For most Gaborone “switched on” yuppies who are regulars at bachelor parties, the first rule is that what happens at stag parties stays at stag parties. So, unless you are a stripper or one of the guys you probably have no clue what goes down at one. Sunday Standard Lifestyle pieced together stories from insiders to bring you a real life peak behind Gaborone’s closed door pre-wedding ritual.
The parties are planned by the groom’s friends who usually use television and movies depiction of stag parties as a drunken orgy with strippers as a point of reference. So the party shopping list would inevitably include strippers and lots of beer.
In the past Gaborone stag party organizers used to import strippers from South Africa, but some enterprising pimps have recently found an opening in the market, and are grooming local girls for the lucrative stag party market.
“The pimp would have a digital picture catalogue of girls on offer in his smart phone and all you have to do is take your pick. Recently we were organizing a stag party for a friend, and you will not believe the kind of girls we saw on the pimps smart phone catalogue. They were good looking women, the kind you would take home to your mum. By the time we were done scrawling through the cell phone pictures, our jaws had dropped to the floor” recalls one source.
Most of Gaborone prostitutes who are in the stag party circuit are not the kind that usually prowl seedy bars and dark corners at night. They are high class hookers who have steady boyfriends and hold day jobs. A survey by the Ministry of Health recently revealed the secret double lives of high class Batswana prostitutes: They have steady boyfriends, work as nurses, bankers, and teachers or attend school as students during the day and moonlight as sex workers at night. According to the survey of the Most At Risk Populations (MARPS) that was presented at the National Aids Council last month, 49.5 percent of sex workers are in the category of between 20 and 29 years age.The survey states that “these are normally school going or employable women”. The survey also states that 50.9 percent of sex workers have steady boyfriends while 51.4 percent had been to Senior Secondary School.?The study says 60 percent of the respondents had no other employment, suggesting that 40 percent are employed. It emerged that some of the respondents of the survey are nurses, bankers, teachers and other gainfully employed persons
“Anyone organizing a stag party with strippers knows that the choice of location is key. At stag parties anything goes, so you need a very discreet venue”, revealed a source. In the past organizers used to host stag parties in South Africa far from prying eyes. But some are now hosting them at private farms or at lodges out of town.
Not all bachelor parties include sex, the combination of booze, male bravado, and strippers, however is a heady mix that moves some men to do things they’d never do otherwise. “But most are sexual scavenger hunts. The sex is premeditated and some guys actually have budgets for paying strippers for sex. Guys would vanish with strippers to the rooms and return later. Everyone would burst into cheers”, recalls another source.
It emerged during the interviews that some men do not go to stag parties with a plan to buy sex, but “most bachelor parties are a pressure-fueled situation that makes some guys feel like they have no choice but to buy sex”, said the source.
“Most guys see this night as an anything-goes event – even a socially acceptable chance to stray. Some men insist that infidelity in this context is no big deal, although their partners may disagree. But women rarely find out the truth. The men always have a plan to conceal what goes down at stag parties. We usually overload the women with stories, except that one thing, so they’d assume they knew everything. The guys’ solidarity and confidentiality amazes me. No one ever breathes a word”, says the source.
