RUA da Araujo in Maputo, Mozambique, bustles with young, skimpily-clad women every evening.
RUA da Araujo in Maputo, Mozambique, bustles with young, skimpily-clad women every evening.
By 11 o' clock every night, Sophia* joins a group of more than 100 young sex workers scattered all over the sidewalks of the street and finds a perfect spot where "potential customers will get a good look at my curves".
Sophia, 21, charges 500meticais (R178 ) per sexual encounter , or 1500mt (R500 ) overnight, which tourists, truckers, businessmen and ordinary men are willing to part with.
Sophia is one of many young girls who have had to drop out of high school after being kicked out of their parents' houses for falling pregnant out of wedlock .
She left her home to join tens of thousands of unemployed youth in Mozambique, a country whose 25million population suffered a 17% unemployment rate in 2007, according to the CIA World Fact-book estimates.
Ever since, she has had to earn profits from innumerable sexual encounters to pay her landlord while also raising her 2-year-old daughter.
Fernando Mbadze, a father and religious leader of the Igreja Zion Apostolic Union Church of Mozambique in Femento township, Matola, said it is "common practice" for a father to tell her pregnant daughter to leave the house if the child is conceived out of wedlock.
"For most families, it becomes a problem when one day a girl child comes back home pregnant despite being unmarried. Only a few families can forgive an unmarried girl who brings home a child that has to be supported by her parents," he said.
Sophia fell pregnant at 19 while living at her father's house in Machava township.
She was given an ultimatum to take her child to its father and come back home or leave the house indefinitely. "I refused to give away my baby. My ex-boyfriend refused to take responsibility anyway. I had to find other ways to make a living as I couldn't find a job."
Most of the girls Sophia works with are in a similar situation. Nema*, 24, and Neyde*, 25, proudly proclaimed that they are "masters of our own households".
Their families in Baone town kicked them out when they fell pregnant and they now rent rooms outside Matola town where they live with their children.
Elsa Alfai, spokeswoman for the ministry of women and social affairs, said the tendency of young women to sell their bodies to support their offspring was prevalent in the capital cities of Mozambique's 11 provinces.
She said the ministry had developed social protection programmes to alleviate their plight.
*Not their real names.
For more stories like this one, be sure to buy the Sowetan newspaper from Mondays to Fridays
'Forced' into prostitution - chased from homes into streets
RUA da Araujo in Maputo, Mozambique, bustles with young, skimpily-clad women every evening.
RUA da Araujo in Maputo, Mozambique, bustles with young, skimpily-clad women every evening.
By 11 o' clock every night, Sophia* joins a group of more than 100 young sex workers scattered all over the sidewalks of the street and finds a perfect spot where "potential customers will get a good look at my curves".
Sophia, 21, charges 500meticais (R178 ) per sexual encounter , or 1500mt (R500 ) overnight, which tourists, truckers, businessmen and ordinary men are willing to part with.
Sophia is one of many young girls who have had to drop out of high school after being kicked out of their parents' houses for falling pregnant out of wedlock .
She left her home to join tens of thousands of unemployed youth in Mozambique, a country whose 25million population suffered a 17% unemployment rate in 2007, according to the CIA World Fact-book estimates.
Ever since, she has had to earn profits from innumerable sexual encounters to pay her landlord while also raising her 2-year-old daughter.
Fernando Mbadze, a father and religious leader of the Igreja Zion Apostolic Union Church of Mozambique in Femento township, Matola, said it is "common practice" for a father to tell her pregnant daughter to leave the house if the child is conceived out of wedlock.
"For most families, it becomes a problem when one day a girl child comes back home pregnant despite being unmarried. Only a few families can forgive an unmarried girl who brings home a child that has to be supported by her parents," he said.
Sophia fell pregnant at 19 while living at her father's house in Machava township.
She was given an ultimatum to take her child to its father and come back home or leave the house indefinitely. "I refused to give away my baby. My ex-boyfriend refused to take responsibility anyway. I had to find other ways to make a living as I couldn't find a job."
Most of the girls Sophia works with are in a similar situation. Nema*, 24, and Neyde*, 25, proudly proclaimed that they are "masters of our own households".
Their families in Baone town kicked them out when they fell pregnant and they now rent rooms outside Matola town where they live with their children.
Elsa Alfai, spokeswoman for the ministry of women and social affairs, said the tendency of young women to sell their bodies to support their offspring was prevalent in the capital cities of Mozambique's 11 provinces.
She said the ministry had developed social protection programmes to alleviate their plight.
*Not their real names.
For more stories like this one, be sure to buy the Sowetan newspaper from Mondays to Fridays
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