Sold into marriage at 14, abused by two husbands

At 45, Goretti Nabwami has only known sadness and despair in her life. The look on her face is a tapestry of the trauma and abuse she has endured from the men in her life. As she talks, her voice is laden with unshed tears. Sometimes, though, she cries, the tears flowing out of her eyes as she narrates her ordeal.

Nabwami lives in a two-room rental in Kireka, a suburb of Kampala City, with her children and abusive husband. Her neighbours are commercial sex workers, some of whose services her husband procures. 

When Daily Monitor visited her home, we found her mopping the verandah, while one of her daughters swept the concrete courtyard. Then, the children retreated into the front room of the rental to feed the family’s lone chicken and its chicks. 

Namwami lights a charcoal stove and puts on a kettle of tea. When it boils, she pours the water in a flask and calls the children. As is the norm in this family, breakfast is a cup of plain tea. There is nothing to eat in this house. 

Nabwami’s life has been one of struggle - the struggle to feed her children, the struggle to escape abusive husbands, and the struggle to walk with her head held high in dignity. 

Sold into marriage
When she was 14 years old, Nabwami was given into marriage to an older man by her father. Her mother and other relatives were complicit in this crime. While it is understandable that 31 years ago, there were few options when a rural family ran out of money to pay a girl’s school fees, Nabwami says she did not want to get married. 

“I was living with my aunt in Kawempe town. She was paying my school fees but when she fell ill with AIDS, she could barely manage to get out of bed to go to work. I was sent back to my father’s home in Kitukutwe. The moment he saw me, my father told my mother that he was going to find a husband for me,” she says.

The first suitor her father brought was a bus conductor, whom Nabwami roundly rejected. The second man sent his mother to ask for her hand in marriage and he was also rejected.

“My mother told my father not to force me into marriage. However, my father was angry, accusing my mother of standing in his way. When he overpowered her, my mother, aunts and grandmother, advised me to get married,” Nabwami laments. 

With the entire family bearing down on the defenseless adolescent girl, she caved in to their demands. Besides, they had locked her up in the house for days and to see the light of day, she had to agree to get married. On December 4, 1993, Nabwami was married off in a traditional ceremony held in Kitukutwe, a neighbourhood in Kira Municipality in Wakiso district.

“During the first week of marriage, my husband locked me up in his house and enlisted his brothers as my bodyguards. He cautioned me to get pregnant quickly because he needed a child. After a month, there were no signs of pregnancy. That is when he began beating me,” she says.

With the honeymoon clearly over, Nabwami was given a huge piece of land to cultivate. Sometimes, her husband would go with her to the garden and batter her whenever she took a rest from digging. 

The abuse did not stop when she finally fell pregnant. He beat her and kicked the young girl whenever she developed nausea and vomited. When the pregnancy was six months, during one of the more abusive episodes, he repeatedly kicked her in the waist. 

“When he saw that I was bleeding profusely, he took me to a clinic and introduced me to the nurses as his younger sister. Luckily the health workers managed to stop the bleeding but he cautioned me not to give birth to a baby boy. He only wanted daughters,” the distraught woman says.

On one antenatal visit, the doctors discovered that she was pregnant with twins. Dealing with the stress of carrying two children, lack of food, and heavy menial labour, Nabwami shouldered on with the pregnancy. Nine months later, she gave birth to her children at Mulago National Referral Hospital.

“I pushed out the first child normally, but I had to have an emergency caesarean section for the second baby. Unfortunately, the doctors made a deep cut into the baby’s head and broke his arm during the surgery. He had to be placed into special care. So, while I was in the general ward with one baby, the other one was in the Special Care Unit, and I had a c-section wound to take care of,” she says.

Not once did her husband visit her. Once in a while, his relatives came to check on her in the hospital. The woman in the bed next to hers offered to help watch over one baby while she made the daily trip to breastfeed the one in special care. 

“That woman had had a c-section, but the baby had died. Her motives for helping me were sinister. One day, when I had gone to see the baby in the Special Care Unit, she was discharged. She wrapped up my baby and took him with her. To confuse me, she wrapped a blanket in a bedsheet and put it on my bed to look like a baby,” Nabwami says.

When she returned to the ward, Nabwami discovered the theft and let out an alarm, alerting the nurses, who in turn, instructed the gatemen at all the hospital’s gates to check every woman walking out. Her baby was recovered from a box in which the woman had hidden him. Once she recovered her baby, Nabwami requested to be discharged. 

More abuse
Back home, the abuse continued unabated. Besides bringing women into their home, Nabwami’s husband did not buy milk for the babies or food for their mother. To survive, she began plaiting women’s hair in secret to earn a few shillings. 

She also hired herself out to dig in people’s gardens for a small fee. When she grew so thin from malnourishment and neglect of her health, her husband disdainfully told her that she was not worthy to be the mother of his children. 

