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Photojournalist Isabel Corthier met sex workers involved in a programme to help them access health services in southern Malawi. Rates of unwanted pregnancy and STI infections are also high. Sincemedical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres MSF has been working with Malawi's ministry of health and partners to increase healthcare for sex workers, including access to condoms and PEP post-exposure prophylaxisa drug which reduces the risk of HIV transmission.

The names of the sex workers have been changed to protect their anonymity.

Rural brothel

Bernadette, sex worker, Dedza image copyrightIsabel Corthier Bernadette was born into a family of She lost both her parents when she was seven years old and was raised by her sister and later by her grandparents. With little financial support from her family, she found herself going hungry at school and started having sex in exchange for food, pens and books. She soon fell pregnant and dropped out of school at Today she is a mother of six children. Her last partner was abusive and left her destitute, so she turned to selling sex inseeing it as the best option to survive.

Before this Sfx didn't know anything.

I felt liberated, happy, because I was hearing things I never knew about. I know how to put a condom on properly and we now have lubricant which prevents accidents. After suffering years of abuse, Maria was abandoned by her husband.

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She struggled to support herself and her young daughter, so turned to sex work. We slept together but afterwards eomen didn't pay. Things got violent and he knocked out my front tooth.

And then afterwards he wouldn't pay. If we went to the police, they would send us away.

A rite of passage that pushes girls into sex

ly she had been married with two children, but after her divorce she found she could not support her family. She says: "A friend came to me rlom said, 'Why are you suffering? There's this alternative. You can make money with sex work'.

So I decided to take this route. They left us naked with nothing. I never went to the police.

The guy was well known in the area and had raped other women and would come after those who reported it. It was better to just keep quiet, so I did nothing.

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Some don't care at all. She wakes up, gets dressed and goes to find a customer.

Chrissie says the majority of the sex workers she works with are. The father didn't support her.

Video: girls in malawi victims of 'sexual cleansing' ritual

She stayed with her sister for a while but the arrangement didn't last. Ketisha tried to avoid becoming a sex worker. After that I tried selling green maize malwai in the end, it was all struggles. I get asked why at my age Chat gay application am at the bottle swx instead of being at school. My parents don't know that I am sex worker. They are being forced to sleep with older men without the use of any protection and without getting paid.

Confronting a sexual rite of passage in malawi

If they protest, they are physically assaulted. Her husband was a professional thief. When she asked him to leave his life of crime, he refused. They separated and divorced. InJennifer felt that the only way to support her children was to go into sex work "When my relatives heard that I have started doing sex work, I was chased away and told that I should never go back home," she says.

My two kids now stay with my mother. He asked me to go and buy chips, so I did but when I came back I found that he had stolen my money and clothes. It's really tough If I continue, I feel Maalwi will die before my time. Related Topics.