Nancy Kawira has never seen her two sons for 20 years. Kawira, who is a gender-based violence survivor, was married young to a young man and she went to school because her stepmother was hostile towards her.
Speaking on Citizen TV’s Shajara na Lulu show, Kawira shared how she left her father’s home to be married only for her husband to start abusing her soon after moving in with him.
“I got pregnant and gave birth to a son and the abuse continued. My husband set up a kiosk and I would help when he had gone to work. One day a lady friend of mine came visiting and I made her some tea. My husband found the used caps and he beat me mercilessly,” she recalled.
Kawira recalls questioning her decision to get married but decided to make her marriage work and soon after she got her second born.
“I believe my husband would look for any reason to lay his hands on me when I was eight months pregnant with my secondborn child. My husband came home and beat me for not serving our house girl,” she said.
For her to avoid her violent husband, she decided to go live with her mother-in-law but her husband asked for a transfer and followed her there. She slowly started thinking of an exit plan which according to her was not easy.
“I was scared of that man. If he found me sitting down, he would beat me. I planned to run away one day but found him at the door. He took my clothes and burnt them. I took some of my clothes and hid them at a friend’s house and one day I left without my children,” she said.
After a while, she came back home because of her children The abuse went on and the husband would beat her in front of the children. One day she left her husband and started working at a nearby market.
“I was not allowed to see my children, anytime I tried to access them. He would attack me. I used to wait for them at their school and we would catch up and when he found out, he transferred them and that was the last time we ever saw each other,” she said.
