Nearly all of the teenage girls working in Inchope, a road junction located at the administrative post with the same name in the Gondola district of Manica, are attracted to or engaged in prostitution as an important source of income.
They contest the sex market with domestic and foreign prostitutes who fill Inchope and whose main customers are the domestic and foreign truck drivers who sleep in their vehicles or in the rooms of the various pensions that proliferate at the intersection.
The heavy traffic of cars, large trucks and passenger coaches makes Inchope a place of innumerable, if illusory, opportunities for prostitution, and the sex trade is growing at dizzying speed.
Inspired by the apparent opportunities, women of all ages, sizes and shapes, mostly Mozambican and Zimbabwean, dressed appropriately and wander through the tourist resorts and streets in search of opportunities.
The activity is also driven by the fact that Inchope is a mandatory stop for long-haul truck drivers and long-distance carriers, who make a short or long stopover there for a well-deserved rest on their round trips to various destinations like Nampula and Maputo, and countries like Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Democratic Congo, among others.
The price list is defined by each sex worker individually and, as a general rule, varies between 100 and 500 meticais per act, depending on the quality of the sex worker and how she perceives her client’s ability to pay.
This value refers to so-called “short time” work, and is adjusted for overnight stay, also according to what the worker thinks the customer can afford.
One night costs a thousand meticais, including the room costing on average 300 to 1000 meticais. But, in the wake of the prostitution boom, the temporary leasing of rooms commonly known as “shot times” costs 100 meticais per hour.
The most active housing market is the temporary rental of rooms, not only to truckers who then go back and spend the rest of the night in their vehicles, but to other service users, including passengers.
Another situation that encourages prostitution at Inchope is that many overnighters, both men and women, prefer to share rooms to minimise costs. For the price of a room, instead of sleeping alone, some travellers prefer to mix business and pleasure, and share rooms with sex workers. Accommodation is shared and the fee for the “rent” of the “services” is paid.
Some travellers also prefer to share rooms with people of the opposite sex, saving costs and simultaneously gaining both rest and relief, although, as a general rule, it is the man who pays for the accommodation.
As a result, seroprevalence in Inchope skyrockets daily, with health authorities and institutions involved in HIV/Aids prevention and control concentrating (in vain?) their attention on the spot.
By Víctor Machirica
Source: Notícias
