LUSAKA, ZAMBIA – Comfort Mwansa, 26, says she is working on rebuilding her life after leaving the sex industry in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital.
The middle daughter in a family of three children, Mwansa says her parents’ divorce followed by the deaths of her mother and her sisters drove her into sex work.
Shortly after her parents divorced, her mother died of an illness. Three years later, her older and younger sisters died of illnesses too.
Missing her mother and sisters, Mwansa says she used to talk to neighbors and friends from school about what was bothering her. She says she then started to frequent bars and clubs with her peers. She started to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes, and she says she eventually became addicted.
“While all this was happening, my father was not there for me,” Mwansa says. “He never checked on me or bothered to find out what was happening in my life. I dropped out of school and continued drinking more and more.”
At the bars, older men would approach her and offer her large sums of money in exchange for sex. At first, she would shy away, but she says she eventually gave in.
Shortly after joining the sex industry, Mwansa says she started enjoying the money she was getting and never looked back. She says that she didn’t use the money to buy food or other necessities.
“I was using the money to buy jewelry, cloth[es] and cosmetics for my hair, beers and cigarettes,” she says.
Her father eventually found out she was a sex worker.
“When my father found out about what I was doing from the neighbors in the compound where I was staying, he was heartbroken,” she says. “I remember seeing him crying.”
But he didn’t try to stop her.
“After some time, he accepted that I was a sex worker and did not speak about it,” Mwansa says. “He just let me be.”
Mwansa says she began thinking about quitting the sex industry only after staff members approached her from Tasintha Programme, a grassroots nongovernmental organization that aims to eliminate commercial sex work and HIV and AIDS in Zambia.
“I only thought about stopping sex work when workers from Tasintha Programme found me one evening and told me about their program,” Mwansa says.
When Mwansa joined Tasintha, she underwent psychological and spiritual counseling and learned various life skills, such as hunger management, nutrition and HIV prevention. She says she eventually wanted to stop smoking and drinking.
“It was not easy for me to change my ways,” she says. “At first, I would even have relapses. It is hard to change. You have to be determined, and it took determination to reach where I am today.”
She says she no longer has sex with men for money.
“I am now able to say no to a man,” she says with a smile on her face.
She says she thanks God and the staff at Tasintha.
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