This post deals with suicide. If you need help, please call the national suicide hotline: 1-800-273-TALK [8255].
Note: All identifying details have been changed.
My best friend in the village is an intelligent, outspoken woman. She’s one of those people who lights up a room when she walks in. Her long hair is artificially colored light brown and she uses whitening cream on her skin. She always wears long sleeve shirts to hide what’s visible on her skin underneath: long scars on her wrists from suicide attempts during the early days of her marriage.
My friend’s mother divorced her father when my friend was nine. Divorce, particularly during that time, was unheard of. It was even more unheard of for a woman to instigate the divorce process, because the children always go with the man. My friend moved in with her father and his new wife, where she was an unwanted daughter. The day her mother committed suicide three years later, she was sent to a very different part of the country, where a different language was spoken, to be married. Her father married her to a man 23 years older than her. She was 12; he was 35.
Woman carrying grass
Women face many challenges here, starting even before many of them are forced into childhood marriage. They are the first to rise at 3 or 4am and the last to go to bed. They do 99% of the work– that is not an exaggeration–yet have very little freedom, whether economically or socially. I have met many men with bank accounts, but I’ve never met a woman with one. Women cannot go anywhere without permission, and I’ve never seen a woman drive. One of the (male) teachers at the school was telling me that a man not beating his wife when he is unhappy would be very rare.
There is strong duality here; both a sense that this is the way it is supposed to be, that men are unequivocally heads of households, but at the same time an air of optimism about the women’s self-help groups and awareness campaigns that are spreading. Most days, though, it seems change isn’t happening fast enough.
Yesterday, two young women in my village committed suicide in separate instances. The first was a young woman who just given birth to a girl. Her husband, many years her senior, would apparently often come home drunk and beat her, and perhaps she felt like there was no escape. The other was ninth grade student at my school. She had faced a lot of public shaming because she had a boyfriend that had “ruined” her and her marriage prospects. Mental health care access is also not at all available.
Child marriage and women’s rights are huge issues here, just as they are in all parts of the world. I think it’s important that we look at our own culture and evaluate how we are doing as well. I would encourage you to read this excellent, shocking report about the rates of child marriage within the US. Did you know child marriage is still legal in all 50 states? If you live in MA or PA (]the states with child marriage bills being voted on soon) I hope you will research those bills and contact your representatives to voice your opinion.
If you need help, please call the national suicide hotline: 1-800-273-TALK [8255].
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