03/06/2015
I happened to take a look at the S*X TOURISM IN GHANA.Also had to interview some s*x workers on the streets of Accra and most of them are saying the business is good,,but i told them it is illegal there in Ghana.They say they are boosting the s*x trade and that they are going to fight for their rights for the LAWS of Ghana.Also a report by:‘This is the Circle…Where the girls come to roost’
December 20, 2011 · by Daniel Nkrumah · in Uncategorized · Leave a comment
Prostitution is illegal in Ghana. Photo Credit: Ghana Nation
IT’S exactly 9.30 p.m. Accra’s night girls come to roost? Not exactly — nothing like rest here. It is time for business and the girls come like a swarm of bees encircling the l***y, dark and never-deserted streets.
Skirts are as short as they can ever be; straps straddled as blouses, virtually revealing the sensual delights of the breast in obscene glory. Everybody passes by and looks on with no sneer. It has become so normal. This is Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Accra, Ghana.
Well lit and patronised food joints keep the area buzzing. Very close to the action spots is a police barrier with policemen on routine night checks of cars. But they hold no fear for the hundreds of pr******tes strutting their stuff for ‘short time’ or full-night services, otherwise referred to as ‘sleep’. It is a business that has infamously grown so much in popularity and attracts scores of minors, some as young as 14, green in looks but potent in pose.
Everywhere, everybody puffs some smoke. One scents cigarette and then suddenly there is a whiff of air that smells very much like ma*****na. There is also beer and there is hard liquor.
About three months ago there was a noisy outrage against Soldier Bar, a notorious den of pr******tes where the girls as young as 14 parade to be hooked up. There is nothing military about this bar! Perched near a very foul-smelling gutter, it is skirted with ramshackle cubicles, which are crudely built with cheap wood that can hardly offer any comfort to their guests but rather bring every shame to the very act they seek to fester.
When the Parliamentary Caucus on Population visited Soldier Bar after a flurry of media attacks and reportage, the feeling was that the nemesis was soon to be dealt a serious blow and the young girls bound for a new life of decency and honour. No! A few weeks later, the structures which had been dismantled by the owners were resurrected and kids strolled around again. It was business as usual.
The Department of Social Welfare, in quick response, rounded up girls and offered them an opportunity to redeem their lives and get some decent lifestyles. That was not to be! Only 13 out of the scores rescued from Soldier Bar opted to undergo skills training and learn trades. The rest wanted to go back to their ‘home town’.
It is the “oldest profession”, we sometimes say. That could generate controversy, but, few will doubt that it has been an act though with an illegitimate tag has been very difficult to beat.
The Director-General of the Ghana AIDS Commission, Professor Sakyi Awuku Amoa, believes that the act will be difficult to beat no matter how stringent the security agencies get.
“Prostitution has persisted since time immemorial and no country has been able to eliminate it,” he says, with a look of disappointment on his face.
The professor offers suggestions on the way out in terms of managing its impact: “What we should do is manage it in such a way that will reduce the negative impact. We need to come up with laws that will protect pr******tes, commercial s*x workers and healthcare providers.”
The debate on prostitution in the country has been a thorny one, with contending views as to whether we should decriminalise the act or not.
Professor Amoa believes that decriminalising the act is the first step to controlling what has become an ubiquitous trade.
According to him, while the prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS in the country is 1.9 per cent, the prevalence rate among pr******tes in Accra is 55 per cent. Now most of the girls carry their own condoms and will not budge if it’s ‘no condom’ session.
The laws of the country currently make prostitution a criminal offence and give the police every right to arrest pr******tes for prosecution in court and Professor Amoa believes that such a system is not the best, as it encourages the pr******tes to go underground.
“One finds out that in most of the Western countries they have identified places where pr******tes operate. They allow pr******tes to register and make it mandatory that every month they go to hospital for the necessary checks to ensure that the society is protected,” he explains.
He reckons that this is the only way brothels like Soldier Bar can be well regulated to also ensure that minors are kept out of the business.
On this particular night, Soldier Bar appears fazed after incessant media bashing. Pockets of kids loiter around and everybody looks around suspiciously, sensing a spy who may come to watch some more and give them some bad publicity. It’s not so good a business now at Soldier Bar and the kids know that. But there is wild determination.
