Challenging assumptions

As I sat alone on the plane to Colombia I was nervous but excited to explore a country that few people associate with more than cocaine trafficking and Shakira. I was coming to work with a highly stigmatised and marginalised community: sex workers.

My first experience on the street was one I’ll never forget. We strolled down, a group of five young women, from a comfortable residential area into the neglected and decaying prostitution zone just 10 blocks away in order to talk to some of the girls in a brothel about STIs. We aimed to talk to them about the risks associated with prostitution, to help them work more safely and encourage the idea of other options. I have to admit I was initially a bit useless but I had to start somewhere.

Paola, the street outreach co-ordinator, brought us to a brothel called ‘California’ with a busty blonde girl on the front. We entered via a back entrance and I felt uncomfortable, having never been in a brothel before and not knowing how the girls would react or what I should say to them. I tried to look relaxed.

We were taken upstairs where there was a bar, adorned with a mounted moose-head, seedy lighting, a stage and garish disco lights dancing around the room (despite it being 2pm and the windows being open). The girls trickled upstairs, about 10 or 15 in total. Some of them really were girls, although it was illegal to work under the age of 18. I didn’t want to be shocked by what they were wearing but I couldn’t help it - a huge girl appeared in little more than her underwear and most wore only slightly more than that. We split into groups and sat on the sofas after some of the girls had got drinks from the bar and we had politely declined.

While I mostly just sat and tried to make appropriate expressions, Paola went through the leaflet we had, explained the stages of syphilis and talked explicitly about ways to prostitute more safely. She asked the girls if they put the condom on the man themselves, to which the smallest girl said she did. I’d been watching her until then and I realised I had been trying to deny that she was a prostitute. This comment made it all too real. After we finished up, they all politely thanked us but then it was back to business. We left and wandered through the streets. Every single window, doorway and alley had four or five sex workers hanging out of it: some transvestite, some women, some old, some young, some fat and some in very ridiculous outfits; all selling their bodies.