Sex worker: I Sleep With 5 Men a Day just to Eat

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Swaziland,Africa

 By Victoria Eastwood

"Here in Swaziland there are no jobs... I have no choice to be a sex worker, whether I like it or not, I must do that".

We met her in the car park of a small shopping mall on the edge of Mbabane, Swaziland's capital. She was too shy to get out of the car her friend had brought her in, too nervous of who might see, or what might be overheard.

She told us that she knew an isolated place where we could talk. Ten minutes later we are in scrubland standing by the rubble and remains of someone's home.

Here Nelsie - not her real name - stops fiddling with her plastic necklace and starts looking me in the eye, but even that appears to take considerable effort. She tells me that for the last two years, since both her parents died in a car crash, she has lived on the periphery, isolated from her remaining family and society.

"Right now I don't feel that I am a human being" she confesses. "Right now I am scared to greet my family because if I say that I am a prostitute all of the people will just say that I am a prostitute".

She wants us to know that this was not her first choice; she did try to find work.

"Here in Swaziland there are no jobs" she says. The necklace fiddling starts again. "I have no choice to be a sex worker, whether I like it or not, I must do that".

Tucked away in one corner of Swaziland's annual International Trade Fair we find the HIV and Aids stands. It is an unusual addition at a trade fair but then so is the large number of children who have come here for a day out with their parents; there is barely a businessman or woman in sight.

These stands are testimony to a tragic accolade; Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV and Aids in the world.

A staggering one in four people have HIV/Aids in Swaziland.