Episode 59: I Can See The End

This is one of my last posts. I will be wrapping the blog sometime in February. Well , I have decided to leave the Street in the coming month. I have become a little weary, and as much as I try to convince
myself otherwise I have reached my peak and can only start going down. There are no quitting ceremonies. For the next two weeks or less I will continue going to work then one day fail to turn up. I stay for a week a month and more. The girls will start spreading rumors of what could probably have happened to me, and quickly I will be forgotten, after all I am not among the most charismatic on the Street. And while my name is being erased from the Street so will it be deleted from your brains. As I fade from your memories I will be struggling with myself not to succumb to the devilish but exciting lure of the Street.

I am not sure what happens next. How I earn my living and all. I might take a long break out of the city, repackage myself and come back to explore other things. Age is catching up with me and its time I tried
to live more of my dreams. Well forget the brand building. I am not going to a higher level in the sex industry, despite my having enough of the right contacts, experience and Street brain to become a big time pimp.

 On the other hand I am not quitting on moral grounds. I am not going to spend the rest of my life saying my years on the Street were wasted. Or trying to 'reform' anyone. I am quitting more out of fatigue and the need to change direction, or like they say in corporate speak "to pursue other interests." 

I once toyed with the idea of stopping writing the blog without giving the readers notice, but then that wold be a bit rude. So I will make some few posts within the next month, and when the last of the last comes declare so. I think it will come very very soon.

There is so much I could write about from my experiences, there are posts here which have epilogues, and maybe which could sound better with more vivid descriptions etc . Perhaps one day when I have the
will and resources, I will write up a proper book. Ideally that would have been the best way to wrap this but then the ideal more often than not eludes me.  The blog will remain here. And maybe once in a while I will pass by to document any interesting development related to my struggle to shake off the Street.  But I doubt there will be anything interesting.

There are so many loose ends related to the blog and my interaction with it, and those I hope to tie up in the next few weeks if not days. Tomorrow I answer questions I have been asked through the Ask Me section. Wow! The end is nigh and the countdown has begun. There is no turning back now.

On a different note as part of my send off package, I will be accepting ads below each and every post. Ads which can start running immediately and be here until blogger dies. I am removing all the old ads. Anyone who would be interested and courageous enough  just CLICK HERE. I have no set price, so just say how much you wish to pay and I will consider. Not too much & not too little.

You can purchase my light cheeky ebook : A Few Things I Know About Sex at only Ksh. 100 HERE. The book was commissioned by Nairobi Books. An excerpt appears before Episode 55.

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Episode 58: Goodbye Guilt

I bet I am starting to sound like a broken record; once more I talk of quitting.  This has nothing to do with the many emails and comments I have been receiving to the effect of late. Those I will respond to later.

 Sometime ago in a moment of personal resolution I  promised myself that if I ever stopped feeling guilty about the evil acts I commit during my work then it would be time to quit.  Of course when I talk of evil I don't mean having sex, that is good, but that other 'bad’ things beyond sex, like stealing from clients.

I have always thought myself not fully gone into the depth of sin because I still felt guilty after stealing. After all its things like guilt that separate human beings from animals. Or is it? In those relatively few times I have stolen from men, I have ended up remorseful despite my justification for the act.

My justification for stealing had always been diverse. Sometimes I made it look like a class war; you know the upright beings and us the wrongly condemned . Other times I told myself I was participating in the gender wars. What's wrong with punishing a man who is cheating and probably making his family suffer? There were also those men I felt were mean, and what I was getting was my rightful fee.  However deep down inside me I knew I was lying to myself. There was no reason for my greed as shown by my thieving ways.  In the end I just felt terrible.

Different girls have varied strategies and guts for stealing. For me depending on the conditions the best time to lift anything from a sober man is before the sex. When his reasoning is made fuzzy by exposed thighs, kinky talk and anticipation. The foreplay offers such a good opportunity to set up a heist, if stealing a wallet maybe made that grand.

Picking during sex has never been appropriate unless there is an extra girl or the man is a bit tipsy and not fully undressed. The latter was common at the SJ. Stealing from a sober man after sex is quite tricky. For in that immediate moment after sex many men seem as if they have woken up from a dream. Some become extra alert, reach for their trousers, quickly dress then leave. But a few will make just a small careless mistake.

