Exit!

by Grizelda Grootboom

  ‘Listen, ladies, I need to deliver stuff to Cape Town,’ he persisted.

  I was very desperate as I wasn’t working, and was being supported by Lesedi. I also had to pay Tie’s rent. He offered me R3000 to deliver a package of drug ingredients. He wanted this done immediately as he was soon returning to Nigeria.

  He had his fun with Lesedi while I waited for my air ticket to Cape Town. I wasn’t afraid, just desperate.

  ‘I don’t care if I get caught or not,’ I said to myself.

  I arranged with a friend to help protect me during my delivery to the buyer in Century City. A proper and quiet handover was necessary in a parked car in order to receive my money. My friend watched from afar; if the exchange was tricked, he would step in.

  All went well, and I stayed with my mother and S for one week, then flew back to Joburg.

  Lesedi was getting more connected with the church guys, and she was finding better-paying clients. She moved from the streets of Yoeville and Randburg to upmarket Sandton. As time went on I could not depend on her any more because I rarely saw her, but I had always tried to be the voice that spoke inside her ear, trying to advise her to get out. I hope it helped her consider her choices.

  Nuro was fascinated by pornography. She was so naive. Knowing my background, she was curious and had lots of questions. I tried to wean her off her interest by explaining the painful experiences I had gone through. She wanted to know how I felt giving blow jobs, for instance, because when she watched the porn movies, the girls sounded so excited.

  I told her how someone holds your head during the blow job so you can’t get away. I told her how I experienced forced blow jobs, and how I had to take four ecstasy tablets and half a bottle of Jack Daniels in order to deal with it. I told her how the skin of your mouth is broken, how your head is pulled back, how sometimes you are whipped while it’s happening. I showed her the pimples on my gums, and how discoloured my teeth were.

  I told her it’s not an exciting, arousing, butterfly feeling. That there are better ways to be a super-strong woman.

  Nuro had had her own experiences of sexual exploitation in her job as an usher at the church.

  I asked her, ‘Why are you still ushering if you’re getting exploited?’

  ‘But I don’t know where to go,’ she said.

  ‘Now you know how I felt!’

  I enjoyed seeing Nuro respond to this wake-up call.

  In the end it was the church itself that released me from the cycle I was in.

  I got a voluntary job at the Christ Embassy Church call centre in Randburg, where I had lots of contacts through Lesedi. People phoned the call centre about their physical ailments; on behalf of the church, I had to take the calls and say prayers for each caller. I had been led to believe by the church that if I attended a four-day conference and volunteered in the call centre, I would be eligible for a salaried job.

  When I approached management about getting a paid job, they said they couldn’t pay me because I ‘needed to grow spiritually’. In a call centre, you need to grow spiritually? And they thought I didn’t have enough spiritual experience to be of service to others? If nothing else, as a volunteer in the call centre, I was the only person in a team of four who could take calls in English, isiXhosa, isiZulu and Afrikaans.

  I didn’t feel the church was being honest with me by saying it was my own limitations that prevented me from being hired. That day of rejection was a very painful day for me.

  I was very hurt by the church and I decided to leave both it and the call centre.

  Twenty-eight

  EVERY TIME I DID DRUG deliveries, I would think of Beverly, my dad’s girlfriend and the mother of my half-brother Storm, who got locked up for trafficking drugs. Could I juggle improving my spiritual life, on the one hand, and having clients and drugs, on the other? I knew I wouldn’t be able to do both: it was either one or the other.

  There is something that was growing during these times in Joburg – this inner voice saying, ‘Don’t do it!’ I knew this drug delivery story would lead to me being caught. My inner self said, ‘You know if you do this, something bad will happen.’

  Thoughts about my future caused me so much anxiety, even though I knew I needed to change and find my purpose. As I exited from the horrors and dislocations of my past life of prostitution, drugs and other abuses, what would I have to face next?

  At the age of thirty-two, in 2013, I decided to avoid temptation by returning to Cape Town permanently.

  I returned to my mother and S five years after I left them. I arrived with some income saved up, but more importantly, I came with a change in spirit, an upliftment, a maturity and growth towards sobriety and even some semblance of inner happiness.

