TEXT: ANDRE AS LÖNN phOTO : PAUL BLOMGREN
Together…
… the girls in the safe village sweep the yard…
...and wash the dishes.
back, the chest… everywhere. I was in agony but I didn’t dare call for help. He said it would get worse if I did.” “Dad beat me almost every evening. I hoped that he would stop if I was extra good. I helped with everything – cleaned, did the shopping, and cooked the food. When he was sick I took care of him. But he beat me anyway.” One evening things got even worse than usual. “I had just gone to bed
when he told me to come and lie down on his bed. At first I didn’t understand what he meant. Then I realised that he wanted to do bad things to me. When I refused, he hit me with an electrical cable. At the same time, he held up a knife and said that he would kill me if I screamed. I couldn’t defend myself, and in the end he did it. My own father.” Tsitsi hurried to school early the next morning before her father woke up, but she didn’t dare to tell
anyone what had happened. “I knew that I had to go home to Dad again, since I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I hoped it would never happen again.” On the way home from school, Tsitsi searched for coins on the street. “I thought that if I could give Dad some medicine he’d be nice to me. By the time I got home I had enough money to buy a couple of pills. But it didn’t help. That night
“Every afternoon after school we sit around the fire and wait for the food to cook. We tell stories and sing. I love sitting here with the other girls,” says Tsitsi. You can join in the fun around the fire in Tsitsi’s village, at
www.childrensworld.org
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