Mayor Aladwa, Nairobi is the bottom of the league

Should you google ‘Red Light Districts’, you will be shocked to realise that Kenya’s Koinange Street sits pretty alongside Point Road in Durban, Kabalagala in Kampala, Marcory Zone 4 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Soho in London and Gang Dolly in Surabaya, Indonesia.

Nairobi, though, does not officially recognise its controversially amorous zone, and the question whether the city should have a legal red light district has been the subject of recent debate after Mayor George Aladwa revealed that commercial sex workers had requested his office to carve out a section of Koinange Street to them.

His attempt to extract himself from the controversy he had kicked up by that revelation was as comical as it was unconvincing, but it still managed to bring to the fore, once again, the industrial concerns of those engaged in the age-old trade.

Like in Rue St Denis Street in France, Nairobi twilight girls wanted to earn a living in peaceful high heels without harassment from overzealous policemen. Although prostitution is illegal under Kenyan law, ‘K-Street’ remains the city’s “official” red light district by virtue of its highest concentration of hookers per square metre.

The term ‘red light district’ comes from the red lights used to direct men to brothels, and a typical district has sex shops, strip clubs, stag night bars, coffee shops, hotels, hostels, sex and cannabis museums and adult theatres.

Most are normally located on the seedier sections of a city.

But not so “K-Street.”

That famous thoroughfare basks in the glory of a shiny part of Nairobi.

Come sun up, one can transact business in any of the street’s 13 banks, rent a swanky, self-contained apartment, lodge in what is Kenya’s “all-suite hotel,” pay a courtesy call to any of the world’s leading news agencies, buy a Mercedes Benz, sweat the small stuff in a gym, sip world-class cappuccino or go clubbing in one of Nairobi’s famous night spots along the street.

You can also buy a loved one flowers, excite your palate with nyama choma or pray for Kenyan soldiers in Somalia at the Basilica on the ankles of the street.

Have a headache at 2am? No sweat. There is a late-night chemist that has never closed for almost two decades. Hungry at 3pm? Just cross over to Kenchic Fish and Chips on Muindi Mbingu Street.

That eatery has never closed since it opened in 1968, the year Manchester United won the European Cup Final, becoming the first English club to do so.

But come sun down, K-Street sheds off its business suit for twilight girls sporting skirts the size of postage stamps, high stilettos and bare backs ready for the more bare-knuckled business of chasing clients out to do stuff strongly frowned upon by the seventh commandment.

Whistling and jostling along this double-lane Sodom continues until the devil hours, and some can be daring — like the lanky ‘Leggy Rover’ standing on the road, who at the full glare of headlights, drops her shawl to reveal what mama gave her.

The driver in the blue Beamer stops. You would too. She picks up her shawl and off they vroom.

Such are the nocturnal escapades — on willing-buyer-willing-seller terms — that the night nurses of K-Street want the Council to legalise. That would make it easy to tax them, right?

Besides that small matter of inspecting their health and business certificates?

Mayor Aladwa clarified that unless the City by-laws were amended to legitimise the oldest trade, Council askaris would still arrest sex workers and their clients.