Paper short abstract:

Girls as young as twelve years old from Iramba district in Tanzania are often misled by people to urban centres (mainly to Dar es Salaam and Mwanza) with false promises of employment and other attractive incentives (Kamala et al., 2001; Swantz, 2007)

Paper long abstract:

Girls as young as twelve years old from Iramba district in Tanzania are often misled by people to urban centres (mainly to Dar es Salaam and Mwanza) with false promises of employment and other attractive incentives (Kamala et al., 2001; Swantz, 2007). In urban centres, these girls are commonly employed as domestic servants, but also as barmaids, sometimes by force (Mbonile, 1996). Both domestic servants and barmaids, fleeing abusive employers, fall prey to prostitution. As prostitutes, they work without protection and become vulnerable to violence and sexually transmitted diseases - particularly AIDS that has become one of the leading causes of death in Tanzania (Msisha et al., 2008). This study adopts an approach that allows the lived experiences of these girls to be accounted and interpreted so as to contribute to the understanding and knowledge about their live in the urban centres. Such an approach, first of all, takes a keen interest on these girls as actors of their own lives and as members of their families and communities. Secondly, the approach intends to provide the cathartic benefits that occurs when a person experience comfort, validation, empowerment and a unique opportunity to confide her personal experiences in someone knowledgeable, interested and caring, alongside the opportunity to work through and express emotions (Dickson-Swift et al., 2006). The assumption is that when these girls participate in telling and retelling their stories, an entirely different set of social dynamics and cognitive processes would take place which, in return, would have effects on their lives.