Bandit

I went to lunch today at my favorite restaurant, La Belle Fourchette. It’s my favorite because they almost always have “legumes” (basically cooked leafy greens, served with some sort of carbohydrate) and also because one of the women who runs it has the most adorable four-year-old daughter, who unlike most children here, has never shown any indication of being scared of me or even surprised by me, but instead orders me around, as if I were her daughter (some might even say she reminds me of me at her age).
Anyhow, when I got there, the legumes weren’t ready yet, so I sat down to wait. I was pissed at myself for forgetting to bring something to read, and just sitting, the only person in the restaurant. Suddenly, from outside the restaurant I heard a woman sobbing and what sounded like pleading with someone else. I also heard a man quietly scolding this woman, a kind of quiet that spoke of controlled rage. Before I could confirm my suspicions just overhearing what happened outside, the woman was pushed into the restaurant, and fell down on the dirt threshold, the man right behind her, not yelling, but threatening. She looked straight at me, our eyes locked for a second before she turned back to him. She stood up and cried out “Bandit!” (something like the equivalent of “bastard!”)
They continued to quarrel, while I was at once on edge, filled with terror. What would happen to this woman? Was the man her boyfriend? Her husband? Who was going to protect her? Could I help her? How? If I got involved, could the man turn his intentions on me? If that happened, who would protect me? I sat there, tense, frozen, watching what was happening, but really just wanting to disappear.
Soon, the two ladies who run the restaurant came out and shoo’d the couple away, and then watched from the doorway, as ostensibly, they continued fighting. I didn’t move from where I was sitting; I didn’t want to see what happened.
The whole scene passed in less than two minutes, but it made me think. There’s no law against hitting children or women here (in fact, an education volunteer recently shared a story of when she was forced to watch one of her students receive 25 lashes from a teacher. She recalls how the teacher stopped after every few lashes, so the student, holding back tears, could try to recover enough to take the next few. She was telling the story to a marine, who asked “don’t their parents do something about it?” “Oh, they want the teachers to do it,” she replied). In the states, when I did crisis counseling, I felt frustrated with the system and with society’s apathy, or worse, blaming of victims/survivors of assault and abuse. But at least there was a system, as imperfect as it is – an acknowledgement that abuse is wrong. This scene quickly brought to my mind the frightening reality that abuse happens here and there is no recourse. Hurting one another is acceptable behavior here. How does one combat a system in which the very idea that hitting someone less powerful than you is okay? If I tried to do some sort of intervention centered around abuse – what kind of progress could I realistically make?
The look in the woman’s eyes as hers met mine while she was still crumpled on the dirt floor will haunt me; as will the defiance set in her back, her posture, as she stood up straight, proud, suddenly after getting up, looked straight at the man and with her chin held up, cried out “Bandit!” African women are fighters; I wonder if this is a battle we can fight?