SEXUAL VIOLENCE = SILENCE

Today here at Rhodes University was the 'sexual violence = silence' protest where a whole bunch of people were 'silenced'. The photos here are of my neighbour Nun. The following are photos I took an a piece I wrote on her- her story.

MORE THAN YOU THINK

She’s bubbly, friendly and confident. She loves meeting new people and making friends. Who would have thought that she was raped a few years back? She wasn’t raped by a stranger though; it was by her own cousin. A cousin who had become rather close to her family as he came to live with them for two years while attending school in her home town. No one believed her. How could she even think of blaming her own cousin for raping her? Her father who was a pastor kicked her out of his own church.

People who meet her have no idea about her story and that is not the only story she has to tell. She fell pregnant after being raped. She fell pregnant with her cousins’ child. 16 is a very young age to have a baby, a baby she didn’t want. After having the abortion her mother called her a murderer. Only 16 when her father told her to get out of his house. Only 16 when she was packing her bags to leave home. Luckily, before she made it out of that front door, her Mom told her that she’s not going anywhere. Tears run down her face as she tells me that “for the first time in years my mom actually hugged me and she told me that she loves me. I had been longing for a moment like that, but when it finally happened, it felt rather awkward”.

Her father whom she was close to has now passed away- liver cancer. She and her mother are now on speaking terms but still do not have that close mother daughter relationship most take for granted. She resents going home. She is a totally different person when she does. She is not Nun, that lovely, bubbly, happy person many have come to care for and cherish. She becomes Nungo, the quiet lonely Venda girl from Louis Trichardt.