2. Household Composition of Interviewees
The 5 CSWs interviewed have quite similar family backgrounds. All are aged between 33 and 38, and they were all married but are now divorced. They each had between one and three children of their own, aged from 8 to 17, and four of the women also had 1 or 2 orphaned children - usually a deceased sibling's children - in their households. Although the women all originally came from rural areas, they moved to Binga and are currently living on their own, having left the children with the one remaining grandparent who in 4 cases was a grandmother.
The women are not aware of their HIV status, however it is clear that they are fully aware of the high-risk nature of their activities, and they seemed to talk of an AIDS-related death as an inevitability. Of an original group of 18 CSWs who were trained as peer educators and who established two income-generating projects in 1998, 4 have already passed away.
Although the women interviewed had been involved in sex work for a number of years, another type of CSW was identified by the women. These are women and girls as young as 15 who come from rural areas in bad times such as drought years to earn money from commercial sex work. The interviewees said that there had been a definite increase in the number of such women coming to Binga since 2001 when food security in rural areas began to deteriorate, and they estimated that there are approximately 200 women engaged in commercial sex work.
Girls attending secondary school in Binga were not reported to engage in commercial sex. This research did not delve further into the issue of "sugar daddies" or wealthy older boyfriends, however.
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