You might feel the title of this piece is sensationalistic and far-fetched. Sex for N200 or less? If you don’t believe this, it’s either you don’t live in Lagos or if you do, you walk around with your ears and eyes wide shut!
I was driving leisurely with a friend a while back when the conversation turned to prostitutes and associated matters. Before you criticize me to death, lemme defend myself abeg! We switched topics after we saw one slutty looking female, who was practically bursting out of her dress, getting into a cab, ostensibly going to meet a potential customer. After ogling her till we drove past, (yes, I admit we did) we began swapping stories on prostitutes. My friend (I won’t mention his name lest I get my nuts kicked in!) told me of how cheap and abundant sex is in Kuramo beach. ‘The ashis there are so cheap,’ he informed me, ‘you can get laid for two hundred bucks!’
I stomped on the brakes so hard, we would have been launched through the windscreen if we hadn’t been wearing seatbelts. ‘TWO HUNDRED NAIRA’, I yelled, looking at him like he just told me I won a lottery. (Don’t get any funny ideas, I wasn’t thinking of consorting with them!) ‘How do you know?’ I asked him, calm enough to get the car moving again. He looked at me in amusement, ‘did you just come to Lagos? You don’t know about the ashis in Kuramo?’
I had heard about them, but I had no idea of what their price regime was like. He proceeded to educate me on the activities that take place in the beach especially at night. The gist was so fantastic and sordid; the ‘investigative’ instinct in me started tingling. I resolved to go on a reconnaissance mission the very next day. Alone, of course! (Yes, I’m brave like that!)
On D-Day (or N-Night), I got all my gear and drove to Kuramo beach in Victoria Island. H-Hour was 9pm. My friend, during the intel briefing, had informed me that things started heating up at the beach at that hour and I wanted to observe the whole show from the beginning to the end.
I parked my car in a vacant spot and had hardly killed the engine when I was mobbed by some rough looking fellows who informed me that they were in charge of the parking lot and I had to pay N200 to park my jalopy there. I looked at their wild eyes and scarred faces and my ‘Lagos Sense’ told me to pay up without complaining if I wanted to see my car again. I got to the ‘gate’, which was an empty oil drum which another set of ruffians had placed across the path into the beach, and I was told I had to pay a ‘gate fee’ of N200 again. This set of touts looked like PhD holders in ‘urban street-fighting’ so I dipped my hand into my pocket and luckily I had a N200 note there so I paid and got a ‘receipt’. I didn’t want to imagine asking them for change for a N1000 note!
On entering the beach, which was filled with people, I was nearly knocked down by a group of people who were trying to outdo each other in getting me to rent a tent and seats for my comfort. I finally picked one person who led me to a contraption which he was ‘willing’ to let me rent for N1,200 for the night! As I sputtered in disbelief and indignation at this ‘night-time’ robbery, he calmly informed me that they all had a fixed rate and I wouldn’t get it any cheaper elsewhere. We haggled for around 2 minutes before I got tired and agreed to pay him when I was leaving and thus we struck a deal. He caught me looking around and asked me if I wanted anything else. I asked for a bottle of Smirnoff Ice and he was going to get it for me when I had the presence of mind to ask him how much it was going to cost me. ‘Six hundred naira’, he informed me matter-of-factly. ‘Oga, how much for coke abeg?’ I asked, wishing I had an expense account to cover all these missions I undertake. ‘Two hundred’, he said, in a tone that suggested he thought I was cheap. I asked him to get the coke and reclined in my expensive seat, eyes darting around like I was Ibori and I heard the EFCC was in the area. The beach was filled with people eating and drinking, homeless people bedding down for the night, stray dogs and chickens and of course, prostitutes!
I know most prostitutes lack any iota of shame. Don’t ask me how I know, goddamnit, I just know, okay? Like I was saying, I know prostitutes don’t have any iota of shame, but these set were positively shamelessly shameless! I watched wide-eyed as they patrolled the beach, their feminine attachments protruding from their skimpy attires, looking for likely customers. They would sight some potential clients and swoop on them like dive-bombers, shoving their boobs in the faces of the guys and soliciting for a roll in the hay (or sand). I guess I didn’t look like a likely victim ‘cos I was nursing a bottle of coke and I was alone. They probably thought I was gay or something…
After an hour or so, my ‘landlord’ came back and engaged me in conversation. ‘Oga, you dey wait for person?’ He asked, planting himself in the seat beside me. I answered in the negative. ‘Shey make I arrange woman for you?’ He asked, like he was doing me a favour and I would have to be retarded like Yaradua’s Federal Executive Council to say no. I smiled inwardly, thinking how this fellow had made my mission easier. ‘Maybe,’ I said nonchalantly, ‘how much will that cost?’ He grinned, probably calculating how much he could swindle out of me before the night was over. ‘Oga, if you want short time inside room there,’ he said, pointing at some shacks some distance away, ‘you go pay one thousand for the gal plus five hundi for the room. If you no wan use the room, you go pay one two.’ I pressed for an explanation and he said the extra two hundred bucks was for the girl’s pimp who would watch over her while the act was going on to make sure she wasn’t cheated. When pressed further, he informed me that many girls had been laid in the past and the guys kicked the shit out of them when they were done and escaped without paying, thus the new arrangement…
After giving me all the info he felt he should in his bid to get me to order for some ‘woman flesh’, he reclined deeper in his seat (which he hired out to me at a ridiculous price. I should have told him to get the hell outta my seat) and fixed me with a gaze akin to how Turai glared at her numerous sons-in-law when she wanted something done quickly (When her husband’s corpse was still in power though). I almost swore at myself for putting myself in this predicament. This tent renter/pimp/reformed thug was waiting with mounting impatience for me to patronize him and while I didn’t have any intention of doing so, I wanted to leave this modern day version of Sodom and Gomorrah with all my valued body parts intact. The odds of my ‘Jason Statham-ing’ all the thugs on the beach and making a clean get-away were between 0 and -19,000,000!
