Meet E…., a 36 year old mother of five who narrates to us how life with a violent husband has been. She tells us that her husband was very violent all through their marriage. For the better part of her married life, she opted that some day he will change. “I have gone through a brutal marital life. My husband could beat me beyond recognition until, I thought I will lose my life someday, but hope kept me going,” E… narrates to the Africa Youth Trust team.
E… reported her husband severally to the nearest police station in Nairobi’ but despite the arrests, he still beat her like he never feared any legal actions on him. “My husband often promised to change while at the police station and they released him only to be arrested again and it just became a routine and no serious action was taken against him.”
“I later decided to move out of my marriage and manage on my own with my five children. Due to minimal support in their education, my two daughters dropped-out and currently nursing their babies at home. One dropped out at form two and another at form three,” she painfully narrates.
E… who lives in one of the informal settlements of Nairobi, narrates to us how life became unbearable due to stress and situations her children were going through. According to her, most women stay in abusive marriages to avoid the economic hardships that comes with being a single parent when you do not have a stable income to take care of basic needs that the children require. The upbringing becomes intense and you can hardly control their moves. There is that lack of respect from them to you as a parent of whom they should look up to.
“I started attending Access to Justice programme counselling sessions at Mukuru and the social support has been huge. It has empowered me to start a small house to house salon business and hopefully soon I will be able to put up my salon shop. This has in return encouraged my children not to give up in their life.”
Africa Youth Trust (AYT) together with ActionAid Kenya runs a programme. The main objective of the project is to help survivors of gender-based violence access justice. This project uses SMS platform, whereby the survivor is required to send the word ‘HELP’ to 21094. Some of the services gained from using the sms platform include, legal aid, medical and psychosocial support free of charge.
“sexual gender-based violence is a crime against humanity”.