LAMENTATION OF A PROSTITUTE

Lamentation of a prostitute
By Samod Biobaku
Sixthsense34@yahoo.com


I was in the company of my cousins and we had just finished watching a very pulsating soccer match between Real Madrid and FC Barcelona in Lagos at a public viewing centre shortly before midnight and were on our way back home.
We were all shuffling between sharing our post-match thoughts and avoiding the cars that drove past the narrow road we were on when we suddenly heard a prostitute lamenting.
If you’re one of those who would ask: How did you know she was a prostitute? Well, she was standing by the road shortly past midnight and lamenting the refusal of her clients to part with the true worth of her sexual services to them. Are you convinced?
It was her utterances that caught our attention because while it could pass as being comical, it also cast a dark light on the tragedy of commercial sex.
Are still wondering what it was the prostitute said? Well, expressing herself in pidgin English, she said: “Dem go dey f..k ‘toto’ N1, 000 – 20 people – person ‘toto’ go dey hot – ‘toto’ go dey comot water. Wicked men! Dem no dey pity person o.”
As expected, all who heard her lamentation besides her fellow commercial sex workers burst into a fit of laughter and she hardly gave a hoot about what they did.
As we walked away from the scene, her voice gradually faded into the wind and was eventually drowned by the hoot of car horns and other mechanical noise.