An Unfortunate Reminder

**contains violence**

After having a long phone conversation with APH on Thursday, I settled into bed to read a book, and started hearing screams outside my window. The housing compound was built mostly out of concrete, which made it difficult to decipher exactly where the sound was coming from, so I decided to go outside to check it out. My new housemate met me in the hallway; she was also startled by the noise. Two days earlier, the previous houseboy was arrested for taking money from my room, and was replaced with a “new” houseboy who had worked for the house owner in the past without any issues, and came with good references. Once we stepped outside, we could tell that the screams were coming from the new houseboy’s apartment where he and his wife were staying.

We walked down towards the apartment. The door was cracked open and the interior glowed with a dim bluish light, but we could not see inside. We could hear the wife wailing and the sound of him hitting her. It wasn’t clear if he was physically and/or sexually assaulting her so we started to shouted his name over and over. No response. I debated whether to enter the apartment, but the intensity of the screams and the other sounds coming from the apartment frightened me. I quickly ran to get the houseboys from next door (who are friends with this man) and also to call the landlord. I called for the boys next door, no response. I woke the landlord who lives across town, who responded but did not have any suggestions on what to do.

In the minute I was calling next door and the landlord, the man had pulled a knife on his wife and tried to stab her. She stopped him by grabbing the knife, pushing him, and exiting the apartment. She was covered in blood and ran towards the gate. The man approached me to try to explain, but I quickly threw both my hands out in front of me and told him not to come any closer, repeating “No, no, no …” Even though I didn’t speak the same language as the houseboy, he knew when he approached me that I was afraid. If there is one thing that can be communicated across language barriers it is fear. The woman was not able to get beyond the second gate, because it was locked, so he chased after her.

I’m not sure how much time had passed, but maybe 15-30 minutes later, the woman returned, accompanied by the houseboys from next door. Her hand was burned and bleeding badly. I called Zach and Cara, two medical students who are doing a rotation in Freetown, to get their advice on how to deal with the wound. The 99 cent first aid kit I brought wasn’t much, but it was enough. We rinsed her hand in clean water and used a tube of iodine that Liz had given me (from her mom) as an antiseptic, dressed it with gauze, and then wrapped some packaging tape around it. He had hit the side of her head several times, making her earrings pierce her scalp. She also had a cut behind her ear, maybe from the knife. He had bitten her shoulder and broken the skin, so we cleaned her ear and shoulder with an antiseptic wipe. Blood was all over the compound.

We insisted that she sleep inside the house, but we could tell she was afraid. If she stayed in the house away from her husband that could potentially mean more abuse for her later. All night I sat in my room, awake, with the lights on, behind two sets of doors and four locks. I couldn’t sleep, not only because I was shaken up, but also because I told myself that I needed to be awake just in case there were any more screams. I took out the knife that my dad gave me over the holidays, set it on the table near the door, and waited. I kept telling myself, “He will not stab her. He will not kill her; not if I can do anything to stop it.”

Once the sun came up, I packed my bags and called my landlord to tell her I was moving out. I called Kyle who calmed me down and walked me through the next steps: call the embassy to see if/how to report the crime, wait for the landlord to escort me out of the house, and call Laura to see if I could move into her house. The embassy’s advice was really discouraging. They insisted that it “is not uncommon for a man to beat his wife in the middle of the street,” and even if the woman reported the crime to the police, she may not receive the voucher for medical treatment. Additionally, they informed me there were no shelters in Freetown (no surprise there), which meant she had nowhere to go. But where the embassy failed, the landlord excelled. When the landlord arrived, she insisted on talking to the man and woman separately about what happened. She made the houseboy take his wife to the doctor and return to the house so she could confirm that her wounds were attended to. She spoke to the man about how his behavior was completely unacceptable and suggested alternative ways to handle jealousy. She spoke to the woman about leaving her husband and returning to the village to her family. Whether or not she will actually return, I don’t know. In the days to come, she will continue to reside with her husband, making it more difficult for her to leave. The landlord drove me to my new house, I unpacked, Laura graciously provided me with dinner, we sat on the balcony, decompressed, and then, I finally slept.

The event was an unfortunate reminder of why I applied to graduate school in the first place: to understand how sex and gender based violence manifests to maintain oppression, and to be part of the conversation to fight systems of oppression. Or in other words, to never again have someone tell me: “Some women just love to be beaten, if they are not beaten they don’t feel loved.”