A prostitute’s redemption
My former editor at a Catholic magazine, Fr Gigi (his nickname), once asked me to interview a certain young woman who, he said, had a very interesting story.
Let’s call her Alice. I sat with the woman some distance away from the magazine offices and started the interview. Alice was a former prostitute in the streets of Nairobi.
Her family had broken up. Her father moved on to live with another woman. Alice struggled through high school thanks to the support of a sponsor.
But after school, she had nothing to do to support herself. He mother could not afford college. That is how Alice ended up on the streets. It was a tough life: braving the cold in skimpy clothing, cat-and-mouse runs with the police, drunk and violent clients who did not want to pay and so on.
Alice became pregnant and decided to have the baby. But after the baby boy was born, things became worse for her. She couldn’t return to the streets for some time, which meant she had no income. The baby died a few months later.
Needless to say, Alice was heartbroken. In the midst of her grief she started asking herself very deep questions about life. Would she go back to the streets? If not, how would she live without money? What else was there to do to earn a living? She had no answers to those questions.
One day Alice wandered off to town and ended up at Nairobi’s Holy Family minor basilica. Until recently, when the cathedral authorities tightened security, people used to hang around the church grounds.
Alice did not go inside the church. She had no intention of praying. She had long concluded that God was, in fact the problem, not a solution to her woes. So she found a lonely spot, sat down and buried her head in her hands.
She could not remember how long she had sat there when someone tapped her on the shoulder. Looking up, Alice saw a young man standing beside her. He tried to talk to her but she didn’t say much. The young man told her he was a seminarian attached to the cathedral for pastoral work.
After a little chat during which Alice opened up a bit about her troubled life, the seminarian suggested that she should go into the church and pray; tell God anything she wanted. Alice didn’t see the point. The seminarian left her and she rose and walked away.
But Alice returned to the cathedral another day. This time she managed to actually enter the church. She knelt down and tried to pray. She was so angry at God. He was to blame for all her suffering. And that is about all that she said in her prayer.
As Alice dragged herself out of the cathedral, she bumped into the same seminarian. They spoke a little. He told her he had heard about a certain priest at a parish within the city who could assist her. Everyone called him Fr Gigi. Perhaps she should go see him.
Alice was reluctant. Although she had been brought up Catholic, she no longer went to church. But somehow she pulled herself together and went to speak to Fr Gigi.
The missionary priest believed Alice’s story. And it was the start of a deep father-daughter relationship. Fr Gigi secured Alice admission at a nursing school. At the time of our interview, she was working as a nurse at a Catholic hospital in central Kenya.
I recall this story because of a blog that is gaining popularity here in Nairobi. The blog is written by a self-confessed prostitute who plies her trade on the city’s notorious Koinange Street. The street runs from outside my office and ends down at the Holy Family minor basilica.
The blogger documents her experiences with the aim of building “a brand”. The young woman has already attracted some international media attention and, of course, curious clients. She says she is not looking for sympathy or help. Her means of livelihood is a conscious choice.
But her latest post is surprising. “Some sort of unexplainable low spirits, slackness and a lack of enthusiasm has engulfed me. I have become a robot-like person, doing things for the sake of it, without any attachment, emotional or otherwise,” she writes.
“I have been sleeping all day, wanting to be alone, and smoking countless cigarettes. I have been to the streets a few times, but being dull and slow, the days haven’t been very fruitful.”
This has happened before, she says. “In the past when the dullness did not wear out naturally, I overcame [it] by taking a proper break out of town; sometimes going to my parents’ home in the village, or in better days retreating to a quiet Christian-run guesthouse in Kericho.”
I am sure Jesus the Good Shepherd is out there looking for this woman as he did for Alice. Once he finds her, he will take her broken body and spirit into his arms and heal her.
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