My cousin sold me off into marriage in Kenya
Sep 11, 2012
After her cousin told her of a lucrative job in Kenya, Sylvia Hasahya failed to resist the temptation. She quickly resigned her job and started planning her trip in April, only for the man she was to work for to hold her hostage in his house.
After her cousin told her of a lucrative job in Kenya, Sylvia Hasahya failed to resist the temptation. She quickly resigned her job and started planning her trip in April, only for the man she was to work for to hold her hostage in his house.
At 23 years of age, Hasahya a qualified nurse had the pressure from her family to provide for them.
“My parents kept piling pressure on me to send them money, often claiming they had spent a lot on my education. I prayed daily that I could get a better job and provide for them,” she said from her new workplace at Prime Medical Centre in Bweyogerere.
A fresh diploma graduate, Hasahya had just got her first job at a clinic in downtown Kampala and they were not paying her a lot of money, but it was enough to sustain her.
“Now that the family wanted a share of my earnings, the pressure became too much. I embarked on searching for another job but luck was not always on my side,” she said.
Just when she was about to give up, a cousin approached her towards the end of April this year and told her he had a friend who would offer her a job in Kenya.
According to the cousin, the friend had opened up a non-governmental organisation and urgently needed a receptionist.
“The offer was enticing and they would triple my salary. It was what I had been praying for. I started fantasising about a better house for my family,” she adds.
She tendered in her resignation, sold off her belongings and set off for greener pastures.
“I travelled with my cousin to Kisumu where my prospective employer lived,” she says.
Ugly truth revealed
When they arrived, she met the man she would work for. He was so welcoming. “After introducing me to him, my cousin left,” she adds.
Hasahya sat at the reception as she waited for the man to finish his work. He then called for a cab and off they went to where Hasahya was supposed to spend the night.
“Since it was my first night, I thought I was going to be booked into a hotel or guest house but instead, he drove me straight to his house,” narrates Hasahya.
When they got to his house, he dropped the bombshell.
“You will be staying here,” he said as he ushered her into his bedroom.
She could not believe that she had quit her job to come and share a house with a man she hardly knew.
Suddenly, the man opened up and told her the truth. “He told me he was single, but once married and that he wanted a Ugandan woman and that he had been told I had all the qualities,” she narrates.
The man then told her he had extensive discussions with her cousin, who then offered to find him a woman.
“I was shocked. This is somebody I trusted so much. Why would he make me leave my job and then marry me off to his friend,” I asked myself.
She immediately broke down and started crying, demanding to talk to her cousin, who by this time had vanished with all the money she had.
Gentleman turns brutal
“He started consoling me, offered me a place in the maid’s room and told me to think about his proposal,” she narrates.
The next morning, the man left for work, but hired someone to watch the house to make sure that Hasahya could not leave.
“I had no money and neither did I have credit to call for help. This was a new place and I knew nobody. I told myself help would come my way,” says Hasahya.
“Fortunately, the man never subjected me to any form of sexual harassment. In fact, I continued staying in his house and gradually gained his confidence as I plotted my escape,” she says.
“After two weeks, he told me that since I had not upgraded my education, he was taking me to a computer school. For the first few days, he made sure I was escorted, but he gradually let me start going by myself,” she adds.
Whenever the classes would end early, Hasahya would sneak to a nearby church for prayers. During one of the sessions, she met the senior pastor and told him of her plight. The pastor offered to help her with transport back to Kampala.
But before he could, the man suddenly became impatient with her.
“He wanted me to pay him back by sleeping with him. I started locking myself in the room,” she says.
When the demands became too much, she packed her belongings and planned an escape. But as fate would have it, the man barged into her room on a day she had not locked it.
“He suddenly became brutal,” Hasahya recollects.
“I threatened to make an alarm if he ever laid his hands on me. Fearing that I would expose him, he grabbed my phone and ordered me out of his house. I had recorded some information in my phone, which I wanted to pass over to Police once I got the opportunity to escape from his residence,” she narrates.
Thrown out
In the cold, with no money to bring her back to Kampala, her only saviour was the pastor she had met.
“Lucky enough, I had his phone number. When I called, he told me he was in Bungoma, near Malaba, and that I should board a bus; he would pick me from the park,” she says.
When she reached Bungoma, the pastor met her and offered her transport back to Uganda. “He linked me to another pastor in Kampala who was to receive me.”
But when Hasahya safely arrived in Kampala, life was not easy. “I had no job and place to stay so I had to start afresh. It is here that the new pastor, who was a guard in one of the schools, offered her a place in one of the classrooms,” she says.
But then the school season was about to start. She was lucky that the same pastor offered her money and soon she got a small house in the Bwaise. “I would go hungry for days,” Hasahya says.
Then came the temptation. “I had neighbours who kept on telling me they could get me a man to take care of me and provide for my needs. I must admit, given my conditions, it was hard to resist the offer, but I went down on my knees and prayed,” she adds.
Hasahya never gave up looking for a job. Soon she started getting part-time jobs in the clinics around the area: “They would pay me sh3,000 per day.”
It was only her resilience that saved her. But as fate would have it, one day, thieves broke into her house when she was not around and stole all she had.
Breakthrough
Finally, lady luck smiled her way when a lady who had got a job in one of the clinics in Bweyogerere offered Hasahya the job instead. “She introduced me to Dr. Gerald Akankwasa, the owner of Prime Health Care Centre in Bweyogerere, now I am employed,” she says.
Hasahya cautions parents who think that when their children graduate they should immediately provide for them.
She argues that had there not been any pressure from the people she thinks loved her, she would not have ended up going through whatever she did.
She has also learnt not to blindly trust people who come with good offers. “Patience pays,” she sums it up.
About the betrayal she felt from her cousin, she says: “I have forgiven him and moved on.”