A popular and seemingly well organised brothel known as the ‘White House’ is operating in Tanna – largely catering to Chinese clients.
Sex workers told The Independent that the brothel has been operating for more than a year, with the going rate for sex being double that for a married woman than for single women.
“It’s simply because we have more experience,’’ one married sex worker told The Independent.
Sex workers told The Independent that the main clients are Chinese but some other construction workers who are involved in a number of major medium to long term infrastructure projects on the island also use the brothel.
“Many people have known of its existence for some time and it may not be really accepted but its existence is sort of tolerated,’’ one of the sex workers said.
“Even some of the husbands know about it and just turn a blind eye to it because otherwise there is no money for things like school fees and even food. Nothing has really been right here in Tanna since Pam.
“It may sound horrible but in many cases here there are really few other real choices to survive.’’
But sex workers told The Independent that the biggest, most concerning issue that it is now emerging is that there are children born from these sexual liaisons that are not being accepted by the Tannese community.
“What will happen to the type of life these mixed blood children will have here in years to come is really up in the clouds. Already they are being treated as outcasts in a number of villages,’’ a married sex worker said.
Another told The Independent that her husband had thrown out herself and her small baby daughter from the family home.
“He beat me and told me never to show my face in the village again, but what could I do – we had no money to eat,’’ she said.
This part-time prostitute told The Independent that many husbands had no idea of the extracurricular duties their wives were up to on a regular basis.
A local Tanna church leader who did not want to be named said the issue of prostitution in Tanna is growing really fast.
“And we can’t stop that,’’ he said.
Men told The Independent that some were unaware of the location of the White House, but that its existence was well known across the island now.
“I’m sure it’s not the only one,” said one chief.
“We have two major concerns here – one is the serious health issues and the other is that these children of mixed blood will spend their lives as outcasts,’’ he said.
“Treating a fellow child as an outcast is really a bad thing to do also because we are all God’s children,” said the church leader.
“Many people have their own points of views concerning it but my opinion is that we live in a Christian country and our motto says ‘In God we stand’.
“This country has a lot of Christians who claim that they know Christ but their ways of living and actions towards others don’t make sense at all.”
A health spokesman at the Lenakel Hospital said he had not heard of a story relating to a brothel catering for the Chinese workers in Tanna.
“But this is quite interesting to know,” he said.
He said he will now make other hospital workers aware of issues involving prostitution in Tanna.
“There are a quite number of Chinese working in Tanna under contracts tar sealing the roads,” he said.
“As a health viewpoint, we don’t encourage that (prostitution) to happen at all due to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
“People nowadays don’t really care about their own body, when having sex they don’t want to use protection like condoms.
“For instance women practicing sex that never knew the guy’s background might contract an STD like gonorrhea, which is very serious, and when a women has gonorrhea then she gives birth, the infection can be passed on to the newborn and cause eye damage.”
The Health official said that treatment is very expensive.
“A person with an STD here like HIV, then it will cost over a million vatu in a year to treat the disease and if we get 10 to 20 cases of that, I don’t know how we will manage that,” he said.
“So far in Tanna we are trying to help people to use protected sex because we never know what will happen next.”
There are three well known brothels operating in Port Vila, but prostitution is rife at many of the nakamals as well.