Aisha Bakari was on the phone with the girl’s auntie. She was giving directions and informing her that the family might be hostile. They didn’t anticipate such hostility. They had hardly finished the phone call when the first stone hit their vehicle.
“Aisha!” Called out the driver.
“Drive faster,” Aisha instructed the driver.
The two colleagues at the back of the car were bending and screaming. Aisha was trying to search for the direction the stones were coming from. They sped up, but not before a stone hit the rear window. It also hit one of their colleagues. It didn’t seem too serious, but his temple was bleeding. He had a slight cut.
“Are you okay?” Aisha asked the hurt colleague.
“It’s just a graze. I think I will be okay,” he responded.
“We need to be quick. The girl’s auntie and mother are waiting for us,” Aisha told the rest.
They approached the compound and found the auntie waiting for them. She quickly welcomed Aisha and her team. It looked like she was looking out over her shoulders. She led Aisha to the girl and her mother. The mother has a bruised face. The girl was fourteen years old but looked younger than that. She had covered her head with a shawl.
“Huyu ni Aisha, atatusaidia. Aisha will help us,” the auntie told the girl and her mother.
“Have you reported to the police?” Aisha asked the auntie.
“The man’s family is very influential here. We feared the police might not believe us,” she told Aisha.
“Bwanangu atarudi. Tuharakishe. We need to hurry up,” said the girl’s mother.
The auntie led them out of the compound. The auntie, mother and girl had packed a few clothes. They all headed to the car. They noticed a group of young men forming a crowd a few meters from the vehicle.
“They must have been sent by her husband,” said the auntie.
“We have to speed up again,” Aisha told the driver.
Those at the back of the car put their heads down since the rear window was already broken. The crowd started approaching the vehicle as soon as they got inside. Everybody was scared, including Aisha and the driver, but the two at the front had no time to panic. Aisha had been working with the driver since she set up her organization.
“Is there another way out?” The driver asked the girl’s auntie.
“Yes, but it is longer,” said the auntie.
The auntie proceeded to give directions quickly as they drove off. Everybody was on high alert. If they had stoned them, there was no telling what else they were capable of to prevent the girl and mother from leaving. The girl’s auntie had called Aisha. She had a friend who had received help from Aisha’s organization, and she had given her the contact.
The girl had been defiled by her stepfather and was pregnant. Once the girl’s mother learned of what had happened, she confronted her husband but was met with physical violence. She had screamed but had received no help from her husband’s family. They claimed the young girl had tempted the man. Further, such issues were dealt with within the family.
When word of the beating spread through the village, the auntie, who was a cousin to the girl’s mother, came to their rescue. The auntie told her to report the matter to the authorities. The mother quickly said to her that she had tried to report the husband previously when he beat her so bad that she had a miscarriage, but the husband’s family had friends in the local police station. This was a bigger problem, and she didn’t trust the authorities.
The auntie went back home, and as she was looking for solutions, she came across the information on Aisha’s organization. Aisha had gotten her child at sixteen years of age. Her family had instantly disowned her once they found out she was pregnant. She found refuge in a friend’s grandmother. Aisha’s friend had lost her parents and was living with her grandmother. The friend’s grandmother pitied Aisha and offered her shelter. The resources were scarce, and Aisha had to start working through her pregnancy and go back to hustling soon after childbirth. The events surrounding her child’s birth led to her resilience and passion to save teen mothers and other vulnerable mothers.
The father of Aisha’s child was an older man who owned a small hotel in their village. She had been lured with mandazi and snacks. The attention from an older man, who seemed successful in their setting, made her feel good. She was only sixteen with hardly any guidance, and when he made passes at her, she naively thought he was genuine. She attended a day school and would meet him after school. “You can’t get pregnant the first time,” her friends had told her when they talked about sex. Aisha served as their evidence that they had the wrong information.
Aisha’s fortunes turned when she found a way to travel to the U.S. in her mid-twenties. She met a lady who did humanitarian work, and after working with her for a while, she decided to set up an organization to help others. She went back to her village because she knew of other teen mothers like herself. Sometimes, she faced opposition, while others thought of her as a saviour, but she was determined to help.
The case that brought her to this village where they were getting stoned was challenging. The people in the village used culture to shield men like the girl’s stepfather. He had previously defiled the girl, but this time, the girl fell pregnant. The family had said that they would deal with the matter within the family, but it hadn’t deterred him from defiling her again. The girl’s mother depended on her husband for provisions. She had two boys with the man. She was afraid of leaving.
The girl’s auntie had eventually convinced her that she needed to leave. Leaving with her sons, too, was going to be more complex because their culture taught them that boys belonged with the father’s family. Painfully, she decided to leave with her daughter first, and hopefully, she would also get her sons. As they drove out of the village, she hoped their lives would change for the better. Aisha was their saviour.
Once they were far from the village, Aisha looked at the girl and remembered her younger self as her family kicked her out with her unborn child. She remembered the helplessness and felt compelled to keep helping even after a life-threatening day like she had just had. They were going to help both the girl’s mother and the girl.
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