“I started the business when I was 15. Now I am 23. Initially, it was quite difficult and I had to endure the bullying from my senior colleagues because the men like the new pr******tes in town. Sometimes I tried to fight back but I couldn’t stand them. They beat me real hard and shared my money with me,” Abena recounted.
I try hard to convince her that I am a serious customer.
“So what is the rate?” I enquire.
“Short time or sleep?” she asks back.
“Both short time and sleep?” I ask again.
“Sleep is GH¢60, while short time is GH¢15,” she responds, but looks ready to negotiate.
Then I begin to back track.
“Too expensive,” I protest.
“How much are you ready to offer,” she offers to negotiate
“We may have to make it another time; I don’t have that much money on me and I am feeling unwell. Let’s make it tomorrow,” I say calmly, with a feigned look of discomfort.
Somehow, I manage to escape her fury and succeed in winning her friendship after paying her compensation for ‘wasting’ her time.
She is touched by my gesture and engages me in a lengthy conversation. The tales are endless — from the gory details of a ho**er killed in cold blood under painful conditions, with breasts and va**na cut off; the death of some pr******tes for what she describes as strange diseases resulting from a curse; stories of a few pr******tes going mad after years of the commercial night trade, to the refreshing stories of her second life as a hairdresser apprentice and committed churchgoer, as well as the success of some reformed pr******tes as business women.
She has a dream and I listen with rapt attention!
“The business is not as good as it used to be. It is now safer but there are so many of us now and there is a very keen competition. Everybody wants to attract the next guy who passes by,” she continues.
Indeed, it appears the police are not so keen on arresting the pr******tes now and that can mean that the Ghana AIDS Commission’s campaign is working. As a result of that, many of the girls are not scared to openly parade the streets and that can mean that their numbers have gone up significantly.
“We are working with USAID to do stigma reduction among security agencies for them to appreciate HIV/AIDS issues. The more the people harass them, the more they go underground. We have to liberalise the environment so that they can come to the open,” Professor Amoa states.
But DSP Kwasi Ofori, the Director of Public Affairs, Ghana Police Service, maintains that the police is determined to curb the trend since it represents a criminal offence.
He explains that the major challenge the police face in that regard is the complexity the act sometimes attains. “Establishing evidence in the case of prostitution is difficult and police operations aimed at arresting pr******tes needs to be carefully conducted,” DSP Ofori states.
Some months ago, a young lady burst into the offices of the Daily Graphic with a complaint against the police for arresting her at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle on suspicion of being a pr******te because she had condoms in her hand bag. “In this era of HIV/AIDS is it wrong for a lady to keep condoms in her bag?” she asked me.
Now a liberalised environment appears to have intensified the competition and reduced profit margins for some pr******tes. “After I have learnt my trade, I will quit this job to establish my own shop,” Abena tells me.
Indeed, many of the pr******tes believe that one day they will have to quit the business and some believe that the best way out of the job is a good marriage.
“This is Satan’s profession,” one pr******te laments. “When you start the business, you get so many customers and you enjoy it, but with time you struggle to even get a customer a night,” she laments.
On this night she has not made a single round and seems frustrated as she seeks company among some taxi drivers who stand by their cars throughout the night, waiting to transport the pr******tes home when dawn breaks.
The other good companions for the night who may not necessarily make a pass for a night stand are the handful of mobile beverage sellers who sell hot coffee and tea to the pr******tes to help them stay awake and do business.
It’s a booming industry for all!
It is understandable that the new girls get the market. The male patrons hardly change and some are well known among the ladies. When they come, they first look out for the new ones.
I make for a prominent nightclub that is well patronised by pr******tes. The atmosphere in the club is electrifying, with loud hip hop and rap music. The ladies, as usual, are dressed to kill, enjoying erotic dances with their male patrons.
I look around for a moment and make towards Vanessa who, with her sensual moves in front of a mirror, was clearly looking for attention. I offer her one but I am soon to prove inadequate. After a few awkward steps, I get tired and proceed with my real mission.
“Can we have a chat?” I ask.
“Yeah, but I want a bottle of Guinness first,” she responds.
