'Aid staff would pay more': sex workers in Haiti speak out

Natasha stands alone on an unlit trash-strewn pavement at the side of the road to Pétion-Ville, the upmarket hillside suburb in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. “I’m here every night,” she says, eyeing SUVs as they speed past on a sticky February evening. “I want to do something else, but there isn’t anything … this is my only choice.”

The 31-year-old mother of three has been a sex worker in the city for nine years. Like almost everyone here, she lost relatives in the catastrophic earthquake that devastated the capital in January 2010. “My sister, nephew and cousin were all crushed by their own houses,” she says, with a dead-eyed stare. “I was living in a different house, that’s why me and my kids are still alive.”

The disaster killed between 200,000 and 300,000 people and initially displaced 2.3 million. Homes were buried in rubble, while markets and government buildings were completely destroyed, in a country already ranked the poorest in the western hemisphere. Natasha bottled up her grief and began working again later that week.

“I didn’t have a choice,” she says. “It’s the only way I could make any money.”

Aid workers from around the world arrived in their thousands to assist with the recovery. Natasha could earn big money. She says a foreigner would give her at least $100 (£72), more than five times the price a local would pay.

“They have more money but like everyone there are good guys and bad guys,” Natasha says, recalling an instance shortly after the earthquake when two aid workers picked her up.

“One of the guys wanted to have anal sex but he wouldn’t wear a condom. When I said no he got really aggressive and his friend had to stop him from hitting me. He had his arm raised already.”

Source: theguardian