Today

Shila nowadays cares for the plants and vegetables in the Production Center garden. She does it with a lot of love and delight and she takes a lot of pride in her work and the vegetables produced. Little by little she recovers serenity and joy in life. She had initially been placed in the Production center itself, to work there along with the other women.  But her past was too burdensome so that she had trouble relating to the other people; and her psychological condition made working collectively very difficult.

Her story

According to tradition, Shila’s was a marriage of convenience, arranged by her parents.She was 15 years old. Her family did not know it but her husband to be was a drug-addict. As early as the second day after their wedding, he started to shout at her, to harass her, to reproach her their poverty; saying it was her fault because she had not brought enough as her dowry. He took her wedding jewels. She became a kind of slave for her in-laws. Confronted to their bad treatments, she ran away, back to her parents but they could not afford to keep her at their place. Her father then brought her back to her in-laws, demanded that they treat her with respect and stop mistreat her. The husband – who had already divorced from a first marriage, then promised to take care of her and treat her properly. She stayed and it all started again as before.

When she gave birth to her first baby, he fell sick. She used to leave him under the care of the women amongst her in-laws when she was busy working in the house.Therefore she did not realize his condition was getting worse and the in-laws were not taking care of him. The baby died because of lack of care at the age of 5 months.

Her second baby died really small as well, at the age of 9 months.Bad treatments were going on. Just after her second delivery, Shila was exhausted but still her in-laws would not bring her food.On the contrary, it is a bad dog they brought into her room and it bit her when she was trying to get to the kitchen for food.

Pregnant for the 3d time, the baby survived. But the family persisted in its attitude towards her and when she was pregnant for the 4th time, again the baby died. She then ran away with her baby girl, who was 10 months at he time.  She took refuge at her sister’s place but they were very poor and living conditions really hash. Shila contacted WF.With their help, she was able to bring an action against her husband and to obtain back from him her citizenship card, to get paid employment and to put her daughter – nowadays a healthy and smiling 13 years old – at WF children shelter.