunk to understand.
“In my whole life, I never experienced love and care. The
idea of love was very strange. He bought me many bottles of beer and
left. Afterwards, I started thinking of changing,” she says.
Not long afterwards, she decided to leave the streets and walked into a church one day and asked the pastor to pray for her.
She then met her second husband, George Mwangi, with whom
she had a daughter. She was married to Mwangi, a gangster for five
years, until he was killed by police. She says she settled with the
gangster because he loved and accepted her as she was, and she hoped
that she would change him.
After Mwangi’s death, Watiri opened a second-hand clothes
business, but also decided to use her experiences to encourage and
motivate other women who are in the same situation she was.
Today, the reformed sex worker is a preacher attached to
Streams of Living Water Grace Centre Church in Pipeline Estate. Together
with her pastor, Ms Edith Wangui, she offers counselling to sex
workers, encouraging them to change.
Many times, you will find her in the company of prostitutes in their homes and on the streets preaching to them.
Her very public life seems to have rubbed her family the
wrong way, with many questioning why she is not ashamed of speaking of
her dark past.
“My family has an issue with me speaking to the media
because it causes them embarrassment. But I tell my story because I know
there are people out there who need to hear my story and know that it
is possible to change.”
It is not easy dealing with sex workers, she says, because
many of whom have lost hope. In spite of her sordid past, Watiri remains
optimistic that her dream of getting married to a good man will come to
pass. For now, she walks from door to door, saving souls. One sex
worker at a time.
On her first night, she recalls, she stood all night on the
street, watching and learning how to negotiate with clients. She was
taught how to dress, where to alight from the matatu and the route to
take from the Khoja Mosque stage to Koinange Street.
Wanjugu also introduced her to security guards who would
show her a room to change from her usual clothes into her “work gear”..
On her third night, Watiri got her first client and there began her
seven-year stint as a prostitute. She soon fell out with Wanjugu, who
died a few years ago, but by this time, her career had already taken off
– perhaps beyond Wanjugu’s expectations.
Her seven years on the street, she says, were painful, dark
and dangerous. She had a strong hatred for men, and led an utterly
bitter and frustrated life, taking out her bitterness on her
unsuspecting clients, many of whom she drugged and stole from. Many
times she would also drug her baby to make him sleep throughout the
night or just leave him to cry himself to sleep.
She would carry two rolls of marijuana, one soaked in
petroleum which would knock out the client, and the other one for her,
to put her in the mood for work.
“In our days we did not have what people today call mchele . That was the surest way of drugging your client,” she says.
Source: nation.co.ke
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