I dish out GH¢2 for the drink and move to a seat in the club. By now it is easy to discern that she is not Ghanaian, or at least she is faking a Liberian accent.
“You are a Liberian, I suppose.”
“Yeah,” she responds.
“How long have you been in Ghana,” I press.
“Five years.”
“And you like it here?”
“Yeah, just that food is expensive here.”
“So when are you going back to Liberia?”
“Very soon; maybe next year,” she states.
“How much is a night?” I ask.
“You mean ‘sleep’?” she also asks.
“Yes.”
“GH¢70,” she says.
“That’s a lot of money,” I remark.
“You pay for the first time; the next time I make it less,” she offers.
“Then we have to make it another time. I don’t have enough money on me,” I reply.
She then picks a cigarette from a pack, lights up and meanders her lean body through the crowd of dancers. The next moment she is hooked to another guy, smoking and dancing.
Another Liberian who at 18 years is already blossoming in the trade is Mimi. With stunning beauty, she is attracting many male patrons in the area she operates in. On this night, she baits me to a dance and demands one Ghana cedi for a dance session spanning three songs. With dextrous dance steps she sweeps me off my feet to the dance floor. Her dress is not exactly s*xually explicit. Tight fitting pair of jeans trousers and a top that is not so revealing and yet not so concealing. For once, one is likely to be struck by sheer beauty and not eroticism.
She tells me that she is new to the trade. “My friend introduced me to the job some weeks back; on the night of May 17,” she states. “This friend told me to accompany her somewhere and brought me to the night club and then the men were all over me”.
According to her, on her first night she had a ‘White’ patron who treated her well. She said there were so many ‘Whitemen’ in the club that night, and most of them were middle aged and ‘big men’. On another night she encountered a Ghanaian who according to her would probably be in his late 40s to early 50s; “He looked very decent and told me his children were abroad. He did not talk about his wife and I was not bothered about that. He liked me so much, parted with $500 and advised me to quit the job”.
“So why not quit it? You are very beautiful and this is not a good job!” I chip in.
“If I get a good man who will take good care of me. A man who will give me money to start a business to enable me to settle down well so that I can quit this job,” she tells me. “Sometimes the money I get helps in the upkeep of the home”, she adds.
“So it’s good business,” I remark.
“Yeah, sometimes God can tell me that on a particular night, I only have to do short time and then if I follow suit I hit good money. You will not believe it but sometimes I make as much as GH¢120 a night”.
“How do you know that God is talking to you?”
She giggles and replies; “I just get the feeling that God is talking to me in my mind”.
“You go to Church?”
She breaks into a chuckle as if to mock me and then hits back; “You think because I do this job I don’t go to Church. I don’t only go to Church but also pray regularly”.
“You love God?” I ask.
“Yes!” She replies with a visage not lacking in sincerity.
Mimi tells me more about her patrons and explains why he prefers the men to the boys. The boys don’t have money. If you are not careful they may even steal your mobile phone.
According to Kofi, a former patron of pr******tes, who says he is now reformed, patronage for some men is down to mere adventurism, peer pressure and taste for variety.
“When I was a driver some years back, I patronised them a lot. Then I was not married. Now I hardly do so,” he tells me.
Indeed, apart from Liberians, there are also some Nigerians and the foreigners appear to enjoy greater patronage. So much that some Ghanaian pr******tes deliberately speak with a Liberian or Nigerian accent in order to attract more patrons to boost their sales.
I wait till dawn breaks to see how the session ends and soon realise that sometimes fights break out as the ladies struggle to make last-ditch efforts to win patrons.
This night the fight is between two girls over a man one claims is her regular customer. With curses hurled at each other and fingers thrust in eyes, the two get into a brawl and a few guys around struggle to separate them. It gets fiery and pointed shoe heels come in handy as effective weapons.
In the end, there are scratches on the faces of both ladies but the man is nowhere to be found. Both of them miss out on a last catch. A hard thug life out there?
By this time, the taxis are honking, ready to move with the next available passenger as the ladies jump in. Drivers’ mates in commercial buses passing by keep shouting, “Accra, Makola. Accra, UTC It’s 5.03 a.m. and Accra has woken up.
*xtourismghanagoodorbad
