The morning after Agnes broke down crying, I woke her up just before 5am. After saying a round of prayers she left to find her sister. It was still dark and would be for another hour. She had a look of determination on her face and I remembered how she’d said the night before; “Tomorrow I will look for my sister. Tomorrow I will find my sister”. Agnes’ strength and awareness continues to surprise me. Though she lives in a small hush-hush polygamous community where shame descends upon the woman, not the man, even when a victim of rape she is fully aware of the wider picture. She knows that it is the man “who has many faults” and she sighed; “my sister is not the first to get pregnant. And of course she will never be the last”.
Agnes’s sister has since been found. She returned to the village – but aware of the shame heaped upon a single female like herself she is now staying at the house of the father of her soon to be born child. Her parents – and Agnes are not happy with this, not least because “How can a poor man have two wives? It is difficult enough to care for one and her children”. Her father is going to go to the village chief on Thursday if Liberé (ironic eh? “Liberated”) does not come back to her family home. Agnes says that the problem is a little better – if only because they at least know now where she is.