Sally Chiwama’s Weblog

SCHOOL GIRL SURVIVES ACID ATTACK FROM “EX-FIANCE”

You have to “grow” crocodile skin to clean the wounds of an acid survivor, the worst ordeal was while in the hospital as the skin kept peeling off, I did not realize that the tongue skin was also peeling off. The young girl was like pushing something in her mouth, I opened her mouth to see and found that almost the whole tongue had come off such that I had to pull it out like you do with a cow and only a little red thing (tongue) remained. These are the words of one Lusaka lady whose young sister Fridah Mwansa (not real name) was acid attacked by Fridahs ex-fiancé. As Annette is narrating the story to me, Fridah is seated right next to me and I asked her if she wanted to tell me herself, her answer was a tear drops from the good eye and she said. “I don’t want to talk about it, am really tired of this, I pressed her to tell me what she was tired of, she said, “well first it brings back very painful memories, I can see the whole incident all over again and very clearly like it happened yesterday”. It all started in the year 2002 in a small village 80 kilometers from Mpika boma and Fridah was only 11 years old and doing her sixth grade when her parents engaged her to a man several years her senior. Fridahs parents even received “insalamu” (dowry) for their daughter. The agreement was that upon completing her primary education, she would then be handed over to one Thomas Chileshe. Her older sister Annette Mwansa who leaves in the capital city received the news that her 11 year old sister with a heavy heart and sadness, she realized that the next year coming the young girl would be writing her final primary examinations and if she did not make it to secondary school, then she would be taken straight into marriage and by that time Fridah would be only 13 years old. Annette then organized for the young girl to travel to Lusaka so that she could continue her school here. In August 2002, Fridah then traveled to Lusaka to be with her older sister. When she arrived in Lusaka, they could not find a place in school for her grade so instead of starting grade seven, she was brought back into grade five. In the meanwhile Thomas Chileshe did not take the news of his fiancée leaving the village very well an apparently was very upset. He wrote a letter to his fiancées guardian telling her that she had not right to take the girl away and that he would soon travel to Lusaka to come and get her back. Annette however did not see the need to respond to the letter as she thought there was no point in arguing with a person she didn’t know. “The letter was in bad taste, he shouted at me in the letter. I didn’t think it was wise to argue with a person I didn’t know, so I saw no need to respond to the letter, so I posted the letter to my parents so that they could see the type of person they had accepted the “insalamu” from”, Annette said. There years down the line when Fridah is doing her grade seven, Thomas Chileshe suddenly appeared in Lusaka in search of his young bride. He found the house where she lived and casually went and knocked on the door. Annette who happened to be in the kitchen opened the door. She did not know or recognize the person at the door so she politely asked how she could be of help. The gentleman introduced himself careful not to mention where he was coming from. He then asked to see Fridah. Annette then called her young sister and asked if she knew the gentleman. Fridah agreed that she knew him and told her sister that, that was Thomas her fiancé from the village. Annette then let Thomas in and let the two to chat, half an hour later, the talks were done and upon leaving the house, Annette gave Thomas a stern warning. “ Listen Thomas, this relationship is known in the village and not in town, if you want to see Fridah, you will see her in the village during the holidays, this girl is here for school, so please make this your last visit here”, warned Annette. Thomas went quite for a while but the silence must have been his plans to relocate to the city because one Sunday he resurfaced at a named church where Fridah and her family used to congregate. At church he would greet Fridah and her nieces but later took advantage of the situation and would escort the young girls from church to their home pretending to be brotherly. The girls though reported to their older sister that Thomas had started coming to their church. Once again Thomas was told politely warned to keep away from Fridah but this seemed to have angered him further. At this point Fridah had gotten over her emotions and insisted she wanted to tell the story herself and she was ready to talk. As fate would have it, in the year 2006 Fridah and Annette lost their older sister who used to live on the Copperbelt, they all tried for the funeral and their parents also traveled from Mpika and they all met as a family. At this point Annette thought it prudent to take advantage of the situation and talk about Fridahs issue to her parents and other family members. The family sat down and Annette told her parents that Fridah was far too young to have been engaged and it was important that she goes on with her education. She told her parents that their older bother was paying a lot of money for her school as she was at a private school. She also informed the parents of Thomas’ behavior and that he had been insulting everyone who spoke on his engagement to Fridah. The family thought about it and it was agreed and decided that the “insalamu” should be returned to Thomas and his relatives and true to the word as the parents returned to the village they did returned the insalamu and Thomas’ parents acknowledged having received the money. In turn they also informed their son that the money they had paid for his fiancé had been returned so the engagement was over. “I suspect that is when he got more incensed but did not show it as he went quite again for a couple of days, Fridah said. From this point Fridah insisted she wanted to recount the ordeal herself, she began to tell me that one Sunday every one had left for church she planned to go to one of the open markets in town to get herself a tracksuit for P.E at school. Fridahs says that when she arrived in town, she received a text message from Thomas asking her where she was. She told him where she was and he instructed her to wait for him for a short while