By Bob G. Kisiki
Growing up in Jinja, Irene knew her cousin, nauma, as her social and moral compass. Whatever nauma did was worth doing; whatever she avoided, Irene avoided, too.
Irene made friends whom nauma approved of; no one came close to her whom nauma did not think fit to hang around her little cousin. That’s how it was, and Irene liked it that way. Irene was in Primary Seven then.
She was walking home for lunch (the school was not far from home) one day when a familiar voice called out her name. It was Tasa, a close friend of nauma’s.
He came from a popular family around the street; you mentioned Tasa and everyone knew whom you were talking of, mostly because it was a mixed-race family. Irene slowed down, so Tasa caught up with her.
“I have something I would like you to deliver to your cousin,” Tasa said to Irene. She, however, said she was in a hurry, but could see him later, on her way home after school. Though he prevailed on her, she refused, and indeed ran off.
But true to her word, on her way from school, she turned into their compound, which was right on the road to home. They ran a shop at the front and slept in the rooms at the back.
Tasa asked Irene to follow him as he walked towards the back of their house. “Meanwhile, the compound was full of girls, older women and other people; mostly family,” Irene says. “They were there minding their business. I greeted them and entered.”
He led her to a room in what is commonly called boys’ quarters and urged her to enter. Though she hesitated, he reassured her it was okay, so she entered. He then began to look for whatever it was, as if it was “a coin in a dark, clattered room”, as Irene put it.
She grew nervous and told him she would wait outside, but again he told her to hold on. “When I turned to get out, he suddenly leapt at me, pushing me onto the bed and pushing my skirt up!
The fight began! I was screaming, telling him to get off me. I was already beneath him, his organ touching my privates. Though I wore knickers, he had shoved them to the side, seeking to penetrate me.”
The ordeal lasted quite some time, with her screaming and no one coming to her aid, but Irene eventually broke free. She fled the room. She ran all the way to their home, crying…
Irene was only 13 years old and a virgin. She didn’t understand boy-girl relationships, sex or pregnancy. As she ran home, she says, her mind was preoccupied with the fear that she had, in that encounter, conceived!
Her fear – her father would beat her to death for it. That’s another story right there, but we’ll probably get to it later. She was only a child, and a man in the neighbourhood had attempted to rape her!
Rape is real. It is a horrid, beastly deed. And yet it persists in our society like there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. Rape rages on for a number of reasons, including that many victims fear speaking out and dread the consequences of reporting the perpetrators.
They also don’t speak out because of the inherent shame that comes with the act of rape, probably coming from how society views sex generally and violent sex in particular.
But also, culprits’ families usually don’t want to be cast in a bad light, so they sometimes threaten the victim with dire repercussions, should they speak out.
It becomes imperative, therefore, that you, the parent, take on this role, of protecting your child and even more importantly, making her feel protected.
Irene says, “Nobody gave me a listening ear. Nobody was close enough for me to share that information with. I didn’t feel protected.” Let us talk a little more about this feeling protected, shall we? I will use another little story from when we were children, to illustrate this point.
A renowned man in our village had told his daughters that if any of them got pregnant before marriage, she should just disappear from the village, or else he would kill her with his bare hands.
Before long, one of the girls indeed got pregnant and, remembering their father’s threat, she decided she would neither keep the baby nor manage life away from home. So, she took her own life!
When you give your children such ultimatums, you cease to be their protector. When you do not create a safe space for them to talk with you about the things that happen in their lives – both the good and difficult – you’re not being protective.
When you do not show a genuine interest in their welfare, especially girls, they will not feel protected, because you have not taken the trouble to show them that you will do everything and anything to ensure that they are safe.
It has been said before, but I will say it again here because I have no proof that, when it was first said, everybody reading this article heard it. Rapists have no labels.
Plainly put, anyone can turn out to be a rapist. Anyone! A parent, a sibling, a friend, a classmate or a spiritual leader. Yes, there are many good people around us who would never do such a vile thing, but they, too, have no labels, so we can never tell.
The safe thing is for us to teach our girls to be cautious – not to avoid all people, for we live among people – but to be suspicious of things certain people say or do.
The writer is a parenting counsellor and teacher
