Five women stand holding hands in a dark and spacious hall in Jamestown, double doors open to the sea air outside. Gloria, out of breath from lateness but with energy coursing through her veins, leads a prayer and the women fall silent. The focus ball is passed from each to each as they make their introductions: Susana, Gloria, Esther and Patience. And then me: the obruni, the sore thumb, the one who feels privileged to be there.
Susana, our facilitator, in a commanding outfit of head to toe purple, introduces the first game: zip, zap, boing. Excellent. I am a demon at zip, zap, boing. Gloria zips when she should have zapped, she lets out a cackle and runs loops around the circle. Her daughter, infected by the activity, begins running too. Baby Fiona, tied casually to Esther's back, lets out a giggle. Great joy.
The scene- minus the children- is a familiar one: I have zipped and zapped with the best of them over the years. I even found myself embroiled in a giant game of 'West Country' zip, zap, boing outside the Rutland Pub in Hammersmith once upon a Boat Race day. I was tempted to introduce the women to it but feared it would not translate: the women all speak Twi and they have never even come close to the West Country. It is a far cry from the lives they lead as sex workers living in the largest illegal settlement in Accra.
These women form a part of the 'Peace and Love Club': the name they themselves chose to represent Theatre for a Change's pilot programme working with ten sex workers from the Old Fadama community. The programme adopted a four-step approach to support the improved health and rights of these women: behaviour change, advocacy, access to service provision and economic empowerment. Through the facilitation of Susana and a male colleague, all three women here today have completed the programme. Esther is tall, slim and of model-esque beauty. Her focus is whole heartedly on the workshop but each noise from baby Fiona gives rise to a smile that speaks volumes of love for her child. Gloria was a late starter: she joined the Peace and Love Club seven months ago at the encouragement of the other women and she is an absolute asset. She is paired with me during the group activities and her English is impeccable. I tell her so. She is elated. Patience is petite and immaculately presented: hair sitting obediently beneath a pink hairband, toes polished with precision. Her eyes are alive with character. She is enchanting.
Patience's spark speaks nothing of the hardship she has lived through. She was thirteen when she entered sex work. She fell in love young, became pregnant and her partner disowned her. As with so many of her companions, prostitution was a critical bid to provide for her child. Her dream is to set up a small business but mostly to do anything that will allow her to leave the brothel and send her son to school. Today that goal grows ever closer: alongside Gloria and Esther, Patience is training for her new role as a peer facilitator. Tomorrow twenty new sex workers embark on the four-step programme and these three women, the women who have lived it, will be the ones taking the lead. Together the group will realise, explore and define their rights as sex workers but also as women.
This is the one zip, zap, boing that could change things. And they are the change they want to see.
Susana, our facilitator, in a commanding outfit of head to toe purple, introduces the first game: zip, zap, boing. Excellent. I am a demon at zip, zap, boing. Gloria zips when she should have zapped, she lets out a cackle and runs loops around the circle. Her daughter, infected by the activity, begins running too. Baby Fiona, tied casually to Esther's back, lets out a giggle. Great joy.
The scene- minus the children- is a familiar one: I have zipped and zapped with the best of them over the years. I even found myself embroiled in a giant game of 'West Country' zip, zap, boing outside the Rutland Pub in Hammersmith once upon a Boat Race day. I was tempted to introduce the women to it but feared it would not translate: the women all speak Twi and they have never even come close to the West Country. It is a far cry from the lives they lead as sex workers living in the largest illegal settlement in Accra.
These women form a part of the 'Peace and Love Club': the name they themselves chose to represent Theatre for a Change's pilot programme working with ten sex workers from the Old Fadama community. The programme adopted a four-step approach to support the improved health and rights of these women: behaviour change, advocacy, access to service provision and economic empowerment. Through the facilitation of Susana and a male colleague, all three women here today have completed the programme. Esther is tall, slim and of model-esque beauty. Her focus is whole heartedly on the workshop but each noise from baby Fiona gives rise to a smile that speaks volumes of love for her child. Gloria was a late starter: she joined the Peace and Love Club seven months ago at the encouragement of the other women and she is an absolute asset. She is paired with me during the group activities and her English is impeccable. I tell her so. She is elated. Patience is petite and immaculately presented: hair sitting obediently beneath a pink hairband, toes polished with precision. Her eyes are alive with character. She is enchanting.
Patience's spark speaks nothing of the hardship she has lived through. She was thirteen when she entered sex work. She fell in love young, became pregnant and her partner disowned her. As with so many of her companions, prostitution was a critical bid to provide for her child. Her dream is to set up a small business but mostly to do anything that will allow her to leave the brothel and send her son to school. Today that goal grows ever closer: alongside Gloria and Esther, Patience is training for her new role as a peer facilitator. Tomorrow twenty new sex workers embark on the four-step programme and these three women, the women who have lived it, will be the ones taking the lead. Together the group will realise, explore and define their rights as sex workers but also as women.
This is the one zip, zap, boing that could change things. And they are the change they want to see.