When he was informed of her suffering, Nabwami’s father advised her to abandon her babies and walk out of the marriage. He was ready to find her another husband. She was 16-years-old.

“I refused to leave my marital home unless he gave me permission to return to his home with my children. In anger, my father disowned me and told me never to return to his home. He forbade my siblings from helping me or talking to me. My mother does not have authority to counter him. Even today, I cannot go back home,” Nabwami laments.

When their sons were four-years-old, her abusive husband decided that one of his ‘healthier’ girlfriends needed to bring them up. After spending days out of the home, he returned and informed her of his decision.

“I objected. When he lifted the children off the verandah, I grabbed his legs. He began kicking me viciously. I tried to fight him, but I lost the battle. He took the children and abandoned me in our home,” Nabwami narrates, tears rolling down her eyes.

The distraught woman remained in the home for a week, hoping that her husband’s girlfriend would fail to look after the children and he would return them to her. He never did. Eventually, she also abandoned their marital home and went to live with her aunt in Gayaza. She found a job as a housemaid.

“The next time I saw my twins, they were very ill, malnourished, and unkempt. They did not recognise me. I had found out where their father was working and one day, I stealthily followed him to his home in Namasuba. The next day, when he was at work, I returned to his home to visit my children,” she says.

Nabwami found her children naked and hungry. Apparently, their father’s girlfriend was not feeding them, and according to the neighbours, they scavenged for food at the roadside garbage heap.  

“I cried. I had nowhere to take them. I was a housemaid and there was no way my boss would allow me to live in her home with two children. When their father found out that I had visited them, he took them to live in Manyangwa with another woman,” she says.

During the time she worked as a housemaid in different homes, Nabwami was impregnated by one of her bosses, who later abandoned her and the baby. A few years later, she entered into a relationship with another man, who agreed to live with her. They rented a home in Banda and went on to have four children.

Abuse from second husband 
She continued to visit her children stealthily and even showed them her home. They also visited her. However, she was soon to lose them mysteriously.

“When they were 16, Wasswa, my first son, fell ill and was rushed to Mulago Hospital. I was only called when he was in a critical condition. He died two days after I visited him. After his death, I continued to see my remaining son stealthily, until he died six years after his brother,” she laments.

Even when her second son died, her former husband did not inform Nabwami. It was a neighbour who called her a few hours before he was buried. Even today, she does not know how he died.

“We had not had supper the previous night so I borrowed Shs50,000 from a neighbour and travelled for the burial. I found my son lying on the floor of the sitting room, foam coming out of his mouth and nose. No one had bothered to wash the body. That kills me every time I think about it. Since that day, I have never been happy,” she cries.  

However, more trauma was waiting just round the corner. After ten years of marriage with her second husband, he suddenly changed his behaviour towards her and told her to start fending for their children.

“Like my first husband, he began bringing women into the house. We fought all the time because I told him he will not mistreat me in my home. He assured me that as long as he was the one paying the rent, he would do as he pleases. He also procured the services of prostitutes, using them in the outdoor bathroom, in the hearing of our children,” she says. 

Without a man to fend for the family, Nabwami began washing clothes for people in the neighbourhood and working as a mobile saloon, plaiting women’s hair. With whatever money she earned, she stocked up on maize flour, rice, and charcoal to feed my children. On many occasions, they have gone hungry. 

Over the years, her husband took to drinking and is now an alcoholic. In the search for school fees for her children, she joined an organisation that purported to educate orphans as long as their guardians paid Shs200,000 as a commitment fee for the bursaries. 

After paying the money, the organisation offered her a job, where she was tasked to enlist more women with orphans. They also had to part with Shs200,000 per child. However, it turned out to be a scam. 

“The founders of the organisation disappeared with the funds and the women came to my home, demanding for their money. I did not have it. Some of them beat me and insulted my children. When I informed my husband to help me come up with ways in which we could pay the debt, he told me it was none of his concern,” she says. 

Nabwami now has a police case where she is charged with obtaining money by false pretense. She also has mounting debts, since she has had to borrow money to educate her children. The oldest is in Senior Six.

Trying to break the cycle of abuse
After 17 years with her husband, Nabwami is ready to leave him. But there is a huddle. She says due to what happened to her twins and their mysterious death, she is not ready to leave her children behind. 

“My husband is an alcoholic and yet I have four daughters aged between 20 and nine years. Whenever he comes home drunk, he becomes violent, breaking all the utensils. Many times, he is wild and has attempted to defile his own children. I cannot abandon them to such a beast,” she says.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, Nabwami borrowed Shs1.5 million to pay school fees last term and now the debt has accumulated to Shs2 million. She has failed to make the payments and has been summoned to appear in court on January 22, 2025.

Such is the stigma on her life that her siblings do not want anything to do with her and her children, since her father - who began the cycle of abuse - disowned her.

[email protected]