Land, not water, is life

My story is about the youthful energy I spent in my husband’s home and how my own brother stopped me from using the land at home.

Until I constructed my self a house, three co wives, our children and my husband, shared a grass thatched hut which my husband built. My husband asked me to let the family join me in the big house and I agreed. But when he declared that a new wife was coming to take over the only plastered bedroom in the house, my room, I could not take it. I went to my father’s home and got to work. The first season, I harvested 6 sacks of corn. That is when my brother woke up. You dig like a tractor! You are not going to continue using that land, he said. I reported him to my father, but mu brother threatened me with death if I went ahead to grow crops on the land.

Men own land and with it unlimited access. As a result, they have every thing at their beck and call, from labor to dignity. As for me, I am like a fugitive in my own country. I have nothing to be proud of. My daughter of 13 years conceived, the very year I left. She also dropped out of school. I also lost my mentally retarded son. And I lost a house and acres of crops to last my husband a lifetime, a symbol of my wasted youth.