This week a man picked me and drove to lodging in Parklands made notorious by its conducive conditions for spiking and stealing.  The client was a reserved but polite man probably in his late twenties. We had some okay sex, which by his facial expression and sounds I couldn't tell whether he had enjoyed. He paid me Ksh.2000. We dressed up and he stepped to the toilet, leaving his phone on the bed. Within seconds it
was in a compartment in my handbag, and I was out of the place.   This was the first time I had stolen a phone; A Nokia X something which fetched me  a mere Ksh.2,500 on the Street. . I felt nothing about it,
and still do. It might be time to quit or perfect my skills.





 You can purchase my light cheeky ebook : A Few Things I Know About Sex at only Ksh. 100 HERE. The book was commissioned by Nairobi Books. An excerpt appears before Episode 55.

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Episode 57: January Mind Games

The stereotype of a Street prostitute is that of a birdbrain, a girl dull enough all she could think of to earn a living was  open her legs and lower herself to the bottom of society. Over time I have learnt there are few advantages of trying to prove otherwise to those clients who still stick with the stereotype; to show I have more thoughts, and not only of the vulgar, thieving kind. 

So most of the time I go with the flow, displaying some ignorance and avoiding any of the so called serious talk. But sometimes I want to tease a man a little bit. To get to his nerves, or remind him he is not the only one who knows. Sometimes though it's strategy, playing mental games with a mentally weaker but financially  endowed man, so that his ego is crushed and he tries to make up for it in a way that will benefit me.

Not long ago a man who looked in his early 30s picked me. Once in his car he muttered "Hey" which he quickly changes to "Sasa", supposedly a greeting in the language I could understand and comfortably communicate in.  " I am good" I replied, and not the "Poa" he expected me to say. He didn't seem surprised, after all every street girl knows some few English words. "Kumekauka sana"? ( Aren't things tough?)  he asked . He was now acting savior and wanted me to acknowledge the big favor he had done by picking me .

" Kiasi but things are brightening up" .  I said. The last phrase caught him off guard. He expected an answer in some street Swahili, in addition to acting the damsel in distress like girls on the Street sometimes cleverly do.

He sneered then stared at my thighs. I knew I was skimpy but no sexy. Looking a little stylish but wearing cheap. He smiled. " A wannabe" he must have said to himself.

We hit one of the roads recently constructed by the Chinese. It was slightly past 1am,  the road  empty. He accelerated to about 100 km/hr then slowed down abruptly to 30 km/hr or so. " Hawa wa Chinese kweli wanafanya kazi" ( These chinese are really working) he said.  Its the common ice breaking phrase in the city. I grunted in acknowledgment.

"Ukiwa naa gari kama hii ndio una appreciate better" ( When you are
driving a car like this you appreciate better ). His was a Toyota Avensis or one of those new big Toyota models.  I decided to up the game by ignoring some of what he had said and gently go beyond the pedestrian.

" Why do people seem to trust the quality of Chinese roads but notmost of the other products? " I asked in English.

" You cant appreciate a good road unless you own a car" he said. He was right that I  don't own a car but wrong assuming I will never own one. Owning a car is one of my distant dreams. But that was besides the point, he had subdued my kimbelembele, and he loved it.

" FYI China is the next super power" .  I grunted  because I didn't
have a clever quip to reply to that . After some seconds I remembered
something. Something I had heard on BBC, the station I prefer listening to because most of the local stations will in one way or another end up reminding me of my work . And I don't want to be reminded so much of it.

"Isn't interesting the Chinese don't seem interested in  pushing for the
dominance of the  Yuan like they are pushing everything else?" I asked
a little curt .

" It doesn't matter" he said and accelerated once more. I was not sure my question made sense, but it didn't  matter, I had gotten him  and now wanted want to yap more. 

" I think it does. Anyway what role do you think the euro crisis had in the battering the shilling got last year? "  I asked. Another sweet collage of a question  from BBC snippets. His face tightened and he accelerated more .

" If you know so much about the economy why don't you become the minister for finance?" he said " Instead of parading your ass in the cold!"  I laughed out loud. I had got him where I wanted. I didn't want  to push him so hard lest he dropped me or something. I rested my hand on his fly.

