What We Do
Eliza Nyajala
Eliza is a feisty woman, although she is small in stature you can tell her many years of hardship have taught her to survive, and she does that with a sense of humour that reduces people to tears of laughter! The only surviving child in a family of 12 Eliza grew up in a remote village surrounded by old traditions and beliefs. As a young girl she sat perfectly still and didn’t cry once while a local village mama took a knife and cut a line from the top of her forehead to the tip of her nose, one of the rites of passage into woman hood. She is proud as she tells of her bravery and chuckles when she explains that the resulting scarring makes young women irresistible, and beams as she tells of the men that brought 10-15 cows to her father to purchase her as their bride!
At 15yrs old she was married and had 7 children with her first husband, of those 3 are still alive but do not keep in touch with her. She tells of their names and sits quietly for a few minutes while she thinks of them. Last week she visited the local witch doctor and paid him 1,000/= for a ritual that would make her daughter come to visit, she hasn’t been yet so will go back again to ask why the ritual hasn’t worked yet.
She comes to life again when she talks of her childhood and the years leading up to her wedding day, she tried to think of what age she was but struggled, then she said “Well my titis (boobs) were still standing up so it must have been a long time ago!” She made reference to this again when she realised it had all of us sitting around listening to her doubled up with laughter! She went to school for a short time but her parents listened to her reciting the alphabet, ‘a’, ‘e’, ‘o’… and thought she would become a mad woman so forbid her from going to school again, saying they would beat her with a stick if anyone saw her there. So she went back to looking after the cows, which she liked because she was the boss of them.
After her first husband died and many of her children too she went to Mwanza town to try to start a new life. There she met an old blind man called ‘Gigi’ who lived at BCC, she agreed to move there with him under the guise of being his wife, to look after him. The ploy worked and after settling in they were married. Gigi died a few years ago and now she is happy to sit with the other old ladies, keeping each other company.