I first met Kadzo in my Baltic, dank, single-windowed office. In this twelve-by-twelve cubicle sat a gaunt, hard- on- the -eyes looking Giriama girl. A twenty two-year-old caged to her night crawling profession.

Kadzo was a hooker. A street walker. A prostitute addicted to weed and God knows what else.

As her therapist, she did the majority of the talking. I mostly asked questions while paying attention. I watched as Kadzo tumbled to her death, with a formal education only as short as her black, faux leather mini-skirt.

“How did you get the nickname, Manzi wa Kanairo?”

Kadzo threw me her sweet smile and whispered, “In the streets they call me that because I’m a Nairobi girl that can pull so many clients in my street without trying too hard.”

I had a hard time accepting that this sweet, innocent-looking young girl was capable of uttering such words.

“Talk to me a little bit about your upbringing, Kadzo.”

“I was born in Kilifi, before my mum and one of her many lovers moved to Dandora, where I was raised.

At fourteen, my mother’s lover started taking off my panties. I was fifteen when my mother found him heaving on top of me. She scolded me.

She said, ‘You are to blame. It’s because of that red dera you swagger around the house in.’ “So I stopped wearing the dera. But that didn’t stop him. He could care less if I wore a nun’s tunic and veil.”

I was torn. The innocence in her voice made my heart crush inside.

“What followed?” My quivering voice asked.

“A year later, my mother kicked me out of the house.”

“Why?”

“As a teenage girl, all I ever wanted was to look and feel glamorous. Outside my window during the wee hours, I would watch women with big, fancy wigs and sparkly dresses stand on the street outside our house. I had no idea what they were up to; I just thought they were being glamorous.

So one night I asked one of the women what they did and she said, 'We take off our panties for men and in return, they give us money."' I figured I’d easily do that, because my stepdad had already been taking my panties off for free. I paraded myself for five nights before my mother could even find out. That’s when she kicked me out.”

I held back my tears when I remembered my daughter Amina. I couldn’t help but see her little eyes in Kadzo’s face.

“How did you manage to survive?”

“I opened up shop in Koinange Street, before a pimp took me under his wing. He turned me onto weed. He bought me a tight denim mini-dress, red high-heels that lifted my petite body six inches off the ground, and lots of makeup to fix my face. ‘You have to cover your acne dark spots with make-up if you want customers to look your way.’ He said to me.”

“When was that?”

“About a year ago.”

“Did you ever get any STDs?”

Biting her upper lip in pain she replied, “Yes, I got most of them – Chlamydia, Syphilis, and Herpes.”

A tear welled up in my eye as I tried to focus. Pressing a paper napkin against my face, I wiped away the tears and blew my nose.

“How did you react to the news upon diagnosis?”

“All I could think about was getting another hit of the blunt.” She didn’t look baffled at all– like she had no idea as to why she was put on earth or that she could soon be leaving it.

I thought it best to get her into rehab. I hoped the distance would keep her off the streets of Nairobi. Three weeks later, Kadzo escaped.

Like a homing butterfly, she flew to the only place she recognized as home. Back to her weed, back to her pimp, and back to her money maker.

The next time I saw Kadzo was in a jail Langata Women Prison. She had turned 26. She had not aged well. The drugs, the streets, the night crawling, wore her out like a ragged pair of Sunday-best jeans. She had been accused of robbery with violence.

“What went wrong?”

“I didn’t do anything. People always assume the worst. Because of my job, they’ve created an evil picture of me and believe me impure.”

It was at that moment, while we were waiting for her hearing to start, that she began to think about everything that had happened in her life. Up until that point she had never had some idea of what to do, where to go, how to pick herself up again.

Suddenly, she thought of so many bright ideas. I remember her looking up at me and saying, "These people don’t care about me. Could you please help me, please?"

I reached an agreement with the Government Prosecutor, Kadzo’s Public Lawyer, and the Judge, to send her to a locked-quarantine institution for drug rehabilitation and therapy (which was limited and unsuccessful at the time).

On the day of the second hearing, I received a call instructing me to cancel the transaction. Kadzo set fire to her cell mattress. She lit a cigarette.

The guards barraged her cell with fire extinguishers as toxic smoke

filled it. Kadzo’s suicide attempt was an appeal for assistance.

In retaliation, the Government accused her of arson.

The Government then consented to a four year sentence since they knew Kadzo’s time on earth was finite. For the next two years I heard nothing of her.

One morning, I sat in my living room, sipping my hot kahawa as I read the newspaper headline: ‘Famous Prostitute Dead At Thirty.’

In the article, Kadzo had been released from prison three months prior to her death. She passed away in a convent. The nuns had petitioned the court to allow her die outside prison walls.

On her deathbed, Kadzo found the Lord.

I remembered her at twenty two, at twenty six and now she was dead at thirty. I then called my husband to give him the news.

After exchanging pleasantries, I said, “Kadzo died yesterday.”

I heard his trembling voice ask, “How did you find out?”

“The story is on the front page of The Agenda Daily.”

I talked to him about her soft, beautiful vague smile, her wobbly eyes and her dire short life.

Then he asked me, “What did Kadzo teach us about life?”

“It’s a puzzle for me… But if you figure it out, call me.” I replied.