In the room he was rough. He twisted and pressed me hard. His ego was
hurt and that was his way of subduing me, of  redeeming it. I didn't
struggle and looked physically and mentally humbled. He loved it But there was one final thing, just to be sure. He paid me an extra Ksh.500. I thought that was his way of saying "It doesn't matter what you think you know or pretend to. You are still a prostitute and I have more money and respect than you do. That's what matters."

I didn't care. The money is what mattered to me.

 You can purchase my light cheeky ebook : A Few Things I Know About Sex at only Ksh. 100 HERE. The book was commissioned by Nairobi Books. An excerpt appears before Episode 55.

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Episode 56: And Now The Men Who Can't Quit

It has been said that prostitution is a victimless crime. That a girl-man transaction being a gentleman's agreement of sorts neither of them is really a victim. But moralists will tend to differ. To them prostitution should not judged in isolation but on its effect on the larger social fabric. The man who sleeps with a prostitute has fun, but his family could suffer. What if the girl infects him with a nasty disease, which he passes on to his wife, an innocent party? What if he spends the rent and school fees on the girl? Or better still the money is stolen from him? Is the collapse of a whole family worth the feeding of a single girl who drinks so much and doesn't seem to really care about her body? Mmmmm.

Not that the men who visit Street girls are blind to the side effects, if any, of their actions. There are many who have not abandoned their families for the Street girls. Johns who run happy families, and take great care not compromise that in any way. Men with wives good in private as they are in public, but still they visit the Street.

From my economics class I can remember some musings on choice and rationality. That one stops doing something only when the incentive to stop is larger than the incentive to continue. At the face of it there are many advantages of quitting dilly dallying with prostitutes than continuing. But that is only a quick analysis which ignores the subtle benefits of a session to a girl. Some of which I have highlighted elsewhere.

On the other hand and from the same economics class I remember something about irrationality. Not all decisions human beings make are rational. There exists irrational compulsion, which makes people act in ways which are thought to lead to their own destruction, but can't resist it even when there are better alternatives. I doubt doubt visiting a prostitute or being one is a result of irrational compulsion.

These thoughts were triggered by a man in his forties, who was one of my first clients this year. The same way I had hoped not to be on the Street this year, is also the same way he had hoped not be picking girls. " Why do you want to quit?" I asked. " I don't know. I think I have been doing this for too long" . But rather than interrogate him on his motives for picking girls,and now for stopping, I turned the conversation to me. I went on and on about how I had planned to quit but failed too.

The sex was plain, perhaps the realization that we were doing something both of us hated at the time. ( I have since thrown myself back to the Street without any doubts) . And when we lay on the bed for a few minutes after the romp, I thought here we are two failures who can't summon enough will to say no. Or here are two Kenyans feeling the pressure to be conform to the good of society.

The man paid me Ksh.3000 , double the amount I had asked for. It was not a bonus. For such plain sex I felt he was giving away all the money he had planned to spend on girls that week. I wish he had on him all the money he had budgeted to use on girls the whole year.

" Will you be back" I asked tongue in cheek. " You won't see me again" he said.

Silently I wished him good luck. I am sure he will be back, perhaps a happier man than if he quit.


 You can purchase my light cheeky ebook : A Few Things I Know About Sex at only Ksh. 100 HERE. The book was commissioned by Nairobi Books. An excerpt appears in the previous post.

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Episode 55: Pushing On In 2012

A client once told me that prostitution is curse. That girls who get into the trade are destined to be in it. They are chosen by fate to fulfill a certain role. That the same the universe is precise; you know the delicate distance from earth to the sun, the right amount of gases in the air, the role of trees , water bodies and all in ensuring the survival of the planet so does everyone has a role. But I also read somewhere that believes in Fate and Destiny is the curse of failures.

This early in the year I find myself tempted to believe in Destiny. I know it’s not recommended that one should start the year on a sullen confused note, yet here I go. I had hoped that 2011would be my last year on the Street. But come 2012 I find myself drifting back. Somehow I am not with enough will to let go. I went back this last weekend when I was pressed for cash.

Deep inside though I know I am headed to that dangerous point girls on the street get to after sometime. The point where they start hating what they do, where they want
to quit but somehow cant. And from there it becomes downstream. A girl gets angry, rude and the perfect stereotype of a prostitute. She ends up quitting or living an empty life spreading her legs for whatever comes along.