  I had learnt not to turn my anger on others or to blame them for what had happened to me. Rather, it was my life, and in that life, I was responsible for caring for my son. I would not allow my anger to focus on him, like my mom’s anger had throughout my life.

  Once I was home, I looked at the city of my childhood. I was impressed with the way the Democratic Alliance was cleaning up Cape Town – I didn’t see as many street kids as there were when I was young. I thought that the DA was reputable, and so I got a job working in their call centre. And I became one of two-hundred-and-fifty coloureds and Africans, speaking several indigenous languages, engaged in heated political debate.

  With the DA job I earned a decent income and learnt more about the racial realities in my society. Working there made me realise that I could change professions and hold a job developing awareness. This job empowered me to understand the world better, to work hard, to gain skills and to feel I was doing a worthwhile and useful service.

  In my childhood, I had known only a little about Mandela and the ANC Youth League. Now, I was becoming more politicised, and realising the importance of activism. The DA job prompted me to begin working in public awareness.

  I then saw a request on Facebook for anyone who had experienced sexual exploitation and abuse. I responded and told my story, which was filmed for a programme on SABC 2. This opened up even more speaking events. I just continued to pray to God to keep providing these opportunities. My newfound spiritual strength helped me develop confidence to talk publicly about the gender issues so close to my heart.

  I became excited knowing that my vision and purpose was to write and talk about the horrors of sex trafficking. Working with the Embrace Dignity NGO allowed me to do this.

  This, I knew, was the work I was cut out to do.

  It has not always been easy. At times, my physical, emotional and financial needs have overwhelmed me to a point of wondering if I can ever realise my vision.

  I have also had to deal with the stigma of the strip club community who know my past. When I came back to Cape Town permanently, I had enough money that I didn’t need to find clients. But I would still go to the clubs – maybe just out of habit. The bouncer would say, ‘Hey, welcome back! You just missed out at the big convention event …’ And there it was: this assumption about who I was and what I wanted.

  Habits are hard to change. The minute he reminded me of my old life, my mind would jump wildly: ‘Let me find a client for tonight.’

  I didn’t though. I just watched. I would see how the regular folks who came in were familiar with the girls, recommending them to each other. It is so hard to step out once you are in these circles. You become part of a network.

  There were other things I had to face too.

  I needed to seriously look at matters of health. As a survivor for the past few years, I am only now going through the emotional process of caring for myself. And nothing is simple. Because I had headaches, I went to an eye doctor. At the appointment, I hated him testing my eyes – my vision got very blurry and I couldn’t see. I was very scared, and I started crying. Confused, the doctor asked me why I was crying.

  I explained: ‘When you look into my eyes, it reminds me of the masking tape I had to wear over my eyes during my Jobur
g bondage.’

  I am still healing, and wounds hurt as they heal.

  As a survivor, I want to grow as fast as I can, learn how society works, what it does, and how I can ‘fit in’ and be independent.

  I’m learning to manage my story. When I talk publicly, I feel like I am undressing myself. I’m always wondering what other people are thinking of me. This paranoia will pass, I hope.

  It is still hard for me to be a single black girl in an African community, especially since I have a son to raise. It’s hard for me to get involved in emotional relationships, to tell a guy my background. I keep wondering, ‘When is he coming to me?’ I have never had any stable trusting loving relationship that didn’t disappoint me.

  Also, I am only now facing this process of reconciliation with my mother, having her confront the reality that she abandoned me. This pain hurts us both, but we are working through it, and growing trust between us.

  I have always been perplexed about why my mother and my dad gave up on me in my childhood years and never included me when they started their own families elsewhere. Was I not ‘family’?

  When my mother lived and worked at the docks, I thought she didn’t care about me. But now that we are talking, she tells me: ‘You know what? I don’t even know if they told you at the shelter that I used to bring clothes and other stuff for you.’ And I think it’s true, looking back, that my mother provided some things for me, maybe even further back, when I was living in Woodstock.

  I understand my mother better now too. She is also going through change, meeting her own challenges. Her bouts of drinking have made it difficult for me to reconcile with her, and it has sometimes worn me down. We’re still adjusting, but the peaceful times we have together are a blessing, and we are working on it.

