I don't give a damn: I can't lie to you, maisha ikikwama, siwezi wacha watoto wangu walale njaa

Mercy Atis lit up social media a while back when she was trolled to no end for her music video,  “Damn.” 

But Atis, who is a mother of two sons, has, like everyone else, a story. 

Deported from the USA after serving five years in prison, Atis owns up to taking part in soft pornography which, she claims, she was introduced to by a white man while in the USA.

“I was an online model, basically exposing yourself to clients abroad through a website,” she told this writer.

Young, ambitious and bubbling with big dreams, Atis was barely 18 when she flew to the USA with hopes of graduating from university and pursuing a dream career. But upon arrival, she found out that the person who had pulled strings to get her to the USA had relocated to a different state.

Without a university to join, she resorted to hawking books in hostels before she eloped, hoping that would somehow set things right.

“Things turned out the way they did because I lacked guidance. I was young and immature, fresh from the village and had never been to the city before.”

Atis remembers that it was hard for her to adjust while in the USA and that she constantly cried for home.

“I made so many mistakes, I was alone. I moved from one state to the other looking for a Kenyan family to guide me, and that was the biggest mistake I made. In the States, you are supposed to keep the same address, and if you keep moving, they track that you lack stability,” she notes.

One thing led to the other, until she became homeless.

“I ended up in a homeless shelter where I was then accused of attempting to kill the staff. The whole justice system in America is racist, I was jailed for five years for burning a carpet.”

Atis claims she wrote a ten-page letter seeking help to the then prime minister Raila Odinga while in prison.

“Raila got my letter and then sent his sister, who came to see me six months later. Turns out she was the ambassador, so I asked her to get me a lawyer, and I remember she gave me Sh10,000. The next time she came with Kenyans and got me a lawyer to replace the public defender I had been given.”

Her relief was short lived.

“The public defender claimed I was crazy so that the new lawyer would shy away from my case. The day of the trial, I was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial even before reading my case number and my case was postponed for 90 days for medical evaluation, and that would later translate to five years in prison”.

She says when she started screaming to protest that ruling, her lawyer and all the Kenyans in the courtroom walked out and never came back.

“Ever since I came back, I have been trying to reach Raila to thank him, because when he sent his sister, I was respected for the first time in jail.”

When she was deported after her jail sentence, she stayed with her sister before moving to Mombasa where she started hustling, selling water and peanuts on the streets

“For the longest time, I was in denial that I was back in Kenya after deportation. It was like a dream.”

In pursuit for daily bread, Atis came to Nairobi after meeting a man on an American website that she had interacted with while in the States.

“I told the mzungu my story and he loved me. We dated but he unfortunately died in his home country. He had however introduced me to an online job, which involved selling sex online.

“Basically you chat with wazungu from abroad. Normally we block Kenyans, so that they can’t see us. In America this is a legal job, actually during Covid time, those who were working online were getting a bonus,” she says.

She says, as long as you are an adult, the job is as good as frying mandazi by the roadside. Nonetheless, she was accused of recruiting teenage girls to the sex trade.

“I was never a prostitute, I did online modeling, I have never slept with anyone. It was so hurtful when people accused me of recruiting young girls, yet all the girls I told about the job were 18 and above, and they wanted to do it.

“Even right now, my Instagram is crowded with women asking me to introduce them to the trade,” she says, adding that she believes at least 50,000 Kenyans are involved in webcam modelling." 

Atis explains that Webcam modelling was her back up plan when she got back home because she had prior experience in the US.

“I did the job for about six months while in the US. When I was at my lowest, I couldn’t afford a banana to eat, so I said why not, and went back to the trade,” she says.

But Atis says she had to turn her back on that trade when her music video went viral.

“I feared that if I went back, people would see me and be able to recognize me and expose me. The job involves stripping and twerking,” she says.

Asked whether she would ever go back to exposing her nudity online at a fee, she doesn’t rule it out.

“I can’t lie to you, maisha ikikwama, siwezi wacha watoto wangu walale njaa (if life got tough, I would not let my children sleep hungry). I am a single mother, I will do whatever I can for my children. Only for my children, I can go back to it,” she says.

The businesswoman, who received donations from well-wishers after sharing her deportation story and set up a restaurant in Kitengela, Kajiado County, says she is content with life although she finds Kenyans too judgmental for life.

“I have also released over 20 tracks, yet I can only sing here in my club/restaurant. Kenyans judge too much, I think because of my past. I think they are scared of interacting with because I was deported; because I once did online sex,” she laments.

Atis also fears for her two sons.

“I fear for my children. Although they are young, I am trying to take down some interview videos I did that portray me in a bad way. It is not something I would want my children to see, they will be judged and laughed at in school; that their mother is a prostitute”.

“If the video is not pulled down, I will someday have to tell them my truth when they come of age,” she says.