A story told by Vanessa Klass 1 to Elsa Oliveira. It was after I gave birth to my daughter in that I began to work as a sex worker in Hillbrow 2 , an inner-city suburb of Johannesburg. I was a seventeen-year-old single mother in a family of ten people.
Life was very hard for all of us. I knew that I needed to find a way provide for my daughter. I wanted to find work that would offer me the opportunity to earn enough money so that my family- and I- no longer had to live under the stressful conditions in which we found ourselves. I prayed so much during those days. I prayed for work; I prayed for an opportunity to improve my life; I prayed that my child would not have to live without food or an education; I prayed for all things that would relieve myself- and my family- from the hardships that we were experiencing.
About a year after my child was born, a friend of mine came over to my house with information about a job opportunity in Johannesburg.
She said that I could work at a hotel in Hillbrow, and that I could earn a lot of money. At the time, I lived with my family in a rural area outside of Pretoria, about two hours away from Johannesburg. The decision to pursue work in Hillbrow, meant that I had to leave them all behind- including my daughter- and this was not easy. But, I was eager to earn an income so I decided to travel to Johannesburg in order to find out what the job opportunity was all about.
When I arrived in Hillbrow I learned that my friend was a sex worker. This is what she did to make big money. I did not know that this is what she did for work. I thought that I was going to work as a hotel maid, but when I arrived my friend took me to the hotel where she worked and it was then that she explained to me that she sold sold sex for a living.