‘Oya, find one clean girl for me.’ I said, causing him to flash me a 1000-watt grin. ‘But do fast because I wan do sharp sharp make I commot for here.’ He leered at me again and disappeared into the night while I checked my pockets to make sure I had enough funds to cover the risky plan I cooked up to save my hide.
He was back in less than 2 minutes, with a female in tow. She was not unattractive, though her stomach was a mite smaller than my dad’s who has been drinking beer for more than forty years. I guessed her age at anything between 21 and 27 years. She was around 5”5, light-skinned and was pretty curvy (yeah, the belly was part of the curves!)Without any preambles, she flopped into the seat beside me while her pimp leered at both of us and made me want to punch his lights out.
‘Oga, get her something to drink and bring my bill.’ I ordered, in a bid to get him the hell away from me. She demanded for a big bottle of Heineken and one grilled fish. Total cost: Around N2,500! I wondered if her patrons normally fed her before the act but wisdom prevailed and I refrained from asking the question out loud. I kept looking around and hoping no one I knew saw me her. The fella soon came back with the merchandise. I paid him off and he left, more than satisfied over the amount of money he had made from this ‘mugu’.
She tucked into the small whale with a fierceness that was downright scary. I sat back and watched her stuff her guts until she completely decimated the fish and sat back with a contented sigh, lighting a cigarette for dessert. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked, trying to break the ice. She dragged on the cigarette and turned to me, looking exactly like what she was; a goddamned prostitute. ‘Julie’, she replied. For all I knew, she changed her name on a daily basis but that wasn’t my goddamned business…
I engaged her in conversation, trying to extricate information on the activities that went on the beach at night. She initially appeared reluctant to spill her guts but after a few Wentworth Miller smiles; she was eating from my hands. It was pretty hard carrying on the conversation while one prostitute was performing oral sex on a man less than 20 yards away and another couple was fornicating in their tent a little distance away… The time was around 10pm and the air smelled of concentrated sin! You could hear moans and groans from different locations and if you strained your eyes, you could make out squirming bodies in the sand. It was hard not to gape at the sights around me and she grinned mischievously more than once, expecting that both of us were going to join the fornicators in a little bit.
She confirmed the rumour about prostitutes who sold their bodies for between N200 and N500. ‘Dose ones wey dey pass now,’ she said, pointing at two females who looked like they were fresh out of high school, ‘you fit f*** dem for two hundred. Na d ones wey just start dey spoil market for us. People wey dey come dis beach dey find dem pass because dem cheap. We go soon deal with them, no worry.’ She said, venom dripping from each word. I wasn’t worried about a civil war between prostitutes, as long as they didn’t do it while I was there. I knew her attention span was limited so I peppered her with question after question on her decision on prostitution as a career choice, the hazards of the profession, the highs and the lows and some others that I have either forgotten or I just can’t tell you.
She gave me the standard ‘maga’ yarn about her being a student of LASU and needing money for her upkeep. Aren’t you worried someone you know will see you? I asked and she shrugged her shoulders and kept quiet. She told me of prostitutes who had married their clients, especially dumb white fellas who were most likely ‘jazzed’ into doing so. She also told me of some who had lost their lives in the hands of ritual killers and policemen. Like I suspected, her attention span lasted all of 10 minutes and when I noticed that the whale she ate had digested and she was coming back to her senses, I forked over three thousand Naira and stood up without saying another word.
She looked at the money and then at me, first in confusion and then hostility. ‘Are you a journalist?’ She asked, making the first proper sentence all night. I feigned a hurt look. ‘Me? How can? I just have to rush home, they lock my gate at eleven and I forgot the time when I was talking to you. (Yes, I’m a smooth liar like that!) Give me your number, maybe I’ll call you soon so you can come to my house and see me.’ She called out her number and I pretended to be saving it on my phone while slowly retreating. I smiled one last time at and made my way to the parking lot. I gingerly made my way between and over a number of groping bodies in different stages of fornication and nudity. I managed to get to my car in one piece and was thrilled to see it in one piece. While I was trying to make my way out of the parking lot, I was besieged by around 5 touts who began demanding for money in a polite but mildly threatening way. They clung to the sides of the car until I stomped on the accelerator and swung the wheel, scattering them in different directions and hopefully injuring one or two. Tyres squealing, I burst into the main road and made my way for home, five thousand Naira poorer but infinitely more informed on the topic in question than I was a day before…
