Season of harvest for farmers – and prostitutes

When Sempele ole Kisotu harvested wheat on his 50-acre farm at Ntulele in Narok North district last year, he thought he had kissed poverty goodbye. Only a few months earlier he had been advised to sell his cattle and switch to wheat farming, said to be more lucrative.

After paying off his debts, he pocketed Sh500,000 and swaggered to a matatu heading to Narok town to slake his thirst with a few drinks.

No sooner had he alighted in town than he met some charming and scantily dressed women who sweet-talked him as he walked to a pub.

When he came to, he was lying in a dingy hotel room without a cent in his pocket.

Today Mzee Kisotu can be found wandering around Ntulele Trading Centre talking to himself.

He is just one of the many wheat farmers who fall prey to commercial sex workers who descend on shopping centres in this wheat-growing region during the harvest seasons. The women come from Uganda, Tanzania, Eldoret, Kericho, Nairobi and Mombasa.

With some 80,000 hectares under the crop, Narok is the largest wheat-producing area in East Africa. And while this has brought some development to the area, it has also brought pain and tears.

The situation is particularly bad this season due to earnings from the bumper crop. Local police chief Charles Okweya has put farmers on high alert.

“This season the crime rate is very high,” he said. “Farmers are being robbed. Fraud cases in banks concerning fake banker’s cheques and currencies are rampant.”

Seasonal brothels

Ibrahim Ishmael of the NGO Impact Kenya Youth Initiative says seasonal brothels sprout during the harvest season in Narok.

“There are commercial sex workers who come during harvesting season,” he said. “They invade Kericho during tea bonus season in November and throng here (Narok) in July. In September they will be elsewhere.”

The prostitutes, he said, make advance visits to the area during the planting season to gather information on farmers’ lifestyles and who is planting wheat on how much land. It is believed that the women identify easy prey during these visits.

Owners and renters of combine harvesters are also prime targets.

In Narok, Ntulele, Ololulung’a and Mulot towns hotel rooms are converted into temporary brothels on short notice and tenants kicked out to make way for the high-paying “tourists”.

“Their rooms are even paid for in advance and at a much higher rate,” said David ole Sankok, chairman of the Narok Central Business Association.

Local residents say police have carried out several swoops to arrest the prostitutes who are set free almost immediately.

“They (the prostitutes) grease the hands of unscrupulous police officers and get released quickly,” said a businesswoman at Ololulung’a who requested not to be named.

Smooth operators

Musa Lang’at, a counsellor, describes the prostitutes as smooth operators who do not make their prey suspicious and who are often educated enough to understand and manipulate the farmers’ psychology.

Women in the wheat-growing areas have threatened to demonstrate to protest what they consider the snatching of their men by the sex workers.

One woman in Mulot told the Sunday Nation that since her husband harvested their wheat on the family’s 20-acre farm two weeks ago, he had not come home.

“He has left us hungry, and our children are out of school for lack of fees,” she said.

The prostitutes are also reported to work closely with thugs to rob farmers. One old man from Nkareta committed suicide after he was waylaid by unknown people and robbed of Sh1 million at gunpoint. He is said to have been seen in the company of a prostitute earlier.

According to the outgoing Narok South District Medical Officer Dr Gerishon Abakalwa, HIV infections more than double during harvest time.

David Mpatiany, chairman of the Narok Farmers Association, has urged his colleagues to open bank accounts and save their money instead of splashing out on golddiggers.

“This is money that is hard to come by. When drought does not wipe out the entire crop, there is wheat rust; when you escape these two, there are the poor grain prices,” he said.

A man reportedly committed suicide last year in Maai Mahiu after his 100-acre farm under wheat was attacked by Ug99, a particularly virulent variety of stem rust that wiped out his entire crop, causing a Sh5.6 million loss.