I have something to tell you and that something happens to be a story. A story that generations and generations would be told about. A story about a woman. A women who had dignity within her inner self. Many women are underestimated and forsaken because people think that they are weak, but this women defied the odds and broke many barriers.
Her parents named her Chipo. She was born and raised in the rural areas by both her parents. Her father was a farmer and her mother was a house wife. Both of her parents decided to send her to school so that in the near future she would not live a life of poverty. When she started going to school her thoughts became wide open. After school she would go home and tell her mother the new things she would have learnt at school and even though her mother never went to school she would help her daughter with homework. When Chipo was now entering the years of teenage hood, her parents bore another child and named him Musa.
Years of draught and hunger came and ravaged rural homesteads. Plants began to wither, dams and rivers dried up and livestock died. All this twisted the mind of her father and he later decided get Chipo married in exchange for food. Back then it was normal to trade your daughter for food during these times of draught but nowadays it is illegal to do so. The man she was soon going to call her husband happened to be a polygamist and this meant that Chipo would face numerous challenges. All the marriage rituals were done and Chipo was forced to go but her mother told her to be strong and vigilant.
At her new home the other wives would mock her and make fun of her. She would even cry herself to sleep because of the torture she faced every day.
One day her husband sneaked into the kitchen but Chipo took no notice of all this for she was fast asleep. He awoke Chipo and told her that he now wanted children. Chipo went against this and she refused. Her husband began to abuse her physically and sexually but she managed to overpower him and stabbed him with a knife that was close by.
She screamed and the first wife came running in to where she was. The first wife was devastated when she saw her husband in a pool of blood.
She even told Chipo to pinch her so that she could verify if she was not dreaming. She asked Chipo what she had done but she could not respond back for she was also still in shock.
That same night Chipo ran away. Her thoughts were on going to the city but she decided to pass through home and see her mother and father. All that she had expected to see when she had got home was the total opposite. Chipo arrived home and she saw her mother and her young brother Musa, but she did not see her father.
Chipo asked where her father was but her mother only managed to shed a few tears. She was told that her father had a fatal accident but he was not quite lucky and did not make it. She also cried with her mother and they both shared the pain and agony they were feeling deep down and even though her father did some awful and horrible stuff, she still loved her father very much.
After all this Chipo explained to her mother everything that had happened and what she had done. Her mother insisted that she should leave for the city and go and live with her aunt. Chipo told her mother that if she was going to the city alone then she would not go because she feared that her husband’s relatives might come after her mother and brother.
Without hesitation they packed up their belongings and departed for the city. Chipo and Musa continued going to school and their mother managed to start a catering business. A few years later Chipo became a counselor and she also helped protect other fellow women who would have faced the challenges she face.
