When revenge gets old

Kimironko market - Rwanda 

She tried killing herself three times. First by rope; rope snapped. Second by rope, branch snapped. The last time she tied her feet up tightly, so tight it would take two men to untie it, then hurled herself into Lake Kivu. A man cutting grass by the shores dove in and fished her out. "Am I dead?" She asked bewildered, coughing water, wide eyed. Man said, no. She couldn't stop crying. "I felt hopeless to find myself still alive." 

She really wanted to die so that she could save her mom who had married six different men by the time she was 14. "She kept getting married because these men would try to rape me so she kept moving to protect me and suffered for it. I wanted to kill myself to protect her. To stop her moving from one bad man to another."

So, she ran away from her village in Rutsiro to Rubavu, Western Rwanda & married a man she didn't love. One day her mom came for treatment and was diagnosed with HIV. She was devastated, couldn't bear it. "I also had HIV, but I had made peace with it." When her mom went back to the village she killed herself. 

"During her funeral I vowed that I'd infect as many men as I could to make them pay for all the pain she had suffered under the hands of men." So she left her marriage & became a commercial sex worker. Her turf was a grungy joint called Labamba. Burly, hard & determined, she ran those streets for two decades. Two years ago she stopped. "Revenge gets old. It wears your heart." 

Because she liked clothes she hired an old sewing machine and started sewing vitenge clothes. Then she slowly started recruiting other commercial sex workers, her ex-cronies, from the streets to join her. They started a cooperative group, bought two sewing machines. Then three. Then Trademark East Africa heard about them, bought them 14 more, and offered training to them on management, finance access, capacity building etc. They opened their doors to the orphans of commercial sex workers to train them on dress making. And this stone started rolling, slowly gathering moss, growing to 29 members.

I met them last week at their workshop on a Mbugangaeli street. The early morning sun was warm and golden, the type that makes you want to open your mouth and swallow it. We sat amidst sewing machines with brand names like Juki, Kawkab, Panama. There was a lot peeling back the raw past, a lot of sobbing in hands. The world is a cesspit of cruelty. 

Later, they sent me away with a gift of a shaggy carpet they made. I pledged a new sewing machine & capital to this sweet 14 year old girl called Uwineza who stole (and broke) my heart ( she reminded me of my 13 year old daughter; shy, soft spoken, stoic) once she finishes her dressmaking course. She teared because in her world generosity is a novelty; she expects life to keep taking away from her, not give her. 

Of course they need more sewing machines, these ladies. It's literally oil down there. It saves them and then heals them.

As told by ...#bikozulu