BY: PATIENCE KENGORO AND IVAN OKUDA editorial@ug.nationmedia.

com Kimombasa: Where prostitution, crime and drugs thrive day and night

A ghetto where commercial sex workers are not shy about broad day light and operate in publicly gazetted houses on a 24 hour basis. A slum where criminal gangs go about their work, trading in and abusing narcotic drugs and terrorising residents in open day light. And police can only do much about it. A society where half-naked women openly smoke pipes with all the freedom that comes with witchcraft in an area where everybody minds their own business. That precisely is Kimombasa for you. It is one place you dont just visit before establishing contact; goons can easily undress and beat you up. You can be moving innocently and a thug claims you have stolen his money, before you know his peers are pouncing on you, these were the words of one civil society activist we contacted in preparation for our visit. Yet everybody and everything in this slum, located in Bwaise 2 zone in Kampalas Kawempe division can only be suspicious. According to this source, you can trust someone but leave some room for the fact that they come from Kimombasa. We took heed and sought the intervention of three youthful officials working with Action For Fundamental Change and Development, a community based organisation who know the nitty gritty of the 90,000 population size slum. Their intervention can only come after briefing us in what will appear the golden ground rules of our tour about the slum so we tread with care and caution. These men were born, raised and have grown up in the slum but there is just no trace, both physical, mental and other wise to show for it. The prostitutes here hate journalists taking their photos. You have to do your work tactically, it can be very dangerous if you get them in a rowdy mood, Mohammed Kisirisa cautioned our photojournalist, asking the writers to take notes hideously. Access to toilet facilities here is at 20% so you have to watch the ground otherwise you might step on human excreta, he quickly advises when a shoe belonging to one of us gets stuck in a heap of the same. Indeed, in almost every five metre distance, the eye can only get accustomed to the ghastly sight of feaces

littered all over the place without abandon. Intervention by non-governmental organisations has only registered limited success as the public toilet facilities constructed by AMREF charge shs. 200, a fee many find outrageous. In a way, human survival instinct takes the better of you as you slowly but anxiously discover that latent potential of the body to do things like somersaulting and high jump when necessity so calls. What with the trenches filled with solid waste and thick over flowing sewage so nostril breaking. Mohammed paints a vivid picture of the water supply and access predicament here by pointing at a community water spring surrounded by heaps of decaying garbage. Meanwhile, soapy waste from makeshift bathrooms easily flows in as shabby and half naked children play about, dipping dirty jerry cans and basins as some casually drink the same water. At this point, he justifies the validity of the loose joke that water is life only if you do not stay in Bwaise and Kimombasa for that matter. Usually when it rains heavily, all the water from the hills of Makerere and Katanga flows down to Bwaise and Kimombasa has not been spared. A line of both mud and wattle and brick made houses are abandoned with old car tryes and other forms of solid waste and stagnant water with insects occupying what was once a family house. It goes without saying that a recent flood had rendered the house inhabitable, forcing the residents to permanently flee and leaving room for the structure to become a hideout for criminals. Face to face with day time prostitution and witch craft The next house has not been put to waste; at least it is occupied and kept productive. The door is wide open and a curious peep brings to life a woman dressed in a conspicuously stained, see through petty coat, her over flowing breasts are out for a man, seemingly drunk beyond repair who is playfully caressing them as a child, probably 8 years old, sits on the floor with more innocence than anxiety at the sight of an action packed moment a few inches above her. This is not a local massage parlour neither a herbalist giving therapy to a client. This is a sex worker at work. She sheds off the whiff of doubt in us by putting the mans hands away and cajoling us, ba uncle mulinde ko awo, nzija (Luganda to mean, uncles wait a minute, I will be ready for you soon. Our biggest concern as progressive young people from Kimombasa is the bit of these women carrying out their trade when children are watching, Brian Mugaga, an official with AFFCAD notes. He throws more light that only leaves the team

