Confessions of a Sex Worker: “How I Revenged Over Unpaid Dues”

When Milly* decided to venture into prostitution in 2010, little did she know that she’d one day go to the extremes of revenge against her client. When her “co-workers” inducted her into the business, they equipped her with the wherewithal and what to expect including clients who end up not paying for the services.
Starting off at Pipeline, Embakasi, she eventually transitioned from an amateur and even surpassed her co-workers. She eventually established a formidable empire for herself.
“Sometimes two or three clients a night are more than enough for me,” she reckons. “Some clients can take me for a whole night – which is equally a good deal.”
This is when Milly* opted to use sedatives to get her going. Hitherto, she had never fallen out with any of her clients safe for some drunkards who would hurl ugly words at her though she learnt to swallow it all.
“It’s part of the game,” she avers, “And you have to be prepared for it anyway.”
As she recounts the events of one fateful night, she’s easily carried away with remorse.

“There was this guy who picked me one night on a Nissan matatu last month. Apparently I knew he was a conductor who had just taken over from the driver till the next morning. I was flat broke then, and we actually settled on KES 700 for the whole night.”
On reaching the guy’s house somewhere in Pipeline, she cooked as he went to have a quick bath after which they ate and went to bed.
“He sent me away in the morning without paying me,” she says. “In fact, I’ll never forget the face of that guy as he pushed me out of his house like a dog. I felt useless.”
Milly* relocated her services to Mlolongo at the behest of her friend who had tipped her how saturated the place was with clients and the income she would earn. She settled down in the face of the thoughts of the conductor still lingering in her mind. When she shared it with her co-workers, they advised her to carry even a small penknife or anything in her purse for her protection just in case a client turned violent. She opted for a miniature dagger and kokomanga, a popular aphrodisiac. She had heard a sex worker who used the tact to revenge against a regular client who had failed to pay her twice.
“After around a month, the guy coincidentally came and picked me from Mlolongo with the same Nissan matatu.” she recounts. She was overwhelmed with apprehension at the thought of revenge and how to go about it in just in case she didn’t get the chance to get near his food.
“Definitely, it was his regular habit that he could go to bathe as someone cooked for him. My plan worked. I prepared the fish and spiced it up with the kokomanga. When he came back, I excused myself that I was OK and so he gobbled it without suspecting anything,” she says. They went to bed but Milly* excused herself to take a leak in the washrooms. She picked her handbag, locked the door from outside and hurried off with the key before the he raised an alarm.

Such an aphrodisiac starts working after a few minutes and stimulates the body to the extremes. Incidences of some sex workers drugging their clients and stealing from them or injuring and even killing them have been reported in the past.
“I offered to pay one less than we’d agreed but she almost chopped my manhood off!” reveals Jaro, a jua kali products trader.
He also says that always render sex workers their due, a statement also echoed by Milly* who now operates from a different location for fear of her safety.
*Not real name for anonymity...