Build Healthy Relationships in100 Rwandan Couples

Achieving a Better Life, Late October/Early November Report

We will distribute part two of the series “Basket” (culturally translated as Secret) next week. The story continues with Kamurari, the husband with many lovers, as he starts to see consequences and learn lessons from his behaviors. He continues mistreating his wife but now recognizes the baby because it looks like him, and he is ashamed he told his family that the baby was not his. One day when going to sleep with a prostitute he loses his wedding ring and all his money. There is no peace at home because the wife realized that the girl in house is not his cousin, but his lover.

We also followed the other couple that Kanyamanza worked for, where his female employer was neglected by her husband and seduced him. Both the wife and the boy have been kicked out of the house, and the wife is now pregnant. The wife went back home to her family’s village, but there she suffered a lot of rejection.

            The husband who kicked out his wife after driving her to infidelity finds a new wife, but she is not in love with him. She just wants to seduce an easy man and take his money. Finally she persuades him to sell the house and buy a new one and register it in her name. What about the part of the house that belonged the first wife? It’s confusing.

            Kanyamanza, the domestic worker seduced by his employer then kicked out of the house, went to live with the headmistress,who wanted to marry him. But, the woman forgets that he is her fiancé; in her mind he is still a domestic worker. He knows how to do the household chores so well, so she always gives him too much work instead of too much love. Kanyamanza is unhappy.

            The young boy Gahigi who kept switching girls sleeps with someone who is HIV positive. He wasn’t using a condom.

In this second part we raised another cultural issue. In this new couple, the husband is very devoted to his wife but struggles to balance his love for her with his love for beer. He often has to choose between accepting the wife’s desire or going to the bar. He starts making funny choices, saying that he will not enter the bar because the wife asked him not to go in, so instead he will drink beer at a table outside. Then, his friends start telling him that he is powerless because he accepts the decision of a woman.

            Soon, we will prepare the third part.