intrigued; at night, the sex workers send the children away to give themselves space to attend to their clients and if they are asleep, they just put them down and use the bed. The kids grow up seeing these things and it is not surprising that we have many 14 year olds in the trade. In any case, these leaders of tomorrow grow up perceiving prostitution as a way of life without moral loopholes. One of these children recites the names of the lodges around where one can get prostitutes at any time of the day if they so wish. One of them is Good Life lodge that we can only see from a reasonable distance where four ladies, dressed in tempting attire sit amorously, arguing loudly about waragi and screaming obscene insults. Every body knows that is their territory, it is like their office and even the policemen know it. They even stopped disturbing them, after all when they come, they are bribed with free service, the child, who admits he dropped out of school shares. By 7pm, one does not have to bother going to the lodge as every corner of the slum gets packed with sex workers offering service at varying fees. Ono ayina ku mali, nkumi biri short, long ya tano, kasita osessa (this one looks rich, shs. 2000 for a short and shs. 5,000 for a long one, Maggie, dressed in a translucent micro mini skirt and sipping aviation fuel with fresh leaves of marijuana in her left hand, tells one of our guides who easily relates with them, for the sake of having them open up to us, albeit unaware that we are from the media. She explains the dynamics of price discrimination in their trade where customers who look smart and therefore moneyed pay up to shs. 5,000 and the shabby average slum dweller can pay even as low as shs. 1000 depending on his bargaining power. Maggie reveals that the lodges are run by businessmen who rent one room, partition it into five compartments using curtains. In this case, the client pays the lodge owner who in turn decides how much to pay the sex worker. That is why some of us prefer to do business in our houses. Yes the children are there but will they eat morals? If we can go to the church and parade our goodies outside at night, what are you talking about? This is Kimombasa my dear, she assures, sipping from her plastic bottle of waragi, chewing fresh leaves of marijuana at the same time and demanding us not to waste her time as she has to take some aviation fuel which she claims keeps hunger at bay.

On if she is worried about the looming danger of mixing all the drugs at the same time, she stares at our guide, grabs his chin and romantically holds his waist, and jeers at one of the writers for being, too daft that he does not understand how we do our things in Kimombasa. On proceeding to Katale, we are treated to the sight of six half naked women seated casually on their verandas, smoking pipes with thick clouds of stinking smoke above them. A few greetings and wishes for a good day put them in the mood to say a word to our crew. We are here as usual. Blessings, curses, riches, husbands, children, co-wives, our gods really have issues to solve, you can proceed, the eldest of them says, waving at us lazily as she coughs heavily. Here, every house has the potential of becoming a shrine at any time and one does not have to hide around when practicing witch craft. People know and understand one another so well that they let every one be. Drugs, gambling, violence in action

In the middle of our tour, we bump into a small area colonised by about thirty youthful men from West Nile. The atmosphere here balances itself between euphoric to tense. As we create rapport, pretending to negotiate prices of their reed made chairs and tables, their sole source of income, one of them mobilises the peers to turn against us. He has detected the photojournalist taking their pictures and at once, they roar like a pride of lions under attack, with eyes blood-red and mouths filled with marijuana and smoke, journalist, journalist, out! Red zone feared by Uganda Police This one is a Red Zone, even police knows it. They cannot just come and start arresting people, Jaffer Nyombi, the youth Chairman shares, pointing at strong solex padlocks and calling them useless as thugs break into houses at will. He narrates an incident early this year when Kawempe police officers met him with a view to helping them identify criminals in a surprise night operation. Within 15 minutes of their meeting, word had reached these criminals and they besieged them, hurling stones and injuring one police man. His own life was in the line and the only savior is the fact that he is a born of the area and therefore easily maneuvers his way through with them. He shares that the gangs are so organized that they have hierarchy, weaponry like iron bars and knives, and intriguing names like Hot Crew, Kimwanyi, Santili and

Love Crew. In the place of police, these carry out day and night patrols, at times clashing and causing bloody scenes. They wake up, booze, take weed and punch bags of sand all day and plan their next course of action, they execute their missions any time of the day, the youth chairman reveals. Utility Origin of the name Kimombasa According to the three mens accounts, in the 1960s, a prostitute migrated to Bwaise from Mombasa in Kenya alongside two other sex workers. She was such a gorgeous woman that male residents of Bwaise and beyond flocked them for commercial sex. Each time a man felt like having commercial sex, he was asked, ogenda ekimombasa? (are you going to the place of the women from Kimombasa? And that is how the slum came to be known as Kimombasa.