Paola
While making the documentary film m/f/x, Koen Suidgeest met Paola. Despite having a full time day job at an LGBTI activist organization in Honduras, Paola is forced to top up her income by doing sex work. A client, unhappy with her insisting on always using a condom, poured gasoline over her body and set her alight. She was in a coma for three months and in the hospital for many more months.
Despite having a full time day job at an LGBTi activist organisation in Honduras, Paola is forced to top up her income by doing sex work every Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening. The series doesn’t only show her transformation from office worker to sex worker, but also highlights the risk of the latter. Paola’s body is clearly full of burn scars. She obtained those when a client, unhappy with her insisting on always using a condom, decided to pour gasoline over her body and set her alight.
Paola was in a coma for three months and it took her nine months to leave the hospital, during which all she wanted to do was take her own life. Miraculously, she has recovered to being loving and positive human being with an incredible sense of humor.