  Sometimes my mother says the prayers that I have taught her. She sometimes asks me to help her with certain scriptures. I think my journey is rubbing off on her. She is learning, and now it’s in her life. I am proud to say that I have changed, and now she is changing too.

  I have learnt from S the importance of loving and how to extend that love. Now that I am present, at home, he can identify me as his mom. There’s some normality to our lives now; we’re like a typical family, with Granny caring for him as I work. This makes life and loving easier.

  S is the voice that keeps me going. When he calls me ‘Mama’, it is my strength.

  Author’s note

  WHAT DO I TELL PEOPLE who ask me who I am?

  I say I’m a recovered drug addict.

  What drove me to drugs and prostitution was the anger and pain I felt after being gang raped at the age of nine. I did not choose to be a prostitute because I liked or wanted drugs. I was also not ‘forced’ into sex work. Some activist groups advocate that prostitution should be decriminalised because girls (and boys) are forced into this exploitation. But I feel strongly that we must recognise the social conditions that exist in our communities that support this type of exploitation. There were circumstances that led to my engagement in sex work and drugs, and I met these conditions before I was trafficked.

  My mind flashes with ways of dealing with human trafficking. How could the traumatic events in my life have been avoided?

  After I was abandoned by my guardians at the age of nine, I was raped by the members of a community gang. The community knew how the boys behaved, but did not act against them. Instead, they painted my mother’s house in shame, which cast me out of the Khayelitsha community. I was pushed to live under the bridge in Cape Town with other street people. It was while I was trying to escape this life that I was then trafficked by someone I thought was a good friend when I arrived in Johannesburg. So my prostitution was never due to ‘force’, but to the social circumstances that make children like me ripe for exploitation.

  My rape happened in the comforts of my community. My trafficking happened within the comfort of friendship. Violence against women works at all levels.

  Being a prostitute and trafficked for sex work at a young age disrupts education, and leads to illiteracy and gaps in acquiring knowledge. My street life made me sound savvy, but writing articulately is a different skill.

  Some people get annoyed with me because I am so honest about what really happens out there among prostitutes. In my advocacy work, I stand up for young girls who have been forced into sex work – that’s my vision in life. There are ways to EXIT and stop this abuse, and it’s up to individuals, civil society, institutions and government bodies to determine effective and long-range measures.

  As a survivor, I feel that organisations working to eradicate human trafficking are bringing out more information about this societal scourge, but are not necessarily pushing for change at all political and social levels. I have been through several years of healing and understanding about the importance of exiting, but I realise that organisational managers themselves do not have the capacity to change the sex industry. It is the survivors who have the knowhow – they should be leading organisations and NGOs to push for and enforce dynamic change in the sex work industry. Organisations and governments are called upon to act forcefully and sustainably to eradicate the causes of this abuse.

  There is a desperate need for the message to get out:

  Stop human trafficking.

  I’m writing this book because of the pain the prostitution cycle has caused me. As I deal with my own healing and the trauma that goes with it, I am seeing how change works in closing the wounds.

  I am now advocating for women’s rights and against the abuse of women and children. I’m doing this because once I woke up in a hospital bed after being beaten, drugged and enslaved. And I said to myself that for the rest of my life I would fight to make sure other girls did not go through what I experienced.

  I want mothers to buy this book for their teenage daughters, fathers to buy it for their sons, friends to buy it for their girlfriends. Today I am Grizelda Grootboom, the name my mother gave me. Thank you for taking the time to get to know my story and find out who I am.

  This work comes from my most inner being.

  This must not be allowed to happen again.

  For help call 08000 737283

  Toll free national human trafficking helpline

  Embrace Dignity

  Since Grizelda walked into our office, we have been part of her incredible journey. She has also been an important part of our journey of the understanding the exploitation of trafficking and prostitution, and for this we are extremely grateful. We also wish to thank Grizelda for donating half the proceeds from the sales of this book to the ongoing work of Embrace Dignity in supporting ‘Sisters’ exiting sexual slavery and prostitution.

  We wish to thank Carol Martin, social activist and retired educationist who recorded Grizelda’s story and transcribed all the recordings, from which the final book was edited and published.

  Thanks to our publisher.

  Embrace Dignity can be contacted through our website www.embracedignity.org.za