Are prostitute killers back?

               Commercial sex worker           Photo: africanewspost.com

It is late in the evening. Darkness envelops, covering the city - slowly, like a blanket.

In Mathare North Area 4, Linet Akinyi, a 24-year-old commercial sex worker is applying make-up. I am seated on the bed and can feel the wooden railing press into my bones through the thin mattress.

“Hold this for me,” she instructs, thrusting a broken piece of mirror at me. Staring at it with rapt attention, she traces an arc right where her eyebrows should be.

She grabs the mirror from my hand and inspects herself. She seems satisfied with her efforts. She places the broken mirror and her make-up kit on a stool near the bed.

Red hair band

Linet is dressed in figure hugging red trousers and a shimmering lacy black top. Her hair is knotted severely at the back of her head with a red hair band.

She picks a huge handbag from a nail on the wall. We leave her house and head to town. Since there still could be traffic, we branch into Imani Bar in Mathare North Area 2 for a quick drink.

It is 8.30pm when we hit the Thika Superhighway, heading to town. On a normal day, Linet leaves her house at about 9.30pm.  Today is no normal day. I am treating her to dinner and we will hang out together as she goes about her business, peddling sex in Nairobi bars. She agreed to let me tail her, after I told her I would highlight the plight of prostitutes who meet killer clients. Linet has lost two friends. One just disappeared. The other was found strangled in a city lodging. We encounter the usual traffic bottleneck getting into the city. I park near Jevanjee Gardens. We walk into a popular eatery along Kimathi Street.

Linet never pounds the streets looking for clients. She has a base of operations. Fameland Bar along Duruma road. There are cheap lodgings metres away.

“Nowadays, we don’t go to men’s houses. I have an arrangement with three different lodges around my work place. They know me. I would rather starve than get into a man’s car. I might end up dead like my friend,” she says over fish and ugali.

Prostitutes fear ‘wazungus’

Prostitutes, she reveals, are especially wary of wazungu clients. Fear has engulfed the prostitution business, she says.

“If we can’t walk into his hotel, I am not getting into a car with him. If it’s a taxi, I call the taxi drivers I know,” she says.

At 9.50pm, we head down to Fameland bar, a cramped poorly lit joint. The seats are hard. The tables are covered with Guinness branded canvas. The dance floor has mirrors affixed on the wall. It’s too early in the night and the place is near empty. Girls trickle in, one by one.

“Nyakio was picked by a well-dressed man. He wore specs. Her body was found the next day at a lodging in Ngara,” says Linet.

She secures a table for us at the bar, then places her bag inside the DJs booth. “The man came here in January. He left with a new tiny girl. I didn’t know her very well. She was called Shish, I think,” says, Linet after ordering for a Snapp.

“That girl has never been seen since. In February, the man came back. He is tall and dark. He went with Nyakio. She was found strangled. That’s when other girls here started piercing the pieces together. If that man comes back, we will call the police,” she says, staring into space.

“It’s not just Fameland. Currently, it seems every bar with girls, has had cases of a missing woman, or a girl found dead,” says Linet.

She drifts off, eyes staring vacantly into the distance.

Prostitute killers seem to come and go in seasons, she says. In April 2010, eight hookers were murdered in Thika town in a period of two months.  The suspected killer was arrested 250kilometres in Kisii town. Philip Onyancha.

His alleged eighth victim in Thika was Jackline Wambui.

Wambui’s mother, Margaret Nduta, says her daughter left home on a Sunday afternoon. Their home is at Gatukuyu, nearly 20 kilometres from Thika town. Two days later, Nduta was informed that her 25-year-old daughter had been murdered. Her body was found naked, her neck broken.

“There is a season for these killings. For the last two years, there haven’t been any cases. I think the season is back,” says Linet, eyes glazed. She is on her fifth drink, my tab.

Wrapped in a bedsheet

In the same month, at Mbuthia Bar in Huruma, three prostitutes were killed. Anna Mueni was found dead in a lodging nearby. She was naked. A bed sheet was twisted round her neck. Another prostitute was found dead in a culvert near a German clinic on the boundary between Huruma and Mathare.

Osama, a bartender at Imani Bar in Mathare, remembers the three deaths.

“They all happened within a month. There were rumours that one man was involved in all the deaths. Unfortunately, the police never take such deaths seriously. It’s probably because no one follows up,” says Osama.

A few days before Wambui was killed, Helen Nyambura was found dead in a Thika Lodging. Her neck was broken.  In the same month, four prostitutes were found dead in lodgings in Majengo slums.

Officers from Shauri Moyo, who visited both scenes, found used condoms next to the bodies.

All the five prostitutes were strangled to death.