A girl who looked hardly 15 stood out among a group of scantily dressed women at a hub for haulage trucks in Victoria Falls. Her young face was heavily powdered and her eyebrows were dark, but the plastic face could not hide her age. As a sex worker, she has seen it all, from those who loved violent sex to those who after the act robbed her of all the money she would have toiled for.
In her right hand, she had a small black bag with condoms, lip gloss, toilet paper and a small towel. On the night, there were about 40 haulage trucks that were parked in the area and the young girls were using them as cover to entertain clients. The majority of the girls, numbering about 20, looked below the age of Some revealed that they were working for older men and women who took most of their income.
Moyo opened up after this reporter informed her that he was in the area to follow on a trip by the National Aids Council NAC earlier in the day where officials were shocked by the levels of child prostitution.
As the conversation with Moyo continued another girl who looked the same age emerged from a haulage truck parked nearby. I will be back in five minutes and you can tell your man that we can negotiate for anything. The Victoria Falls truck stop is just but one of the many prostitution hotspots in the town where men come to whet their sexual appetites on underage girls.
Even during daytime, sex workers โ some as young as 12 โ line up the main road connecting Victoria Falls town centre and the truck stop scouting for customers. NAC has set up a clinic at the truck stop to help both the sex workers and truck drivers whenever they fall sick. The clinic, according to authorities, offers HIV-testing services and sex workers dominate the number of visitors to the clinic, which is manned by a nurse and aides.
