Government Camp, Sinoe County – 23-year-old Mary Musu lives in a tiny motel room here in this mining town in Bokon Township, Sinoe County.
She is neither a miner, nor a legal businesswoman, and her name is not really Mary Musu. She is a prostitute and prefers a false name due to the stigma she faces in Liberia, where selling sex for money is illegal.
“When you enter here that’s ‘money for hand, back for ground.’ If you don’t pay me you can’t touch me,” says Musu matter-of-factly. “You will pay me before I naked myself in front of you.”
Musu pays LD400 per day for the motel room, where she lives and works. Day and night miners, many of whom are a long way from home and separated from their wives and girlfriends, and ordinary men from the community, can be seen entering the rooms occupied by Mary and other prostitutes. Musu sleeps with an average of 10 men a day and says she uses condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections.
“I can charge LD500 for short time. When the day is good, I can get about LD$8,000, sometimes LD$9,000,” Musu says.
“For now things are hard on Government Camp. “
“When we hustle like that on Sundays, the highest money we get is L$4,000, sometimes L$3,000.” She charges LD$1,500 for night if she has slept with other men L$3,500 if she hasn’t.
“Wrestlers on the Wrestle”
In late 2016 Musu boarded a car from Monrovia to Greenville and then rode on a motorcycle for three hours before stopping in Government Camp.
This was where she started having sex for money. Many like her have followed and call themselves “wrestlers on the wrestle.” Their presence is the reason why this part of Sinoe is called “city in the forest.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” says Joseph Geah, a 24-year-old mineworker.
“They have hopojoes where we can go to and pay money and do things with them,” says Joseph Geah, a 24-year-old mineworker.
(Hopojoes is a Liberian slang for prostitute).
“I know where to go and get them when I want to,” says Dennis Ponney, 35, also a mineworker.
“If you want to free yourself, they are here. I go to the motel to free myself. I can pay L$400 to free myself. Through the gold work I can get money to free myself.”
Government Camp, established in the 1930s, is one of the oldest mining towns in Liberia. Local legend has it that the camp gained its name because President William V.S. Tubman mined there in the 1960s.
Built on a hill, Government Camp retains its mining profile today. It has a population of 10,000 people and has 15 Class ‘C’ license holders for small scale or artisanal mining and a lone Class ‘B’ license holder for middle scale mining, according to a local office of the Ministry of Land, Mines and Energy.
According to the Ministry of Lands, Mines and Energy, it is the setting of the very first mineral development agreement signed between the Government of Liberia and any company in the country.
The entire southeastern belt is recognized by the Mines Ministry to have a huge potential for gold, especially the Bokon-Jaedae area.
Prostitution is a first-degree misdemeanor under the Liberian law and has a maximum penalty of one year imprisonment for a first offense and at least five years for a second offense.
Local officials in Government Camp say they are aware of the prostitution there but claim it is difficult to stop.
“There are places where they live and the men go there and pay money,” says Commissioner Abraham Dennis of Bokon Township.
“We have invited those who have those places and told them. But when you say stop they say they are not doing it, and before somebody go to court you need to prove that they are doing it.”
Commissioner Dennis’ quarter is just a block away from the simple five-room motel where Musu and other young women live.
There is a single bathroom and a corresponding living room for the women who live there. The windows in each room are tiny, just to allow light and air in.
Musu’s clothes hang on a nice wall rack and on lines on the front and real walls.
A small table next to her bed is filled with cosmetics. Several men come in, entering their preferred rooms. Some are miners and businessmen.
An elderly man arrives late in the evening and goes straight into Musu’s room.
Survival
While the law and government officials see Musu as a criminal, she says she’s only a victim of circumstances.
A woman encouraged her to travel from Monrovia to Grand Kru County to start trading coconuts but left her there with no money and Musu had to fend for himself.
Musu says she grew up in the Monrovia suburb of Brewerville. She is a sixth grade dropout and has a daughter who stays with a friend in Grand Kru. She grew up with her father and has never seen her mother.
“The reason why I didn’t stay long in school is because of my parents, let’s say my stepmother,” she explains.
“Any time for test was when they used to put me out. That was the only time my school fees dog used to hold me. If it was my mother I was living with, I was not coming to reach this far.”
Musu does not want her daughter to know that she is a prostitute, because she doesn’t want her to consider doing it when she grows up.
She says she visits her daughter often. “She will not do it because I will not continue it. She will not meet me inside it. If I bring her here, she will pick up it.”
Gender equity
The Township of Bokon has tried to help women to leave the street, Commissioner Dennis says, but the women are not interested.
“On many occasions I have invited them here and they say they don’t have money and they don’t have job. We try to talk to them.”
“There are some other people who want to give them job to cook on the field but they are not in the position to do it. Maybe they get more money from what they do,” Commissioner Dennis says.
The county officer of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection says she is aware of what is going on in Government Camp. She says it just does not have the funding or support to do something about it.
Sinoe County Gender Coordinator Julie Decontee Jilly Teteh says that there is prostitution in Government Camp and elsewhere in the county but says that is not unique to the county.
“Even in Monrovia, where the Gender Ministry’s head office is situated, prostitution rate is also on the increase there,” she says, blaming women from Monrovia and other parts of the country for bringing prostitution to Government Camp.
“Some of them can pass and go to Government Camp because Government Camp is a mining area and they have most of these guys who have money because they are mining,” she affirms.
Teteh says she is disappointed that after more than a decade of gender activism some women are still earning a living through selling their bodies.
“Before, we preached gender equality but now we are preaching gender equity because the information is going all around that men, women, boys and girls have the same, equal rights. Women should start taking the opportunity of equity,” she says. If you are a woman and you are not empowered…frustration can lead you to [prostitution].
“If we had funding we could go to [Government Camp] for awareness, talking to the young girls that that is not the only means of surviving.”
The women here say they know about gender equity but women’s rights are not putting food in their stomachs. Musu says there is no dignity in the work she does. She plans to save enough money and go back to Monrovia for a new beginning.
“Now, now when I get L$500,000, I will move from here.” When I get that money, I am going straight to Monrovia rent my room and put myself in school. If that’s pepper and bitter boy (garden eggs), I will sell it to support me and my daughter.”
This story was produced by James Harding Giahyue. It was written as part of a media skills development program run by the Thomson Reuters Foundation and New Narratives, and funded by German Cooperation. The funder had no influence on the story’s content