 Yet there is a way out of that psychological trap, which is to accept that one is destined to be a prostitute. Once a girl accepts her destiny, things become relatively easy. A girl has her feet, heart and mind fully in the trade. She just has to evolve as she grows older, less pretty, and fatigued by her working environment.  And that’s what I am debating with at the moment. No need to keep saying I plan to quit, or going on and on about how I didn’t dream of being a prostitute forever. Why not  just make up my mind I am in this for the long run, and with it acquire the peace of mind that comes with knowing and accepting your purpose in this world?

Quitting for me is made complicated because I don’t know exactly why I got into this trade in the first place. Of course now I have tied it to economic needs, but still there is something else pushing me. Like they say how can I know where I am going if I don’t know where I am coming from?  

After the brand building of the last one year and with a little, discipline and determination I can run my economic life without necessary being on the street, but for some reason I am afraid of letting the street go. So what next?
I will have to wait and see how the year goes. I will get into my work with gusto. I will try enjoy my work and become happier. It’s boring to keep lamenting. . Maybe its time to up the game. To make the brand building what exactly it should be and not spend  time dilly dallying about having a higher goal, which is not clear. Its time to become a prostitute proper.

Destiny is perhaps also something to think about for those girls who email requesting me to introduce them to the trade. Yes once in a while I receive an email from a girl asking me to show them the ropes of what I do. Some will quote their pressing economic situation while others are seeking adventure. Perhaps in my writing I have given the impression that prostitution is sort of an amazing race. It’s certainly not.

Thinking of it I believe not every girl with the courage to sell her body is cut to be a prostitute. There are things that make one really fit. Some inborn traits which I would hesitate to call talent. I see it every month, girls who come to the street as determined as they can be but quit after a short while unable to flourish. Nevertheless can one be trained
to be a prostitute? I don’t think so. Just like a footballer, you either have talent or not. Football practice only makes you better but does not give one talent. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to join, let alone show them the ropes. Whether for money, power or mere adventure a girl has to seek inside her and make the bold move on her own. Girls who come to the Street as a result of peer influence  end up more frustrated than the rest of us, who walked here on their own accord. And maybe a girl has to be chosen or rather cursed by the gods.


On a different note despite being January, the tough month, business is good. The men
are bargaining less and paying well. The only low is that there are not as many.  And the city council is usually more stressful in January. Of course by the end of the month the Street will flood with the salary men with their ‘hard earned’ cash. And the drama will start. But with the sobriety and calmness of the clients of the moment it’s even harder to quit.

Happy New Year everyone.  I will continue writing.

 You can purchase my light cheeky ebook : A Few Things I Know About Sex at only Ksh. 100 HERE. The book was commissioned by Nairobi Books. An excerpt appears in the previous post.

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Up Nairobi : The Types Of Tourists And How They Rank

(I still write a monthly column for UP Magazine. Below is an excerpt from this month's issue. If the story looks so smooth and lacks the roughness of what I write here, then its because it has passed through the hands of an editor. UP Magazine is distributed free of charge at coffee shops, shopping malls and petrol stations in Nairobi. )





Cities often acquire their identity from the physical, culture, economic activity or any other such strong attribute. Thus, Dubai could be defined by its architectural designs, while Rabat could be identified by the strong Islamic culture. What about Nairobi, could it be a city without character? What is the immediate feel one gets on arrival in the city, other than the hurly-burly of any urban center?



Nairobi is many things but seems to lack any dominant quality to label it. In the absence of a black and white clarity of what it is, city fathers, residents and notably the media have tried to come up with idioms to characterize Nairobi. These range from the feel good (but no longer in vogue) Green City In The Sun to the resigned Nairobbery.

But then there is also the tourist view of Nairobi; Nairobi as packaged in travel websites, brochures and in-flight magazines. This is the Nairobi of The Hilton and Inter Continental Hotels. The Nairobi which is “the only city with a national park” and Nairobi which is home to Kibera, “one of the largest slums in Africa”. The tourist Nairobi is thus experienced in cozy vans, and five star hotels.


