Have you ever had a really bad feeling about a place, and immediately abandoned what you were doing, and got the hell out of there?

We were staying in Kenya, and behind our beautiful hotel was a sunny beach. One evening, we decided to take a late stroll and enjoy Kenya by night.

The beach looked very different though than it had during the day. Young local girls were soliciting to engage in recreational activities (virtually free of charge, especially for tourists), and we noticed at least two men who stayed in our hotel, walking away with girls who would be much younger than their daughters.

Poverty and disease walked hand in hand to the HIV horizons, and this type of tourism only made it worse.

We also saw local men standing near bonfires, and I am pretty sure they were not standing there for fun. Rather, they were the shepherds of their herds.

One girl approached us right away, and made lewd propositions without so much as blinking her eyes, as if she had been there, and done that. She didn’t seem to care at all, nor did she care about protection. We didn’t say much because we were shocked.

We left the beach not much later.

Later, I read in a UNICEF report that as many as 30% of girls aged 12–18 in Kenya’s coastal areas are involved in this type of activity.

She was only one of them.