Holding Back the Shame
continued...
"Half of rape victims in Burundi are under 18, and many are very young girls – perhaps because they are clearly virgins and thus will not pass on the Aids virus. A few rapists even believe that sex with a virgin will cure them of their own HIV status."
Christine was left alone with the houseboy – actually a man of 18 – for only a short while, but sadly it was long enough. Beatrice had gone to the fields, the other children were at school, and the babysitter went out for a moment to get some milk. When she returned she found the man on top of Christine. He ran off, but was caught and is now in jail. Christine showed her mother what happened with the houseboy using gestures. Beatrice took her to a nearby doctor, who confirmed that she had been raped, though it appears that she was not completely penetrated – which may be good news for her future, as virginity is highly prized and a necessity if a girl wants to marry Christine has not cried since just after the rape, nor spoken of it.
But at night she has nightmares, and her mother holds her close then as she does now. “I love her so much,” Beatrice says. Eventually I find out that Christine is likely to be her last child – Beatrice is 44 – and that three other daughters have died. Children are so important to women here that usually the first question I ask them is how many they have. They tell me how many boys and girls, but there is always a ghostly third number lurking behind the others – the number of children who died, of the usual killers: malaria, diarrhoea, respiratory infections, typhoid, malnutrition. All seems well now with Christine and her mother, except for one factor.
It is easy to forget the fathers in situations like this. Beatrice’s husband is a soldier and lives in a camp that the rest of the family moved from a year ago because they had found it hard to make ends meet there. They came to where they were able to buy a piece of land, but it means that the father has to live apart from his wife and children. Christine’s father knows about the rape now – Beatrice sent a member of the family to tell him. She thinks he will come back to them in two days, on Saturday. According to her, it is for her husband to decide what should be done about the jailed houseboy. She is Christian, and believes in forgiveness. “When my husband comes back,” she says, “if the man accepts that’s he’s done something bad and asks for his forgiveness, my husband will give it because he knows God. It is not for us to judge him.”
Whether Beatrice’s husband will be so forgiving towards her is less certain. She fears he will be angry, perhaps at his daughter, but more likely at Beatrice. Beatrice’s face tightens. What can she do to placate him? Allison, the MSF psychologist, offers to speak to him about the medication Christine is taking, and to explain that the rape isn’t the fault of Christine or Beatrice. But all of us women in the room – mother and daughter, MSF staff and me – we know that it is difficult to stem the tide of a husband’s fury at his wife. Throughout Saturday I wonder if he has arrived home yet, if he has hit Beatrice or Christine or thrown them out. I wonder still.
Léocadie is one of many women at the Bujumbura health centre remarkably open about speaking of their experiences and willing to be photographed head-on, even when given many opportunities to say no or be photographed from the back or in silhouette to preserve anonymity. The centre is careful to make the records of these women confidential, using an elaborate code system and locking records away.
The stigmatism against rape is very strong in Burundi – as it is most places. Rape victims are not named in newspaper reports in Britain either. Léocadie is 20 and lives in a distant province; she took a bus to get to Bujumbura. She has a one-month-old son wrapped in blue and yellow cloth, whom she breastfeeds while we talk. Her son keeps his eyes fixed on her as he feeds; when he opens his mouth to yawn, his tongue is white with milk. She was raped when she was almost five months’ pregnant. She sells maize in the market; sometimes when she doesn’t have enough from her own field, neighbours give her some of theirs to sell.
One day a neighbour offered her some of his, leading her to an isolated corner of his field and then raping her. “He was very strong,” she says. “He put a hand around my throat and the other over my mouth.” He did not seem to care that she was visibly pregnant. Léocadie is here for her six-month check-up, and has found out that she is not HIV-positive. That is one stroke of luck in her life. She was not so lucky after her first visit to the clinic: she remained for a week so that her pregnancy could be monitored (there is space for several women to stay overnight), and when she returned to her village she discovered her husband had left her because of the rape, taking their three-year-old daughter with him. Léocadie has seen her daughter just twice since then, and says she and her husband are “divorced,” though possibly not in the legal sense.
She has also moved from the village after neighbours were mean to her, and now lives among Christian neighbours who she says are much kinder. She used to run into her attacker’s wife, and would say hello but little more. They never discussed what happened. The man has run off; that violent moment in the corn field has broken up two marriages and deprived a daughter of her mother. Throughout the interviews, I ask women why the men did it. They give concrete answers: Satan made him; he was badly brought up; his father also raped women and he inherited the urge; he is a madman; he wanted a wife. None said anything about how badly women fare generally in Burundi, or the male domination that keeps them so downtrodden.
They are fatalistic, which may explain why Christianity is so popular here, with its promise of a better life after death. None of the women’s answers really gets to the heart of the question: why do men do this to women? This is not a question limited to Burundi, or third-world countries. Men rape two-year-old girls in Britain too, and no one knows why. Though I may be disgusted and upset by what I hear from Burundian women, it is not the response of the righteous, but rather the wary nod of recognition.