First Day with LADA

Today was our first day working with LADA: the Law and Development Association.

We arrived just after 9am, and the two women who work there (Lenah and Blandina) sat down and talked us through their work. They are paralegals, working on an entirely voluntary business at the moment as their funding has been cut, who give free legal advice to anyone in the Monze district’s towns and surrounding villages. The problems their clients face range from gender-based violence and witchcraft to property disputes and land grabbing. It sounded like harrowing work.

Seeing as no one had dropped in to the office first thing, the women decided to take is for a walk so we could meet someone who they were currently working with. We were led to a tiny shanty hut - Collety's house - in an area which Blandina informed us was home to a lot of domestic abuse. Collety told us about how her husband of seven years used to come home of a night after drinking, and beat her. It reached the point where she would have to sleep on the floor of a night to avoid him. She managed to leave him and dissolve the marriage in 2007, but her husband still lived in the locality and would abuse her whenever he met her. Last year, he beat her so badly that she still has pain: this point was emphasised by Collety pulling down the wrap she was wearing and pressing her palm to her ribcage, just below her breast, to illustrate where he had landed a brutal blow on her. She needed to see a doctor, but couldn’t afford the cost of the X-ray.

Could she not go further away, I asked, to a place where he wouldn’t be able to find her? She shrugged. It would be a possibility, but she could afford the rent here (5 Kwacha per month, approximately 1 US dollar, or 60p), and the town was the best place for the trade which she had resorted to for feeding her four children: selling small bags of charcoal in the market, 1 Kwacha per bag. Feeling like a naïve Westerner, I asked her if she had reported the case to the police. Again, that world-weary shrug. She had, but they did nothing. Apparently police, if not already corrupt, will often say that domestic abuse should be resolved where it started: in the home behind closed doors. She was given no support from her family. I felt like crying for her.

Walking back to the office, I was desperately trying to think of some way to help her – some stone that had been left unturned. Short of a complete mindset change for most people (especially men) in the country, I drew a blank.

In the office, the first clients of the day were a middle aged couple with a young child – the first thing that I noticed was that the woman looked extremely unhappy. Due to them speaking in Tonga, we initially understood nothing of their situation; Lenah said because these people were new clients, she would translate for us after the meeting had ended. And so later we discovered the situation: Adam, the man, had a wife with whom he had fathered nine children. The birth of the ninth child had been especially difficult for the mother, and she was warned that having another could seriously endanger her life. So she gave Adam an ultimatum: no more children, they would use contraception. This agreement held fast for three years, before Adam decided he wanted yet another child. Fine, said his first wife, but not by me – fearing for her own health, she allowed him to take another wife (polygamy is not uncommon in Zambia). And so he began ‘seeing’ another woman, who was the unhappy woman sitting with him in the room. She already had seven children herself, and was living alone and making her own money.

This arrangement would appear to fulfil the requirements of all parties involved; what could possibly go wrong? As it turns out, Adam has become tired of travelling to his new wife’s house. He wants her to come and live with him. She doesn’t want to, fearing for the welfare of her existing children and her own independence, but he has paid the ‘lobolo’ (dowry), and insists that she does as she is told. If she does not, he threatens, he can only conclude that she has another man and that she is an adulteress (I won't even touch on the hypocrisy of this). And so they have come to LADA seeking a compromise. In this sense, Lenah and Blandina are acting not only as advisors but also mediators. They listened to the concerns of both parties, and managed to draw up an agreement saying that Adam’s second wife would go and live with him on the conditions that he built her a separate house and took care of her young children.

I reflected that this perhaps was not a greatly satisfactory outcome for the woman – could she not choose to leave Adam and continue with her life? But Lenah explained that cases like this would only end in domestic abuse, with the woman unable to escape. Unlike in our country, where separation is viewed as the unfortunate outcome of so many relationships, it is very hard here for a woman to leave something once it has begun.

The next people to drop in were Maureen and Saliaya, whom Blandina had invited to come and speak with us about their experiences. Maureen’s was a success story, although it had taken a long time to get to that point. Her elderly senile father had fallen sick, and whilst in this state his neighbour attempted to seize his land. He began ploughing it and constructed boundaries, effectively trespassing. Maureen went to the tribal chief to resolve the dispute the traditional way, but nothing was done. She then went to LADA – the culprit ran away and refused to sign any agreements, and temporarily her problem was solved. But then, when her father died, the neighbour returned and took possession of the land again: in traditional Zambian law (which should technically be overruled by the more modern formal law, but in practice often isn’t), a woman cannot own land, and therefore has no right of inheritance. Maureen returned to LADA again, who brought in a lawyer. The lawyer wrote an agreement to be signed by the chief, but upon hearing about this, the neighbour began to beat Maureen’s elderly widowed mother. Eventually the police apprehended this man and brought him to LADA, where he eventually signed the agreement stating he would leave Maureen’s land alone. I asked Maureen what she thought would have happened to her if she hadn’t had LADA to turn to – her answer was brutally short. ‘My mother and I would both be dead.’

from left to right: Saliaya, her grandson, and Maureen

Maureen's husband

Saliaya, although she couldn’t have been much older than Maureen, looked sadly less radiant. One reason for this, as she told us, was possibly that she was HIV+; this she discovered after being married to her husband for several years (he also had two other wives, one of whom had already died). In 2007, she became critically ill and was taken to hospital, but during her stay her husband died. On the death, the other surviving wife went into the home where he and Saliaya had been living and took it as her own. The husband’s family had never liked Saliaya, and refused to let her inherit any of the property, even though formal law dictates that the land should be divided between the deceased’s wives and children. On leaving hospital, Saliaya had nowhere to live, and so took her case to a human rights organisation. They gave her a small share of the property – still not what she and her children were legally entitled to – but in any case she was soon arrested and forced to give everything back (it was possible that corruption had been used by the husband's family in order to achieve this). Her case is still pending. She is very sick, has no money, and no home (she is currently living with her children, but they are facing the threat of eviction).

the ladies we bought fritters from for lunch - all too keen for a photo

The final case of the day was a man called Paul, who was embroiled in either a witchcraft or an attempted murder case. The facts were rather confusing: it seemed he had been warned that two men were seeking potions in order to kill him for his land, and so he took a claim of witchcraft to court: witchcraft is a matter for the civil court, which is where the case was tried, and he won. However the other side then appealed: they said it was a charge of attempted murder, and therefore should have been tried in the criminal court. The judge agreed, and therefore Paul is back at square one, living in fear of his life that someone may come to ‘finish off the job’.

It was a very intriguing day, but the anecdotes from the people we met almost make me lose hope. How can anyone, least of all these people themselves, do anything to improve their lives when what is causing the damage is so deeply ingrained and protected as ‘culture’ or ‘tradition’? 

But at the same time it makes me really want to carry on, in the hope that we might be part of a very incremental, gradual but beneficial change in people’s attitude.

We decided to brave the fast food joint again today where Eva was presented with Paul the fish the other day – this time we saw some chicken kebabs being prepared, and thought they looked like a safe option. Blissfully, they were – it was such a relief to be eating something which didn’t have eyes, a head or a bone running through.

G’night all. Hope you’re enjoying a dinner which doesn’t watch you as you eat.