Hard times are forcing some young women on to the streets to support themselves and their children.
Telling their hard luck stories of trying to find jobs, filling out application after application and dealing with the constant disappointment of being turned down, some admitted they were so desperate for money to put food on the table and provide their young ones with basic necessities that for them, the street was the only answer.
So, they turned to what’s often said to be the oldest profession known – prostitution.
On Wednesday night, a WEEKEND NATION team spent approximately three hours along Bush Hill, St Michael, talking to sex workers, who told stories of not just being laid off or out of a regular job, but also of slow business on the street.
The women, many of whom in their 20s, said they started their night work nowadays from as early as 6:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. to try to get as many jobs as they could.
Still, many confessed that they often left empty-handed even after prowling that strip until 4 a.m. or 5 a.m.
Melinda is 27 years old and has been a prostitute for four months.
“Sometimes I come out brek and I go back home brek,” she said, while standing in a netted shirt under the street light.
For Melinda, life is tough. She said due to a bad asthma condition, she had to leave her previous three jobs.
“I have only been out here three to four months. Things rough. That’s why I come on the road. A friend of mine who is a prostitute told me that if I want to make money, I have to come on the streets,” she said.
“If I could get a job, even if it is a little two to three days to hold me over, I wouldn’t mind,” said the mother of two who lives in a leaky abandoned house which she shares with other girls.
Melinda said that like most of the other girls on the road, she was out from as early as 7:30 p.m. most nights.
“Things are really slow out here too but if I get money I would get between $300 and $400. I don’t like it but this is what I can do for right now,” she said before turning away hoping a customer would come her way.
Melissa has been on the streets for the last year. She was laid off four years ago and has been on the hunt for employment since then.
Plying her trade further down the road away from the others, Melissa, who is also in her 20s, said she was tired filling out application forms and facing the disappointment that followed.
Desperate to provide for her eight-year-old son, Melissa said that before she would hit the streets around 11 p.m. but in recent times she had been going out around 7:30 p.m. at least three times a week hoping business would look up for her.
“Things out here kinda slow. Nobody ain’t spending money,” she said.
For Melissa, a good night is having eight to nine customers, while on a slow night she only gets two to three people.
Even though things were slow, Melissa said she wouldn’t drop her rates. She said she would soon be calling it a day as she didn’t like being on the streets working.
Terry, another sex worker, said even though the “road is dead” she was still there every day.
“Sometimes I don’t get anything at all. I have been out here off and on. In fact I only come out here on the street when things rough,” admitted this 32-year-old mother of four.
Terry said she worked with a company for two years before it closed in 2011.
“I had tried getting jobs at some places but it’s hard. I didn’t get anything,” she said, noting too, that out of frustration at being unable to help pay bills at home, she left six weeks ago.
“Sometimes I don’t even eat because I have no money, or sometimes I just snack on junk food which is cheap,” she said as she waited for a job to come her way. “If I had a job I wouldn’t be out here.”
Terry said that with Christmas coming next month “you can’t feel good” not being able to give your children things.
Another sex worker who was “on the hustle”, said she was fired from her job in 2011 and for the last two years had been working the strip. With three children to feed and still unable to land a regular job, she was getting more and more frustrated on the road because things were just too slow.
“Sometimes I can go home with nothing. Things rough out here. Sometimes I just feel I would strip,” she said before hustling the team on its way.
The story of Darky, a 24-year-old mother of a young son, was no different.
“Most of the time I would go home with nothing,”?she said. “I do this to make a living for my son. I was trying to get a job at one time but that didn’t work out and that’s why I did this. I think about getting out of this but I can’t do it yet because I don’t know where I would turn and what I would do.”
Darky said even though sometimes she went home empty-handed and feeling badly, she was still out the next day hoping “it will be better tomorrow”.
A sex worker sitting close by piped in saying that after being laid off in 2007, she went on the road two years after. “Jobs just don’t pull like before,” she said.
Editor’s Note: The names used in this story are not the real names of the women interviewed for this story.
In tomorrow’s SATURDAY SUN, read about a woman who has been working the streets for the last 23 years. She talks about survival, safe sex and security on the road.
