I lay down to test the mattress: it was lumpy and totally unyielding, not the sort of place one would want to spend much time, which seemed a little odd, given the purpose of this room. Agnes Munyiva saw my wince, laughed and patted the bed. 'You need it to be hard, because otherwise you could get hurt when the men are pushing on you,' she explained.
The mattress, stuffed with lumpy cotton and resting on a plain metal frame, fills most of her room, just one metre by two. The walls are made of mud, the roof of scraps of tin. The air has a tang from the raw sewage and rotting food scraps in the alley outside, and Agnes tries to keep the clouds of flies at bay with a crisp white muslin curtain in the doorway. Remnants of linoleum, pieced together like a quilt, cover most of the dirt floor. She has a kerosene burner for making tea and a gas lantern. Two mouldy calendars, giveaways from insurance companies many years back, are tacked to the walls, the only decoration. A collection of worn facecloths hangs drying on a small clothesline. Beside the bed she keeps a large white box, containing the best part of a gross of condoms.
