ZIMBABWE: From school teacher to Sex Worker

Source: IRIN

*The following are excerpts from the aforementioned article:

Surviving the world’s highest inflation rate is resulting in people ditching their professions and embarking on work, which they had never previously considered. Mavis, a qualified nursery teacher, has swapped her life as an educator for that of a sexworker and now cruises for clients in the upmarket hotels of the capital Harare.

"I am a professionally trained infant teacher, but last year I decided to quit the profession as the money that I was earning was not adequate to sustain myself,” she told IRIN.

"If I was still working as a school teacher, I would be earning just over Z$300,000 (US$7.5 at the parallel exchange rate of Z$40,000 to US$1) a month, but now, I can charge as much as Z$500,000 (US$12.5) per night regardless of whether the client wants my services for a short while or for the whole night."

Mavis said that the majority of her clients were married men, who had to get home to their wives. "When clients cannot be with me for a long time, I can double my earnings in a single night,” she said.

There are some clients who demand to have unsafe sex and even offer to pay more but I insist on the use of condoms or cancel the transaction," Mavis said. More than 5,000 teachers failed to report for duty when schools opened for the new term two weeks ago.

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*Note the abovementioned excerpts are direct quotes from the article and thus all credit and references should be afforded to the authors/sources.