Nightlife at Salima Boma

The quietness that characterises life at Salima Boma during daytime can be deceptive.

It is the kind of quietness that travellers and those touring it for the first time could mistake the district for a ‘dead or sleeping town’.

But that is not what it is. The lakeshore town might have suffered the devastating effects of climate change early this year, but the tragedy has not dissuaded town residents from according travellers and tourists the entertainment they may desire.

In fact, fun-seekers and revellers are usually overwhelmed when deciding where to spend their leisure time.

Salima offers various classes of leisure centres to cater for one’s social and economic standing.

While Blantyre and Lilongwe are generally lively both during night and daytime, Salima gains its momentum after sun-set.

Thus, when this reporter visited this lakeshore town last week, he, too, decided to spend his nights in shebeens and enjoy popular opaque beer.

Usually, these are places where commotions and brawls over ladies are the order of business.

And it is usually in such joints where school-going girls aged between 13 and 16 go to sexually service men of low income. Their charges range from K300 to K500 per session.

And when times are hard, especially during mid-month clients can pay as less as K200.

A bigger chunk of these girls claim parents or guardians send them to raise money for basic essentials [for their respective families].

One 15-year-old girl confided that she fell in the trap last year under the influence of her uncle.

She said the uncle, who brought her from Thyolo, could not provide for the family; hence, he enticed her to join the industry.

Said she: “Usually, he would ask me: “How do you think we are going to survive here? Can’t you emulate your friends who are assisting their parents to fend?”

She was, however, impregnated by an unknown client a few months into the trade.

The girl refused to take the journalist to the uncle, saying: “I don’t even want to see him. He is a heartless man. I couldn’t be a prostitute if it weren’t for his influence.”

Married women are not left out of the equation. This reporter discovered that during the dark hours of the night, some women married to security guards take to the makeshift restaurants (pachiimire) to sell sex to passersby and drunkards.

They, too, claim poverty drove them into the trade.

Away from drinking joints, scores of boys and girls walk aimlessly, with others passing cigarettes among themselves.

And when the day breaks the following morning, you are bound to be greeted with piles of used condoms dumped along footpaths.