To a hotel room where the curtains are always drawn. Melphia is 13 years old. She lives in a slum in Kumasi, the second-largest city in Ghana. And for the past three years, she has worked as a child prostitute. Melphia has sex with up to five men per night: workers, businessmen, police officers — and increasingly, tourists.
For the past two years, the economy in the West African country has been growing more quickly again and things in Ghana have noticeably improved. This also means more people are coming into the country, such as Chinese investors and European tourists.
And along with them come those interested in hiring prostitutes. The youngest are just 9 years old. Melphia looks younger than Like the other girls in the slum, she has a short afro that emphasizes her pretty, childish face. And then she begins telling her story, the sounds of the slum floating around her: drunks scream, Nigerian hip-hop blasts from old speakers and someone moans loudly during sex. Melphia was 10 when she climbed onto a bus in her village, located about an hour from Kumasi.
She would have gone anywhere: Her only goal was to make money — somewhere, somehow. But when he went to Europe, there was no more money. Melphia could barely even read at that point, and instead of continuing to go to school, she headed to Kumasi. Almost immediately upon arrival, she met a young man named Ali, the first person who spoke to her in Kumasi.
A few hours later, he slept with her. It was her first time. Just sleeping with him was so painful that she could barely walk. Then Ali told her about the Chinese. He became her pimp. This is her story as she tells it and it is impossible to confirm, in part because Melphia is no longer in touch with her family. She works as a child prostitute and everything she owns fits into a small, black bag: An old Nokia cell phone with a broken display, two pairs of flip-flops, two outfits, a pair of gray socks.
