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Agence France-Presse

Every Friday, Lada leaves her small apartment to take tourists around Prague’s underworld.
“I pass on my cautionary tale,” says the 54-year-old sex worker as she chain-smokes her way through Wenceslas Square in the Czech capital.
“At least my ruined life can be useful. I can make a clean breast of it. It’s a relief.”
Lada, who was homeless for years, is one of six tour guides who work for a social enterprise called Pragulic that tackles “myth and prejudice” around people who live on the streets of Prague.

The city was infamous for its criminal underworld and drug problem in the 1990s. It still has a substantial homeless population of around 4,000, according to its social services.
“We are trying to open people’s eyes and teach them how someone may end up on the street,” Pragulic’s Petra Jackova says. “The dividing line is sometimes very thin.”
For 12 years, Pragulic’s tours have been giving homeless people a voice and a chance to get a foothold back in society.
“It’s a therapy of sorts for them – some have forgotten fragments of their lives and here they can put their memories together,” Jackova says.
Some guides have quit after paying off their debts and settling down elsewhere, while others are close to doing so.

Lada, who once lost everything to drugs and slot machines, does one tour a week to earn 400 Czech koruna (US$17) plus tips.
She still works as a sex worker to make extra money. But now that she has been clean of drugs for four years, the avid reader would like to quit.
“I only go when I need to buy something. Washing powder, cat food,” says Lada, who is lesbian.
“I work technically,” she chuckles. “I can’t manage more than 20 minutes mentally.”
Lada became a sex worker at 19. Two years before, she had given birth to a son but soon left him in her mother’s care and quit her small hometown for Prague.
“I was young and stupid. But I wanted to live,” she says.
You could say she may be ashamed or hides something, but this sounded really natural and interesting
Petra Weidenhofferova, shop manager, who took a tour with Lada
She spent 30 years on drugs, working in the sex trade in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
She ended up on the street, living at Prague’s main railway station and in an old car. Her drug-induced bipolar disorder put her in a psychiatric hospital 15 times.
Two dozen mostly young tourists listen as Lada recounts how a client nearly strangled her and how another kicked her out of a car naked.
Petra Weidenhofferova, a shop manager who took the tour, says she was surprised by Lada’s openness.
“You could say she may be ashamed or hides something, but this sounded really natural and interesting,” adds Weidenhofferova, who paid the equivalent of US$15 for the ticket.

Outside the main railway station on another night, 56-year-old Roman Balaz jovially greets a group of students.
“I am your ticket to the underworld,” the pony-tailed guide tells them.
Having grown up in an orphanage, the former baker first tried drugs at 32 after splitting with his boyfriend.
He became a sex worker before ending up on the street for nine years.
Balaz gradually quit drugs, taking 10 months to recover.
He takes the students to a homeless shelter and then to see a couple staying under a railway bridge where he once used to live.
Surrounded by rubbish, clothing, prams and the scuttle of rats on the gravel, the students hesitate before showering the couple with questions.
Encouraged by Balaz, they then tip them – “food money”, as the guide says.
Balaz, who once trained as a fashion designer and dreams of his own collection one day, says he sees being a guide as “a mission”.
He insists that he has no regrets about his past.
“I’m happy,” he says. “Maybe I’m crazy, but I take my life as it is. And this all is a part of it.”


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Tourism

Lada (sitting), a 54-year-old sex worker, takes tourists on a tour of Prague’s underworld. Photo: AFP

Lada became a sex worker at 19. Photo: AFP

Lada (right) does one tour a week to earn 400 Czech koruna (US$17) plus tips. Photo: AFP

Lada (centre) spent 30 years on drugs. Photo: AFP

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Lifestyle

Travel & Leisure

Social enterprise Pragulic tackles ‘myth and prejudice’ around people living on Prague’s streets, using tour guides who have all been there


Social enterprise Pragulic tackles ‘myth and prejudice’ around people living on Prague’s streets, using tour guides who have all been there.
