The University of Leicester in its 2018 round of International Development Research Fund resources funded a pilot project facilitated by Professor Teela Sanders (Department of Criminology) with the NGO Bar Hostesses Empowerment and Support project (BHESP). The project is pre-work for a much larger research programme which has been sent to the GCRF for consideration which will create a skills programme for young women working in the sex industry.

The pilot project has taken just 5 months from inception to analysis and presentation, assisted by an excellent project manager in Nairobi, Raham Hassan and a team of five co-researchers from the sex work community. These women were hired and trained as researchers in May to conduct a face to face survey with sex workers.

Learning that you are HIV positive can be the most difficult experience one can go through in life.  You may get scared, angry or even sad but that is all normal as it is a way of coping with something that can be life-changing.

Being HIV positive does not stop one from living a normal happy life, especially if one follows the treatment regimen prescribed by the doctor. This is a life experience of Janet*, a female sex worker operating in Nairobi.

“At one time I got very sick and could not leave the house. My neighbors used to talk behind my back saying that I will die until one brave woman approached me and told me to go to the hospital,” Reckons 40-year-old Janet*.

Dressed in a red sweater, a short black skirt and lip glossed lips, Janet explains that when she got to the hospital the doctor advised her to get an HIV test which she voluntarily agreed.

“Here is where the truth that I was running away from became a reality. The test confirmed that I was HIV positive and I was suffering from Herpes zoster,” she says with her eyes filled with tears.

At this point, she saw the whole world crumbling down, shock, fear, and gloom flooded her in rapid succession consequently burying herself into alcoholism.