SOMBRE mood reigned supreme as we stood there watching a lady disembark from the car with so much difficulty that one did not need to ask to know that she was in severe pain.

This true story happened 15 years ago and later that day, I came to find out that the name of the lady who was coming out with clutches was Eve and one did not need to ask to know that she was in severe pain.  For a while there, we all thought that she had been involved in a serious car accident, little did we know that this kind of accident was more serious than meets the eye.  

It was during the 16 days of activism and I had all the journalists I could to provide coverage for this particular event.  I took the liberty to assist Eva and as we sat down for a one on one, I inquired what kind of an accident she had been involved in and that is when she agreed to grant me and my fellow scribes an interview. 

 Eve, a young lady of probably 30 years, told us she was  married and the two had been blessed with three beautiful children.  She told us that hers was an abusive marital relationship where she had lived to see her husband burn her with a hot iron on her breast, where she went as far as to show us.  

Before we knew it, she told us more than our share as she said the reason she was unable to walk was because her husband had pushed her from the bacon where she broke her spinal cord and doctors had declared that she can never walk on her own.  In other words, she had acquired permanent disability.

At the time of the story she had just been discharged from the hospital and was in dire need of legal and psychological support. For a while there, we sat so quite as not even a pen drop could be heard as some struggled to withhold their tears.  

I and my fellow scribes wrote the story and publicized it with legal experts making their efforts to guide her so that she can get the divorce and move on with her life.   I made a close follow up to follow up her condition and to see how Eve was doing while stressing upon her to never return to her husband.  

However, a week later I called her only to hear the shocking news as she told me she was returning back to her husband because she was not ready to leave her children.  I tried to warn her but she seemed adamant.    I told her that my worries were that the next time she would not be as lucky as she had been and my concern was that the next time I may be writing a story about her funeral.  

I never heard anything about her until last year when I got the sad news that Eve died a week after she had returned back to her marital home.  I guess since dead men tell no tales, I will never find out what really happened.  There was nothing that I could do but to share her story to save the other souls in a similar position as she is.  

Eve’s story is one of the so many narratives that I have come around as a scribe and a citizen of the good country. 

Over the years, civil societies such as the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP) have made several calls for the government to enact a specific law that will deal with the cases of gender based violence.   

Another public outcry has been to establish one stop centres and shelter homes for survivors of gender based violence.  For instance, based from Eve’s story, she seemed to feel that she could not stay at family member’s houses and felt the urge to go home. I believe that as had it been there were shelter homes, she would have not gone back perhaps just guessing as it is now too late to think over.

Counselling services are also critical for our girls and boys to know that it is alright to go when the marriage does not seem to work rather than return in a coffin.    Let us teach our children to know that a failed marriage is not the end of the world especially if   violence and abuses are there.

To stakeholders, let us invest in shelter homes   to spare the lives of so many women and men who tend to go back simply because there is no place for them to go.  Let us invest in mental health and counselling services to spare our generation.  

Life is precious; let us protect it against all odds.  May God rest the soul of Eve and all the women, girls, boys and men who lost their lives from gender based violence.