Jane (not her real name), 28, is a married mother of four - three girls and a boy. Jane did not walk into marriage willingly. One day, as she was walking back from school, a ruthless group of local Banyarwanda herdsmen, commonly known as Bakonyine pounced on her. Her classmates fled in disarray. She screamed her lungs out but she was overpowered by her captors. She recalls that her fellow students later regrouped and put on a spirited fight to rescue her but her captors strengthened their group and won the battle. Stick-wielding men carried her shoulder high to the home of the man who was to become her husband. Later, it occurred to Jane that the old tradition of forced marriage was caching up with her. “I endured untold suffering that night. I was still virgin,” Jane weeps. “It will remain a black night for me.” At the time of kidnap, Jane was 15 years old. She dreamed of becoming a pilot. Her expectations were suddenly dashed. As I arrive in Jane’s compound there is stillness in the air. She is sitting on a mat spread on a dusty floor in her small house made of un-burnt mud bricks. “Come in and have a seat, please,” she smiles as she offers me a stool. An iron-sheet roof leak when it rains. Jane’s future looks bleak. She speaks in a voice of hopelessness.She has been married for thirteen years but marriage to her has been a bore. “I have never enjoyed sex. Sometimes I contemplate even cheating on him but I come from a religious background,” she says warily. “Remember, I was only fifteen years when I was kidnapped. I was innocent,” Jane recalls in an interview last week. “They took me, made me into a wife. I married a stranger!”Jane muses over whether or not girls ought to resist the tradition. “Some people used to tell us it was the culture of the day,” Jane says bitterly. “You would accept the new home and carry on as if nothing has happened.” But Jane knows just how brutal the old order, known as Guterura, is. She knows that she will not be respected if she quits her marriage. A marriage which she had no say in. “On the first night, the man rapes you repeatedly. By the time your family turns up, you are already ‘used’,” Jane continues. Guterura was common among the pastoralists, notably the Banyarwanda living in Umutara and Bahima in Western Uganda. The practice is dying out due the advent of HIV/Aids virus. Jane talks of the emptiness of the love she gets from her husband. She likened her marriage life to a battle where there is bargain. “Sometimes I contemplate running away from him but at my age, I have nowhere to turn,” Jane laments. “It is a lion I married.” She said majority of young girls were forced into such marriages by their ancient culture. What made things worse was the realisation that her own family were not devoid of blame for her fate. “At a later stage, it became clear that my family had a hand in my forced marriage. It chokes my heart.” “My relatives earned a lot in the form of bride prices out of me,” Jane explains bitterly. Jane uses an analogy of a gourd to explain her frustration. “A gourd is used to fetch water, carry beers or milk and all that. Guterura victims are no different.” She says her husband is a very vary hard, unloving man with little sympathy. “I feel I am being used as a prostitute. The man is green about love.” Dreams of becoming a pilot belong to another lifetime; Jane now has no expectations, no hope. Her husband has nothing good to say about her. She was raised by domineering parents who ‘sold’ her to earn a living. “At first, I would spend the whole day crying but culture had tied my hands. It was always said that a kidnapped girl who forcefully slept with a man, could not be welcomed back into the family.” “You basically become an outcast if you dare divorce him.” Jane has given up on life because the husband seems to get colder and colder by the day. Another Gaturara marriage victim says sex in such families become an illusion and a receding mileage. “I don’t love my husband because I never fell in love with him in the first place. He is a stranger. I get scared sometimes,” Phinah (not real name) says. Phinah says she feels after ten years of marriage she is living in slavery. She says her man is a repulsive partner. “The man is just obsessed with sex which is the opposite of me. Whenever I see him fear develops.” “Right away, he demands for sex, he becomes violent sometimes. But, I have not option,” Phinah adds with a depressed face. “I had this dream of getting married to a loving husband.” Eugène Habiyakare says his youngest sister was kidnapped when she was 16-years old. She was living in Umutara in Eastern Province. One day, Habiyakare’s sister was visiting her aunt. “She liked to stay with her auntie and she jokingly said she would not return. Little did she know her destiny had been decided,” Habiyakare recalls. On her way to her aunt she was kidnapped by men living in the neighborhood. This marked the beginning of her married life. “Our father shouted at first but was promised fine fines in form of cows and he cut the story short,” Habiyakare said. Ends