because he had a message for her. The young girl did as she was told and a few minutes later Thomas showed up. She immediately asked him to tell her the message as she was in a hurry to get back home. “He told me that his mother was very ill and had traveled to Lusaka to seek medical attention and had asked to see me, I asked him why she wanted to see me and he said that because she wanted to hear from the horses’ mouth (Fridah) whether it was true I wanted to discontinue the engagement”, said Fridah. Being young Fridah said she got frightened and didn’t know what to do and after all Thomas had assured her that it would only be for a short while and he would make sure she got home safe and in good time. Little did Fridah know that she was being tricked because when they arrived Thomas invited the young girl into the house and as soon as she sat down, he locked all the doors and forcibly got hold of Fridahs mobile phone. She explained to me that she became even more frightened because there was only the two of us in the house. She asked to see his mother but he told her that his mother was in the village. “My sister (Annette) was calling my phone to try to find out my whereabouts, he went outside but again locked the door to answer the phone. He started telling her that they would never see me again because I was his wife”, Fridah said. She then said that she started crying because at that point it dawned on her that she had been tricked. Meanwhile, outside on the phone Thomas was busy calling all of Fridahs relatives i.e. bothers, sisters Aunties as they were saved in her phone that they would never see her again and should not bother looking for her because he had married her. Fridah says that later in the evening after 7:00pm he came back in the house and she run past him to in a bid to run away but he blocked the door and threatened to kill her if tried to run away again. “ He came in the house only pick up his jacket and went out again, he locked me inside the house again but from a window outside he said to me that he would see me in the morning” she said. Back at home Annette was panicking and reported to the Victim Support Unit (VSU) of the Police Service that her young sister had been abducted by an ex-fiancé. She also said that the family launched a man hunt but could not trace Thomas’ whereabouts as by that time he had switched off his and Fridahs phones. She told me that she spent the night crying as she was frightened alone without knowing where she was. In the morning Thomas’ sister in law knocked on the door but she could not come in as the door was locked .I spoke to her through the window and apparently Thomas appeared around 7:00am and the lady asked him why he was keeping a young girl in the house without the consent of her guardians. She pleaded with him to let the young girl go and asked him to apologize to her guardians for keeping the young girl without their consent but Thomas could not hear of that and refused to apologize. “I went home alone and reported the whole incident to my guardians, the quizzed me to find out if Thomas had sexually assaulted me, I told them he did not sleep in the house but my family would not believe me, in fact am still a virgin”, said Fridah amidst tears. Annette further narrates that from the time Thomas released Fridah he had been sending threatening text messages and insults to her and other members of her family and again we reported to the VSU again and even showed them the text messages they had been receiving from Thomas. She said that with Fridahs help, the Police apparently went to Thomas’ house in a bit to arrest him but they did not find him. The police inquired from the neighbors and they too said they had not seen him since the night before, she also said that she feels disappointed because she thought the Police would help but nothing has happened to this date” Annette said. A couple of months passed by and Fridahs Family got comfortable that the Bain of their life had since stopped traumatizing their lives until one Saturday when Fridah reported once again that Thomas had been to church and threatened that “nag banana chachiine nkakwipaya” literally translating to “ if it is true that you have denied me, I will kill you”. Annette says they did not take the threat serious and even laughed about it. Thomas apparently continued sending insulting messages. Towards the end of March, pupils usually sit for their end of term exams at different times and hers finished around 10 in the morning and on that particular Tuesday, Fridah had finished her exams and was heading home. She disembarked off a bus and was walking on a foot path towards home, halfway to home she met a friend who informed her that he had a letter for her from someone, her friend told her to wait a while he picked up the letter from home. As she was waiting for her friend, she heard a voice from behind call her “Fridah” she turned to look behind and there was Thomas on a bicycle. “ I was shocked and scared when I saw that it was Thomas, I asked him what he was looking for in my neighborhood and what he wanted”, I noticed that he had a black plastic bag or something on the carrier of his bicycle but did not bother much about it’, said Fridah. She narrates further that her friend came back and gave her the letter and she tried to walk fast towards home to avoid talking to him but Thomas got on his bicycle, he started following her and asking for her phone so that he could talk to her sister. She refused to give him the phone, as she walked on she met an elderly neighbor Mr. Zimba who asked her why she was not in school at that time, she explained that she had finished for the day as they were writing their end of term tests, while she was talking to the elderly man Thomas had retreated and slowed down for fear of being asked questions. When she finished talking to the neighbor, she looked behind and Thomas had disappeared, she knelt down and said a little prayer, “Thank God he’s gone”, she said but a soon as she tried to get up, she noticed a bicycle pass her by and there was Thomas again. “This time I gathered some courage and asked him what he wanted from me and asked him to leave me alone, I also asked why he had not left but he did not respond, instead he took out sort of a bottle wrapped in a black plastic bag and put it to hi mouth pretending to drink the stuff,” said Fridah. At this point