A WOMAN living in the Highway area comments on a prostitute’s life and pays tribute to Siam Lee.
We salute her courage and honesty and our heart goes out to all those forced into prostitution to survive.
I am well educated, from a decent home and a single mother.
Circumstance brought me to the horrors of the sex trade in Durban.
I remember my first ‘client’, in a seedy house near Greyville race course.
I was so scared and I threw up afterwards. I only did one that day.
I went home and washed myself until my skin burned.
R200 per half an hour, to use and abuse me which ever way they wanted.
I don’t think people realise, we do not want to do this work.
We don’t wake up in the morning and go ‘yay, I get to perform sexual acts on different men ALL day’.
Not one girl I met in that line of work ever said they enjoyed it, it was always ‘lets just get this day over with.’
Do what you HAVE to do!
It is degrading and it damages you emotionally and mentally.
I truly felt worthless and sometimes because of that time in my life, I still do feel worthless.
Then, there is living the double life. Not telling friends and family lies about what you do because you know if you tell anyone they will think less of you.
While you all sit there in your nice lounge with your flat screens, netflixing and chilling, judging girls like Siam and I.
Remember something, you do not know what it is like to have nowhere to turn to, no one to help you.
I was and still am the sole provider in my household and I had to do what I had to do to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table.
I’d like you all to remember this too… it is your husbands, brothers, grandpas, uncles and sons that visit girls like us.
Some women are just blind to what the men in their lives are doing.
How many times I sat there quietly while he spoke to his wife or daughter, lying about where he was.
Open your eyes ladies!!!
I managed to get out of that life. I never stopped looking for a job.
I persevered and escaped. It took me two years to get a decent position in a stable company.
However, those days have mentally and emotionally scarred me and those memories will always be with me.
The shame and guilt will never leave me. But I am alive, unlike Siam.
RIP beautiful girl x
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