With the stigma around female sex-work remaining widespread today, it comes as no surprise that prostitution has been a largely unexplored and misunderstood area of African history. The Comforts of Home uses oral history to foreground the experiences, agency, and financial independence of female prostitutes in colonial Nairobi in the period 1899 to 1963.
Whilst prostitution is one of the recurring themes of world history – the “world’s oldest profession” in the popular imagination, as coined by Rudyard Kipling in 1889 – there are marked regional differences in its role, functioning, and perception across different societies. What distinguishes sex-work in colonial Nairobi from Europe and America, Luise White argues, is that there were never any pimps in Kenya. This enabled Kenya’s female sex workers to have a comparatively greater degree of self-reliance, enabling them to control their own earnings and manage their relationships with customers as they wished. Although some struggled to make ends meet, White’s research highlights that many earnt enough money to purchase property and become landlords, subsidise their families’ farms, or invest in livestock. In the absence of formal employment opportunities, White explains, “women saw prostitution as a reliable means of capital accumulation, not as a despicable fate or a temporary strategy” (1-2).
Whereas the history of sex-work in the West typically concerns itself with themes of pimp-domination, victimisation, moral depravity, criminalisation, pollution, and public health, White’s pioneering work on gender and labour relations in colonial Nairobi shifts the focus onto women’s earnings. This book contextualises sex work within the framework of family labour and capitalism, examining the complex relationship between female sex-work and male wage labour. Specifically, it traces the shifts and interrelationships between three kinds of prostitution among women in Nairobi i) the watembezi or street-walkers, who solicit men in public spaces ii) the malaya or indoor practitioners, the urban tenants who entertain men in the privacy of their own apartments, which included the performance of non-sexual activities like cooking and iii) the wazi-wazi, the women who waited for customers outsider their rooms, were selective about who they invited inside, and rarely performed non-sexual activities. These women generally did not desire to “escape” sex-work, as is usually assumed; they simply desired to make money.
Situated in British colonial Africa, White’s research reveals the distinctly colonial character of sex-work in Nairobi during the First and Second World Wars, a period of heightened interracial intermixing. Prostitution, White concludes, thrived in Nairobi because the colonial state lacked control. Sex-work and its characteristics mapped onto urban geographies, with certain neighbourhoods being known as “hotspots” because of their proximity to particular male labourer populations. Despite sex-work being at odds with the colonial laws that sought to eradicate the practice, it was European men who were known for paying higher prices than Indian and African customers. Some young female sex-workers purposefully went to Government Road where they sought out white men for protection. In a few instances, female sex workers even exploited their relationships with European men to learn about legal documentation and secure themselves accommodation, which they then went on to use to increase the efficiency and profitability of their businesses.
The Comforts of Home is, therefore, a seminal piece of intersectional analysis about sex-work and a valuable contribution to the historiography of Kenya. These intimate histories reveal much about the power dynamics in colonial Nairobi at large. Published in 1990, White makes a convincing case for the importance of studying the interrelated phenomena of sex-work, gender, homeownership, labour, and colonial urban management in Nairobi.
Cover image: “Then – Historic Nairobi City Map 1933”, Historical Postcards of Kenya, https://www.oldeastafricapostcards.com/nairobi/map-nairobi-then/.
Carissa Chew 