Shiro's story illustrates an altogether more complex phenomenon - the exchange of youth and beauty for long-term financial gain, motivated not by hunger but by aspiration, glamorised by social media stars, and often wrapped in the trappings of a relationship. In exchange, he gets to sleep with Shiro whenever he feels like it.Įva's experience is transactional sex in its most unvarnished form - a hurried one-off encounter, driven by desperation. Another two years down the line, he gave Shiro a plot of land in Nyeri county as a show of commitment. Two years into their relationship, the man moved her into a new apartment because he wanted her to be more comfortable.
Six years ago, when she was at university, Shiro met a married man nearly 40 years her senior. After 10 minutes in a dingy alley, Eva went back to Kitengela with 1,000 Kenyan shillings to feed herself for the rest of the month. She used the remaining 100 Kenyan shillings she had in her wallet and took a bus to the city centre, where she looked for the first man who would pay to have sex with her. Eva, a 19-year-old student at Nairobi Aviation College, was sitting in her tiny room in shared quarters in Kitengela feeling broke, hungry, and desperate.
