W earing a tight red dress, a sex worker walks across the petrol station forecourt to talk to a driver in an idling long-haul truck. Levels of unemployment are high in urban areas of the country and, despite handing out hundreds of CVs after leaving school, Julia says she had no choice but to work on the streets. These are areas that are associated with rapid economic growth and high levels of migration and mobility, all of which act as a catalyst for transactional sex.
Despite these increased risks, Malumbe says many sex workers are still willing to have unprotected sex if their clients offer to pay double. So tonight, as she has done every night for the past couple of years, Malumbe and her colleagues walk around the periphery of the petrol station and talk to the dozen or so sex workers waiting for clients.
To gain their confidence, Malumbe pretends to be one of them. Every few minutes a truck pulls into the station which straddles the EN2 highway leading from the capital to South Africa and Swaziland. Some of the drivers pull over for a beer at one of the ramshackle barracas ; others are here purely for sex. I tell them their bodies are their livelihood, and so they have to take care of themselves. Abavamo not only hands out condoms and femidoms to the women, but also teaches them how to negotiate safe sex with men.
And, if a client cannot be convinced, then there are strategies for that too. But Julia also sees the femidom as a symbol of empowerment. In early November, the Mozambican government issued a press release announcing the findings of a new survey of miners and truckers.
It appears to vindicate the efforts of Abavamo to educate sex workers about the need to take responsibility for their own health. The survey revealed that three in four truckers had never received any prevention material. Following her divorce, and with no formal education, she says sex work was the only way to support her six children. Despite a new awareness of HIV and Aids among the women working beside the EN2, there remains a large gap between knowledge and a change in behaviour.
