Mainstory: Kabakobwa Island: Graveyard for ‘spoilt’ girls

STEVENSON MUGISHA reveals chilling tale of Kabakobwa Island You must have heard or seen it. The Kabakobwa Island. Standing inside Lake Kivu, the Island would sit and wait its victims. The victims were girls who would engage in sex before marriage. The traditional values and cultural norms could never accept any young lady who got pregnant before getting married. These girls would be all herded to this dreaded Island, discarded and be starved to death. And many times, wild animals would also come and pick them up! Like a monster, the Island would swallow many girls without getting satisfied! Locals say the Island is haunted by ghosts. The tension was about whether change should be privileged over tradition and girls be left off the hook. Those who tried to plead for their mercy would be scorned. The sense of self-worth in society depended upon the traditional standards by which society judged people. Engaging in sex before marriage was a taboo and a violation of something sacred in the society. The Island would cut them off from the rest of the world. It was a nightmare. Girls who would ‘misbehave’ were considered outcasts, not fit to associate with other members of the society. It was a breach of rules regulating the tradition. Since such an act was a sacrilege, the violators needed harsh punishment. Death, to be more exact. The mere mentioning of the Kabakobwa would send a cloud of fear through the girls’ nerves. This Island is located in the middle of Lake Kivu. As you step on the Island, an eerie of silence welcomes you. Sorrowful mood hangs in the air. I am surprised that even birds on Kabakobwa never sing save for an occasional barking of dogs from neighboring villages. The rain is common. It falls repeatedly. It is midday, but the sky turns black and soon it rains again. I was one of those who thought before visiting the Island such harsh punishment cannot be meted upon our sisters. How wrong I was! As you stroll through the Island, many bones are still visible. A living confirmation of mortals, fate had handed a raw deal. I have never been scared in life. The Island is located in Kamajimbu near Suru community settlement, Nkombo sector (Nkombo Island) in Rusizi district. It is 18 Kilometers drive a way from Kamembe town in Kamembe sector. I watched bones of all sizes with horror. My guide is Disimasi Nkizamacumu, a dark-skinned man. He is 74-year-old and hails from Rwenje cell, a place standing opposite Kabakobwa Island. He walks slowly with a slight limp. You have to use boat as means of transport to reach Kabakobwa Island. Nkizamacumu recalls that at night, resident near the Island could hear girls wailing and screaming on their way to the ‘abattoir’. The girls would be heard asking for forgiveness, to be taken back into the community but in vain. He says in seclusion and since many didn’t know how to swim, they would be left to perish as a punishment and a lesson to others. I listen in dead silence. “It was a brutal way of disciplining girls,” Nkizamacumu says. He says throwing girls on this Island was not enough. “You know such girls were not blamed alone. Their parents would be ostracized too,” Nkizamacumu adds in a low tone. After such abomination descended to the village, elders in the area would cleanse the village. “Sometimes cleansing involved evicting the parents of the spoilt girls and migrate to other places far a way,” Nkizamacumu explains. “How would the society force parents to implement this. I think it was out of ignorance,” my guide starts continues.Girls would be chained and given small foodstuff as a package to last them some days. “Parents would give bare minimum that will prevent them from starving few days and the rest they keep for themselves,” he recalls. He says the Island was also a home of many owls and would snoot at night. When throwing girls to Kabakobwa stopped in the 70s, the owls also disappeared. “Their legs and arms would be tied,” It was a saddening experience,” Nkizamacumu says. The girls had to go through series of interrogation by elders of the village before they embarked on their journey to the Island. “Such families would be under looked. Nobody would want to marry from such a home,” These families would live under excessive fear. They lived under terrible curse. The girls were being brought from as far as Gitarama, Butare, Gikongoro areas and the whole part of former Cyangugu region. Although such acts have stopped, anger is rooted in deep-seated grievances, that the elders of the villages were highly unjust. “They were punishing only girls and leave their boyfriends loiter around. Why, I still wonder,” a 70-year-old woman from Kamembe sector who declines to be named reacted. “I hated it each time I remember it, because it was a very, very bad”. He says there are people who don’t have a single daughter alive. And when old parents beyond child-bearing die, their family line will be extinguished since some girls had been eaten up by wild animals. According to local leaders, later rumor circulated about the beautiful girls being dumped on the Island. Congolese men from Ijwi and Karehe regions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in North Kivu also got wind of it and started visiting the Island. “Sometimes, these men would sneak in and steal them. Later, there was intermarriages,” more locals say. These men would take the girls and marry them. Getting dowry by then was very expensive. “It was a wind fall profit for the Congolese men,” Nkizamacumu says as he bends down to picks some of the bones littered. Because of intermarriages between Congolese men of Karehe and Ijwi regions and ‘outcasts’, this, according to people who lived near the Island many years explains why Congolese residing in Ijwi and Karehe resemble Banyarwanda. I am told even the language spoken around this place is also similar to Kinyarwanda like Amashi language. Nkizamacumu castigated such punishments. He says it was against humanity. “Personally, I stood against such punishments. But I am happy that all my daughters did not bring shame or soil the name of their father,” Nkizamacumu said. He reveals that parents particularly mothers at every after one month, they would check the private parts of their daughters such as breasts and stomach in order to identify those pregnant. Claver Mukaba (78) is also a resident born in the same area. He says girls deserved such punishments. “It was aimed at preventing other girls in the community to get involved into immorality,” Mukaba says. He says today’s parents because they handle their girls with kid gloves; this has resulted into practice of immoral acts like prostitution. “To me, throwing such girls on this island was not meant to harass or torture them. It was a fair punishment and that is why women of the past had morals,” Mukaba empathizes. With time, the Island became a sort of museum. Parents would walk there with young daughters and watch the harrowing story. The idea was to scare them a way from getting involved in such behaviors. In that way traditional society was able to enforce integrity and a proper upbringing for young ladies in preparation for marriage. Ends