Job’s Refuge

I think I’ve always known about domestic violence.  When we were little our clothes that didn’t fit anymore and discarded toys went to Job’s Refuge – a place described to me as a “battered women’s shelter”.  I knew it had nothing to do with making cakes and cookies.  I know that my dad had something to do with the establishment of this important place.  I must have rationalized the existence of a women’s and children’s shelter, and the violence that it implied, in the same way that I understood other crimes.  Some people beat their spouses like other steal and yet others commit other heinous acts.  But domestic violence really goes beyond other crimes.  When women (or men, or children) are assaulted or violated in their own homes by the people who supposedly love them most, the perpetrators take away the very essence of security from their lives.  Stolen from the victims is the notion of trust and of safety.  I don’t know how those feelings can ever be recovered.  How could I have possibly understood this as a child and why didn’t I ask out loud, How can something so terrible exist in our society?

I am thinking a lot about this today because Lydiah, our nanny/housekeeper, has told me that her daughter is being beaten by her husband.  She feels that she must act to defend her daughter and grandchildren.  But what is the right path?  I have told her that in my opinion a man who can beat his wife is a very violent person, and I fear for her safety.  And yet, as a mother, I sympathize completely with her wanting to do something.  So tomorrow she will go upcountry to the village where her daughter lives and determine whether she must collect her daughter and grandchildren or whether she will just show her face as a warning to her son-in-law that she is capable of taking them all away.

As far as I know, there are very limited spaces in shelters in Nairobi for victims of domestic violence.  Without strong family bonds, a person like Lydiah’s daughter would have nowhere to turn, nowhere to go.  Unfortunately, this problem is not limited to East Africa, but it is a global problem that spans race, ethnicity, nationality and class lines.