A booming sex centre in the Miniferme neighbourhood in Yaounde was, at the weekend, reduced to ashes by fire that resulted from a candle stick lit by an asthmatic sex worker.

On November 18 breaking 19, Véronique, a sex worker’s room caught fire while she was “rendering services” to a client.

The 27-year-old, reportedly returned to her room after a difficult man hunt that night, but realised that there was power outage in the brothel.

Though she was allegedly drunk and drowsy, she staggered towards her bed cupboard and pulled out a candle stick, lit it and put by the bed, and she and her client “got to work”.

Just when they were at the peak of pleasure, the candle smoke provoked a crisis in the asthmatic commercial sex worker.

This scared away her client who left her alone in that critical state.

According to her co-workers, they mistook the prostitute’s gapping for air for a response to the satisfaction she was getting from her job.

They were only alert when Véronique’s whole room was covered with smoke.

By a stroke of luck, security men successfully broke into her room to rescue her, while others tried to contact fire fighters. Though the lady was saved, she sustained some burns.

Unfortunately for Véro and her colleagues, all their hard-earned money for the night and other savings which they revealed were reserving for ‘njangi’, was consumed by the fire.

Fortunately, the neighbouring compounds were not affected by the fire, thanks to the intervention of fire fighters.

According to the caretaker of the brothel, Guy Léon, this year has really been a very bad one for his business.

He said he has been going from one financial challenge to the other.

This has pushed him to borrow a lot of money from micro-finance institutions to repay during this festive season. But from all indications, his dreams are far from being realised.

Léon intimated to The Post that it was barely 25 days earlier that the brothel was opened after being sealed for two months by the forces of law and order.

He said all their business centers had been shut down for some time now as Cameroon prepared to host the Africa Women Cup of Nations, AFCON.

“I do not know what I have done to God to receive this kind of punishment. This year has really been a bad one for my business.”

Thanks to solidarity, the other girls whose inns were not affected, have opened their doors to their co-workers to perch temporary so as to gather some money to get themselves a new place to rent for their business to continue.

Although public opinion holds that the fire incident was a natural occurrence, one of the sex workers, Mélanie, refutes the assertion, claiming that Véronique has always been a source of problem in that brothel.

“This troublemaker has, on several occasions, threatened to one day do something stupid if she was provoked.

Surely this act was premeditated by Véro, especially as the caretaker gave her a quit notice, not for anything but for her health challenges,” disclosed Melanie.