Yet, there will be the visitor who will want to experience the city beyond the marketed view; knowing very well the heart of any city is not visible in the colorful brochures or marketing slogans. The most prominent of these are the backpackers who stay in Ksh.1, 500 a night lodgings like Africana and Kenya Lodge.

Here, on the Street we have passing respect for these, we call them the “black white men”. They will come to the Street in an effort to get to the city’s core. But we don’t take the back packers seriously. Over time, girls on the Street have come to know they travel cheap, every coin counts to them and some are rough men in their own countries.

You know, the kind that get involved in bar brawls or who is running from the police for a reason or another. We recognize the back packers from a mile away by their smell, dirtyside-pockets and attempt at Swahili. The backpackers don’t pay well. Many of those who have stayed in the country in excess of a month are more broke than some of us; they only have a few shillings and their return ticket. A girl will go with a back packer because it was a bad night or she thinks he is the silly student kind, and can easily rip him off.

The real gem, though, are the middle aged, or elderly men, who sneak from their five star hotels to come to the Street to see another side of the city. The most daring of them wear shorts, sneakers and come walking to the Street.

Sometimes they come upon the Street by chance as they take a walk around the city. Sometimes it’s by strategy after colluding with a taxi driver or a mischievous waiter. This kind of man will be loaded with cash, open minded and in search of adventure. There are two kinds of these men; those who want to have a session with a girl, and the others who want a girl to act as a tour guide to the other side of the city.

Sometime ago, one of these men came walking from a local hotel at around 9:00p.m. He had grey hair but walked with a bounce that made him look energetic. In such situations the girls will literally surround the man, talk all the English they know, hoping he will fall for them. And so we did. But it’s not always the case that the man will know English; some are French or German.... Read the rest here.

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UP Magazine: “Meet my girlfriend, Sue.”

 I still write a monthly column for UP Magazine. Below is an excerpt from this month's issue. UP Magazine is distributed free of charge at coffee shops, shopping malls and petrol stations in Nairobi. Of course the article has gone through an editor.....


There seems to be so much anxiety in this city. It’s all reflected in the daily hustle and bustle of the residents. Few people are calm and relaxed in what they do. An example, the ever growing party scene. Rather than end up looking genuinely happy and relaxed, party goers wear worried looks and their joy seems artificial.

The Street is not immune to the city’s anxiety. But whereas the anxiety in the rest of the city seems to be driven by the search for the little more and the pressure to become the best, the worry on the Street is more a result of efforts to maintain the status quo and keep from falling. In most of the City settings success is well defined, and the formula for success is clear. However on the Street the formula for success is vague; as anything that is largely made up of luck, unpredictable human emotions and what not.

The girls who show most of their skins or dress up fashionably are not the most successful. And so are those who only pursue white men and sleek cars. Success on the Street is thus left to “God” and our daily labors are aimed more at maintaining our present state of achievement. The fear of becoming worse than we presently are generates a lot of our anxiety. We are focused less in succeeding and more in preventive measures to avoid a fall. A fall is a matter of both personal and peer honor. If I am yanked off the Street because I was jailed for stealing from a man, or since I could not sweet talk the city council askari or the magistrate, then that’s a fall.

And so is when a once-favorite man stops picking me in favor of another girl; it does not matter whether the girl is less glamorous than me. If I am out for two months or so because of sickness, not necessarily sexually transmitted, then that is a fall.

If I am sick I would rather say I had gone to chase Ugandan men in Kampala. Here on the Street there is a very thin line between a decline and a fall. Well, here they are one and the same thing. A fall will mean that I become part of the Street fable. And because girls talk so much, I will be walking round the city thinking everybody knows everything about me. What causes a fall, whether chance or choice, is seen as contagious, and girls want to have little to do with a girl who has fallen even once. Thus girls will use all manner of trickery to avoid being seen as fallen.

Sometimes the anxieties of the rest of the city’s residents converge with those of us on the Street. As happens once in a while a regular client will drop me and pick another girl. The only way to avoid being labeled a failure by the other girls is not to let them know that has happened, which is almost impossible, or to redeem myself by having a better man pick me. Better would mean a man who drives a more expensive car, or who is foreign. The country of origin matters little. So it happened to me the other night. A regular client ignored me for Nancy; a newbie. But before the other girls could start talking I got a chance to save my skin the same night...Read the rest here

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