The other girls all chorus:
‘No sex without condoms!!!’
And in the lots behind us, like a rallying call they were waiting to hear, voices cry:
‘No sex without condoms! No sex without condoms! No sex without condoms!’
I unfold the piece of paper the woman has handed me. It’s a press release from the Syfia agency, dated 19 September 2009, entitled: Congo-Brazzaville: Prostitutes care more for their lives than for money. To this woman, this piece of paper is more important than her own birth certificate.
‘Read that, monsieur, that’s my story, and the story of all the women you see here!’
I smooth out the piece of paper and start to read out loud, with the woman nodding at every word:
Sex without condoms is a thing of the past. The sex workers of Pointe-Noire, Congo, now understand the dangers of their profession, in particular Aids, thanks to an organisation set up by a group of the women involved. These days they are intransigent with their clients, however much money he offers. This woman, who has asked not to be named, lives at present in the Rex district, in Pointe-Noire. A professional sex worker since 1990, she sees her clients at home, or rents a room. Her children live elsewhere, since ‘they must be spared this ugly spectacle’, she says. At 50 °CFA francs (0.76 euros) a time, she earns over 80,00 °CFA francs (122 euros) a month, enough to keep her family. She speaks about her profession without shame: ‘Some of my family know. Life is a choice. You just have to make sure you stay safe when you work.’
While I’m noticing that the price of a trick is now fixed at five hundred CFA francs and that the district hasn’t changed its name to reflect this, the prostitute points out:
‘The woman who won’t be named in this article is me. I’m not going to tell you my name either, we know what you journalists are like! You come here to get us to talk, and then when you go back to Europe what people read is the opposite of what we’ve told you, and of what you’ve seen! If you want to give me a name when you write the article, call me Madame Claude…’
‘But madame, I’m not a journalist…’
‘Yes you are! Why not be proud of your profession? Is it worse to be a journalist than a tart like me?’
‘I’m actually here to retrace my childhood…’
‘Oh, we’ve heard that before! That’s like the clients who come by and make out they’ve got the wrong street and are only looking for directions! Bullshit! They want to get laid, but their conscience won’t let them be! I know you’re a journalist, I saw you with my own eyes yesterday, outside the Cinema Rex, with a man and a white woman, then you went and had a chat with old Koblavi in his lot, am I right?’
‘Yes, but I…’
‘Don’t interrupt me, if you please! Did old Koblavi say bad things about us here in the Three-Hundreds?’
‘No, not at all…’
Somewhat reassured, she hands me a stool and sits down herself on the ground. With a nod of the head she tells the other women to go, and one by one they leave the lot, without saying a word.
‘I’ve nothing to offer you, Mr Journalist… Switch on the recorder on your phone, I’m going to tell you my story and please don’t interrupt…’
I take my phone out of my pocket. She clears her throat, wipes the sweat running down from her brow with the back of her hand and folds her arms:
‘I’m no little girl, Mr Journalist. I’m a woman who’s lived, and let me tell you, this body you see here has been touched by filthy rickshaw pushers as well as the most high-up people in my old country, and yours too. This business is my life, it’s what I know how to do best, and it’s what has brought me here to this country. The day I can’t do it any more, I’ll pack my bags and return to my native land, way back to my village of Bandundu, where I’ll work the soil. I told the other journalists I had children. It’s not true, I made lots of things up, to shock people…
‘I never had children, my seven brothers all left Kinshasa. Three of them live in Brussels in the Matongé district, and are married to white women; two of them manage to make a living in Angola, in the food trade, and the last two wander about the metro in Paris busking illegally, or so I’ve gathered from people back here on holiday. It’s as if there’s a wall between us, in their eyes I’m just the disgrace of the family. I never hear from any of them, perhaps because they resent me for following in the footsteps of our mother. Was it really her fault? I’m not judging, only God can judge our acts. Does anyone ever stop and wonder how a woman comes to sell her own body? Do they think it’s an activity you choose like any other, like becoming a hairdresser, or a carpenter, or a journalist, like you? I studied at school, I even got my baccalaureate, but what use was it to me? A woman isn’t born a tart, she becomes one. There comes a day, you look in the mirror, there’s nowhere to go, you’ve got your back to the wall. So you cross the line, you offer your body to a passer-by, with an empty smile, because you have to seduce the client, like in any business. You tell yourself, you may debase your body tonight, but tomorrow you’ll wash it clean, and restore its purity. So you wash it once, you wash it twice, but your scruples wear thin through habit, then you stop washing altogether, you accept your acts as your own, because no water on earth, including the Ganges, ever gave anyone back their purity. If it could, surely with all the streams and rivers and seas and oceans there are on earth, all men and women here below would be pure and innocent. I simply followed the destiny God saw fit to give me, even if all anyone sees in me is the pimp who controls the girls she’s brought over from her own country. I’m the woman they throw the stone at, it’s even written down in black and white in the Bible, I believe, but didn’t Jesus protect tarts? I make a few of the men round here happy, at least that’s something. My father had abandoned us when I was a child, and my mother brought me up to this trade, which she plied herself till the end of her days. Thanks to that we had a roof over our heads, my seven brothers and I. While the girls in our village were playing with their dolls, my mother was already explaining to me how to hold on to a man: cooking and sex, she said, the rest is an illusion, including beauty and diplomas. A beautiful woman with a diploma who can’t cook and yawns in bed will soon find herself supplanted by an ugly ignoramus who can make a good dish of saka-saka and give her lover a great time in bed. I want you to put that in the article you write about us. I’ve never said any of what I’ve said to you to any journalist, but something makes me think you’re different, you won’t betray us, or old Koblavi wouldn’t have invited you into his lot, I know him. But don’t forget, call me Madame Claude… now, switch off your mobile, that’s the end!’
I put my phone away. The women who had left the lot now came back, gradually, as though they had been listening behind the corrugated iron that defines the limits of the property.
I stand up and hold out my hand to Madame Claude. She keeps it a moment:
‘Old Koblavi’s a good man, he’s never considered us tarts, he respects us. You mustn’t say I said anything bad about him, you understand?’
‘I understand…’
I look at my watch; it will soon be midday.
Leaving ‘Madame Claude’s’ plot, I notice another group of women opposite, watching me, wondering why I don’t come over to them.
I head for the Avenue of Independence to look for a taxi.
