At 11am every day, Mariam abandons everything she is doing and leaves her room to join a gathering of peers outside backstreet rooms behind one of the popular drinking joints at Lower Biwi in Lilongwe.
If she does not show up on time, her phone will ceaselessly ring until she sets off for the meeting.
If she dares ignore the calls, someone will bang her door until she responds.
“That is part of the daily routines here,” she says. “You just have to attend the meetings because they are important.”
The meeting is not sanctioned by the managers of such backstreet lodge who collect daily rentals for the rooms around the same time.
These women initiated the savings and loans group to surmount the inconsistencies associated with sex work.
“Every day, we have to pay rentals for our rooms. It does not matter whether you are broke. If you don’t pay, you’ll be kicked out, leaving your belongings behind,” says Mariam.
The daily contributions guarantee them access to soft loans when they need it most.
“On a dry day, we don’t have to worry about money,” she says.
The daily meetings also foster togetherness among people who sometimes fight over customers, sometimes wounding each other
The appointed coordinator sees to it that everyone pays up as required.
She also transfers the funds electronically to members who might have migrated to other business hotspots.
Mariam belongs to three village banks to cushion herself from financial hardship.
She has never been kicked out of her K10 000-per-day room.
Miriam states: “In one group, each member contributes K10 000 daily and the money is immediately sent to the chosen recipient. It goes like that until we complete the cycle and start all over again.
“In the second, each contributes K10 000 weekly, but we share the money equally at the end of the year. In between, both members and outsiders borrow from our bank account and pay back with interest. Outsiders have to present collateral worth the amount they are supposed to pay back.”
The third group is a welfare fund where Miriam contributes K2 000 daily. This saving provides interest-free bailout loans for sex workers at risk of eviction for not paying up.
“We share the money equally at the end of the year,” she says.
There are similar initiatives at the famous bars and lodges in Mzuzu Old Town where members contribute K1000 to K15 000 daily in readiness for dry days.
Besides cushioning their erratic business, the communal savings provide an easy source of sustainable capital for businesses, especially for those intending to quit sex work for sustainable livelihoods.
“We’ve to invest wisely because we know we cannot be in sex work forever,” says Grace, a member of Miriam’s group. “Younger beginners tend to push old timers out.”
After receiving her first share, Grace sent the money to her mother in Luchenza Town who open a grocery shop.
“My mother runs the business and the people back home no longer pester me to send them money for relish and other basic needs,” she brags.
And she benefits too.
“When I’m broke, I ask mom to send me some money,” Grace says.
In Mzuzu, Shyreen buys wrappers and kitchenware from Taifa Market for sale in her village in Salima. At times, her relatives exchange them with maize for sale and invest the money in stable businesses.
Just like that, these women can afford a break from sex work. They just hang around to attend the daily meetings.
“I go to the village periodically, mostly around the festive season for some rest,” says Shyreen. “This is an opportunity to oversee some of my businesses and see my child.”
Agnes, from Mkanda in Mchinji, migrated to Lilongwe and ventured into sex work because her schoolmate bought a piece of land at the nearby trading centre.
“After disappearing for a while, she returned home to build a house that she is letting out,” says Agnes, who quit school in Form One.
Last December, the young woman, who felt shunned by potential suitors because she is “cute”, bought a plot in her village after receiving K3.5 million from the savings groups.
She plans to build a rest house on the land she bought.
But before going back to fulfil that dream, there will be time for members of the groups to gather and party after a year of hard, cushioning the business from inconsistencies and creating attractive investments out of it.
