Truck-stop girls

Part of this week's New York Times Magazine special issue, Saving the World's Women. Come discuss all the articles at current.com/feminism.

In May, I was traveling down a South African highway with a colleague and a driver, headed toward Swaziland. A private foundation had assigned me to assess a health clinic that it set up for truckers and the girls and women who trade sex with them for cash and goods. Truckers are well known to transmit H.I.V. up and down the highways. And Swaziland, a small, landlocked country dependent on its busy trucking corridors, is particularly troublesome. It has the highest H.I.V. rate in the world: one in three people is infected.

When we reached the Osheok border post, the Swazi official welcomed us, inspecting the vehicle efficiently. Apart from a gas station, a dozen roadside vegetable stands and some dingy bars, there was little activity in the little border town. Adjacent to the customs office, there was a small building fashioned from a shipping container with a hand-painted sign outside: “Truckers Wellness Center.” It’s an innovative way to set up a clinic. While papers are processed at customs, truckers use the clinic to obtain medications for “hot urine” and other sexually transmitted diseases.

We watched truckers filing into the clinic throughout the evening, but there were no girls. So I wandered up and chatted with the border official, who said: “You want girls? Then go to Matsapha. They’ll attack your car!” Matsapha is the main overnight hub for truckers. It was well past 11 p.m., but we decided to go there. As we drove, the “majestic mountains, fertile valleys and lush forests” described in Swaziland guidebooks appeared only as shadows.

Matsapha was still, almost abandoned. A lone gas attendant directed us to the edge of town and an old sign on a hill for the Economy Flats motel. The driver slowed, and as the official predicted, about 10 girls in tiny dresses and little shorts swarmed around our vehicle. But when they saw my female colleague and me, they screamed and went off. I sent the driver out to negotiate. “Tell them we just want to talk,” I said. “I’ll buy them dinner.” The lure of food was enough. Three girls got in the car, and we drove down a narrow, beaten track through the trees to a rundown complex of rough cement-block buildings. This was their home. This was where the truckers slept and the girls earned their meals.