Namibia: Leaving prostitution is easier said than done

"Everything revolves around money and without work there is no money," says 33-year-old Maria Xoagub*, a mother of three who earns her living as a prostitute. "Sometimes we try stopping going to sell our bodies in the streets, but when poverty takes over we are back there." Xoagub’s story is one heard frequently from Namibia’s sex workers. In a country where the unemployment rate hovers around 30 percent, prospects of getting a job outside prostitution are slim for sex workers, many of whom are illiterate.