title: Client retention and health among sex workers in Nairobi, Kenya.
abstract: It is still a small body of research that directly addresses female sex workers' relationships with their regular commercial male partners. I used ethnographic data from Nairobi, Kenya to interrogate motivations and strategies for recruiting and retaining regular male clients among female sex workers (FSWs). Regular commercial male partners, popularly called customer care, wera or wesh by Nairobi's FSWs, played diverse roles in their lives. Client retention enabled sex workers to manage the risk of reduced marriage prospects, guaranteed them steady work, livelihoods, and incomes, and prevented their victimization and harassment. To retain clients, sex workers obliged them a great deal, pretended they had quit prostitution, and sometimes resorted to magical practices. However, these strategies were also accompanied by risks that reinforced the vulnerability of sex workers. Lack of critical attention to sex workers' practices for managing perceived risks in their particular type of work may hamper current programmatic efforts to make their job safer.
authors.affiliation: African Population and Health Research Center, APHRC Campus, Box 10787-00100, Nairobi, Kenya. cizugbara@aphrc.org
authors.forename: Chimaraoke O
authors.initials: CO
authors.lastname: Izugbara
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000517:prevention & control; D006801:Humans; D007630:Kenya; D008297:Male; D040242:Risk Reduction Behavior; D012309:Risk-Taking; D011477:Sex Work; D060386:Sex Workers; D012725:Sexual Behavior; D012747:Sexual Partners