there’s a long pin drop silence and tears begin to flow from her good eye. I let her cry for a while and about five minutes later, she composes herself and continues narrating her ordeal. “ I felt a cold chill around my right ear down to my shoulder, before I realized what it was, I thought it was cold water, I even asked him, “imwe finshi mwanjitila efi?” literally translating to “ you what is this you have thrown at me?” before I knew it he splashed the rest of the contents on my left side and some of it went into my mouth, as you can see, I have lost one eye, I have no ear and part of my head will never grow hair, my neck shoulder also is still being eaten by the acid up to now, said Fridah visibly angry. All the while Thomas was just looking and smiling at her and bolted only when Fridah started to scream in pain. Amid screams of “am burning, am burning, help me” she could see bubbles forming on her skin. She explained to me that the way we see milk boils is exactly what she could see happening to her skin. “I saw my skin melting, my school uniform and bag were also melting” she said. Annette now comes in to continue the narration as Fridah does not remember what happened after that. Good Samaritans and neighbors came to Fridahs rescue when they heard someone screaming outside. By this time she had fallen into the drainage system writhing in pain. She was picked up and taken into the house . The neighbors that helped Fridah did not yet know that it was acid that was poured on Fridah, as they took her into the house, they quickly gave her point of milk in a bid to try and neutralize what ever it was as they women noticed that the girl was forming at the mouth. Later they took her into the bathroom to try and wash off the stuff but instead the wounds were growing as the skin kept peeling off. “As am talking to you right now, the side of the bath tub were Fridah was being washed from has corroded with the acid, one of the ladies who went to the scene where the incident happened found a little bottle but it had also been half eaten with it’s own contents ” Annette said. She says that Fridah was taken to the hospital and that the first week quite bad as the skin kept falling off, in the second week, Fridahs condition took a turn for the worst and her skin turn black. “ Her skin just turned black and hard, we were all shocked, it was so hard that if you sort of knocked on it, you would hear a sound, we had to grow crocodile skin to endure that, when washing the wounds we had to pull it off every day, she said. Annette however, thanks God and the Doctors at the UTH that her younger sister’s internal organs were not affected although her eye was removed. She also says that Fridah has undergone some skin grafting and awaiting her last operation for her eye but that would depend if Doctors will be able to make the top and bottom eyes lids. Fridah says that the thing that she misses most is going to school, she has not been able to go back to school as she has been in and out of the hospital. “ I could have been doing my last grade by now, and looking forward to going to going into college, I miss learning, I miss my friends”, said Fridah tears building in her eyes. NGOs and Civil Society Organisations have condemned the act and have called for the culprit to be brought to book. The YWCA have condemned the act as barbaric and that it must be condemned in the strongest terms. “Any violence against any human being must be condemned and the culprit must be brought to book soon and urged the police to act fast” Human rights and child rights activist Sara Longwe says that the Zambian society condones treatment of women and girls as second class citizens on pretext of following the African culture. “If a man had been attacked this way, the assailant would have been arrested by now, especially that the incident took place not far from the Chelston Police Station and the BP Community Police Post of the Chelston residential area of Lusaka, she says. Longwe also blames the government for not tabling before Parliament the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) and Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the proposed Sexual Offences and Gender Violence Bill. This Bill was proposed to the Minister of Justice in 2006 by the women’s movement, under the auspices of Women in Law and Development in Africa (WiLDAF) Zambian Chapter. And a Zambian Journalist Brenda Zulu says “the man who poured acid on that girl should be punished for what he did, because he is on the run he should be publicly portrayed in Newspapers so that the whole world should know what he has done to this young girl”. Acid violence is a particularly vicious and damaging form of violence in any instance where acid is thrown in people’s faces. The overwhelming majority of the victims are women, and many of them are below 18 years of age. The victims are attacked for many reasons. In some cases it is because a young girl or women has spurned the sexual advances of a male or either she or her parents have rejected a proposal of marriage. Recently, however, there have been acid attacks on children, older women and also men. These attacks are often the result of family and land dispute, dowry demands or a desire for revenge. But the scars left by acid are not just skin deep. In addition to the inevitable psychological trauma, some survivors also face social isolation and ostracism that further damage their self-esteem and seriously undermine their professional and personal futures. Women who have survived acid attacks have great difficulty in finding work and, if unmarried (as many victims tend to be), have very little chance of ever getting married. In a country like Zambia this has serious social and economic consequences. In March this year, this case will be a year old and all this time the suspect (Thomas Chalabesa Chileshe) is still on the run. There is an old adage that goes “you can run but you cannot hide”. Zambia has ratified many human rights instruments over the years. Therefore it is right for women’s movement to conclude that the Parliament should have been able to make some amendments to the constitutional Bill of Rights chapter by now. Instead, Parliament has managed to thwart two separate private members’ Bills, presented by women Parliamentarians that attempted to domesticate international instruments to protect women’s rights in Zambia.