Friday 21 May 2021

MADZIMAI TURNED HOOKER

IN this world we live in, the struggle for survival is real. For some, one income stream is simply not enough.

This is the case for 38-year-old Madzimai Cathrine Bvumbe, a sex worker-cum-prophetess operating in Macheke.

For the past eight years, she has been juggling between satisfying her ‘clients’ between the sheets and those at her shrine.

A plump, strong-minded woman, Madzimai Cathrine appears more concerned with putting food on the table for her three children and sending them to school than with the serious problems associated with sex work.

But while she puts up this façade, deep down she knows about the risks of her profession. “I am not proud of it, but I have been in prostitution for years due to desperation.

“In fact, I only rely on regular clients who contact me on my phone for meeting arrangements,” she recently confided in The Weekender during a media tour organised by the National Aids Council.

“Prostitution is risky business. You can’t wish this on anyone, even your worst enemy. Sex workers are at risk of contracting sexually transmitted infections.

“In addition to that, interaction with strangers put them in harm’s way. Some are maimed while others are killed during the course of duty,” she said before revealing how she almost lost her left ear during a scuffle with a client over non-payment of her services.

When conversing with Madzimai Cathrine, one gets the impression that years of struggling in adversity to make ends meet, together with an inability to find other means of survival, seem to have hardened this woman into apparent indifference towards those around her.

She tries to paint the image of a woman with the world at her feet, although it is clear that she is struggling to stay afloat the turbulences of life. Cathrine’s story begins in a little village in Mozambique when she was born in 1983.

Her parents were to later trek to Zimbabwe in search of greener pastures with young Cathrine strapped on her mother’s back.

After several stop overs, the family finally settled in Macheke, where Cathrine grew up. She got married in 1999 but unfortunately parted ways with her husband in 2011.

However, with life increasingly becoming difficult, Cathrine found herself drawn into the web of sex work as she struggled to make ends meet. And when the going got tough, she decided to explore her spiritual talent.

As a white garment prophetess under the Nyenyedzi Nomweye Nguwo Tsvuku, Madzimai Cathrine wakes up early to rush to her shrine to attend to her clients.

She then comes back later in the day to change her church robs into sexually appealing clothes in preparation for her other clients.

“I am convinced that ndakatumwa naMwari (God sent me). It is God’s plan for me to be interacting with these ladies and imparting His Word unto them.

“It is not by mistake than I am into sex work,” she said, before quickly adding that she would be grateful if she could find alternative means for survival. Manica Post

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