Khensy

MY LIFE IN MUSINA VOLUME KHENSY

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I started working in Musina in 2003 as a coordinator for a project. Musina is a location situated along the Beitbridge border. The Town is almost always busy and over populated by internal and external migrats crossing the South Africa and Zimbabwe border.

About 100 trucks pass Musina using the N1 Roads.

My job was to promote health and talk about HIV/ AIDS and STIs and distribution of condoms. Most of people living in Musina are not citizens of Musina.

The people move to Musina because of mining and other job opportunities.

Life was good were people could sleep outside and move during the night without fearing anything. Only magoumagouma’s are around at the border areas.

Most of people are not educated because some are running awat from their country due to different issues and or certain reasons.

I didn’t know how I was going to manage to bring the food on the table. I visited my friend and she told me about sex work.

In 2003 my mother passed away and life started to be difficult because she used to take care of my kids. Now my children need to go to crèche.

VOLUME

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KHENSY

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1. I was born in Mamelodi Nursing Home. I grew up there until I was 12 years old.

2. There were strikes and this disturbed our ability to go to school. My parents decided to take us to my grandmother’s place in Venda. Venda is a small rural village composed of mud houses. I was not used to staying in the single houses with mud. My granny used to cook only vegetables.

My mother would send biltong and dry bread but we were only given it once. The rest was given to her own child.

3. I was scared but there was nothing that I could do.

4. This is the post office where I used to save my money. The money is from sex work. Even though I volunteered as a peer educator most of the money that I earned was from sex work that I did everyday 5. The office where I am working.

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6. I used to play with boys when I was little and most of the time I would wear trousers and play like a boy.

7. In sex work sometimes we do sex work with condoms. I got STIs and go to the HCT clinic. At this clinic the nurses would call me names and tell me to bring my partner. I told them that I don’t have a partner and they refuse to give me treatment. The following month I went in for testing and because they need stats they asked me questions although I never told them that I was a sex worker.

8. This is the main gravel road that I use to go to work.

Sometimes I use it at night as well because there is a bridge that takes me to my sex work location.

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