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omen are higher than those of men. This is because parents give priority to boy's education particularly if resources are limited. Along the coast, education is not valued because people from these areas are used to receiving tokens and money from the tourists. Children of school going age therefore prefer to go to beaches in search for tourists who give them tokens in exchange for sex. Other factors affecting education for girls include unwanted pregnancies and the fact that they are forced to early marriages by their parents for economic gains.

Kenyan women are discriminated against in most areas of formal employment and more often left with poorly paid jobs or no jobs at all. This makes prostitution an alternative.

The HIV/AIDS scourge in Kenya is estimated to claim 500 lives daily leaving many orphans. The young children left become heads of the families and may often turn to sex tourism and prostitution as a means of earning a living to support their siblings.

Impact of Sex Tourism in Kenya
Sex tourism can be seen as both a risk and an opportunity. Most women in sex tourism face the risk of material loss because their clients may not pay them for the services (ref. The Marco case). Women are generally helpless against such exploitation and take it as part of their business.

Sex workers face the risk of losing their money to thieves and police because they have to bribe their way out if caught as they mostly work at night.

Women can sometimes face attacks by dissatisfied customers. These attacks may be in form of rape, cruelty, violence or even murder.

'Monica Njeri was a 32- year old mother of two and a prostitute in Mombasa. She was brutally murdered by Frank Sundstrom a 19 year old USA navy service man who wanted the kind of sex that Monica could not provide. When he was not satisfied with merely sleeping, he woke up and tried to steal back the money he had given to her plus her own money but she woke up and caught him in the act. In ensuing struggle, he broke a beer bottle to make a weapon and repeatedly stabbed her until she died.' (Migot- Adhola 1982:74).

Although Sundstrom admitted the offence, his only sentence was to sign a bond of 500/- (equivalent to US$46 at that time) to be of good conduct.

Women in sex tourism industry and prostitution are continually exposed to sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS. Many tourists may not accept to use protection such as condoms because they argue that it interrupts the flow of sex and carrying it may imply that one is promiscuous (Clift and Grabowski 1997).

Sex workers are also faced with the danger of susceptibility to anal or cervical cancers, additionally, since many women are forced into sex work, many of them only work under influence of drugs and/or alcohol. This may lead to depression or alcohol addiction.

Sex tourism has been blamed in Kenyan coast for increasing rate of school drop-out, poverty and illiteracy. This is mainly because children of school going age choose not to school but to follow tourists who lure them to sex tourism.

However, some women that have risked sex tourism have been able to build better houses and i