How widows moved from grief to growth

Today the world is celebrating the International Widows Day, a day recognised by United Nations to address the poverty and injustice faced by millions of widows and their dependents in many countries. This year’s theme is ‘Invisible women, invisible problems’, signifying the lack of recognition towards challenges that widows face.

In Tanzania, just like many parts of the world, especially in the African continent, women once widowed, are often faced with a number of injustices including denial of inheritance and land rights, some are evicted from their homes and physically abused, while others are killed by relatives.

In the African setting, once a husband dies, his wife loses her place in society because in many communities, a woman’s social status is inseparably linked to her husband’s, that’s why losing a husband is considered one of the toughest challenges in a woman’s lifetime.

However, despite facing a number of challenges such as being stigmatised and seen as a source of shame, some widows have refused to let their pain and suffering pull them back by playing both roles as mother and father to ensure that their lives and that of their children become better.

Among such women is Eliada Bihere, a 44-year-old mother of eight. A resident of Temeke, she lost her husband nine months ago from diabetes. The loss meant she’d shoulder all responsibilities as a single parent. “My husband was diagnosed with diabetes back in 2007. He was an architect, however, after he got sick his working efficiency also went down the drain, he later developed eye problems which further worsened the situation,” she sadly recalls.

The widow says her husband’s deteroriating heath status forced him to quit his job in 2016, a situation which caused a lot of stress for the family, especially considering the number of children they had.

“My late husband felt hopeless and couldn’t go out for two days, but as a wife I did my best to encourage him. He was the type of man who didn’t want me to work, but I had to find work even though he wasn’t happy about it. His state meant that we needed to find a way to survive,” she says, adding, “His passing was very tough, considering the fact that our last three children are still young, the last born being five years old. I had to come up with ways of putting food on the table, take care of school fees and other expenses.”

Her children were also affected, both emotionally and financially. Supporting her family alone isn’t easy. At one time she was on the verge of withdrawing her children from school. “There’s a time family members advised me to stop taking one of my children to the school he was attending because I could no longer afford to pay school fees and they were not ready to support me. I considered the option but later on God heard my cry and the school owner allowed my child to study for free,” she explains.

The mother of 8 is able to support her family through poultry business. She supplies eggs to different clients and earns an average of Sh400,000 per month.

Only someone who has gone through a similar situation can understand the pain of losing a husband. “For instance you might call someone with the intension of greeting them but instead they think that you are calling to ask for money. They brand us as beggars, women who can’t depend on ourselves, something which is very wrong. I refused to be looked down upon that’s why I am working hard to make sure that we don’t starve, my children go to school and we don’t end up on the streets begging,” Eliada says.

She wishes the government would come up with a plan to empower widows economically, because most widows are not only left with lots of pain and suffering but also with lots of financial difficulties, especially when it comes to shouldering family responsibilities.

Widows Association

Rose Sarwatt is a widow and founder of Tanzania Widows Associations (TAWIA). Having gone through a lot as a widow herself, she decided to come up with an organisation which helps other widows to have a place that will give them hope and support.

She officially started the association in 2014 and within a few months more than 3700 widows were registered in Dar es Salaam alone and within six months they registered more than 7000 widows from Dar es Salaam and nearby regions including, Morogoro, Coastal region, Arusha and Kilimanjaro.

“We currently have more than ten thousand registered widows in our organization and we have others working closely to identify more widows in different places such as churches and mosques. Last year we started collecting their information so that we can have a clear number of them, this will help us assist them closely,” she explains.

She says many women lose hope after becoming widows and instead resort to begging on the streets. Through her association, she finds a way of helping these women by taking their children to school and finding activities for them to do. Rose identifies economic challenge as one of the common challenges that most widows face. “Most widows are in a bad financial situation and this is caused by a number of reasons: one is most of these women have no skills or certain expertise because they had to stop going to school in order to get married and so they ended up becoming housewives dependent on their husbands. Once a person who was providing for them dies, the situation becomes worse because they can’t manage to run the family on their own,” she explains.

Rose says some of the widows are forced to sell their assets so they can support their families. “There are also those who are faced with financial difficulties because they were forced to give up their assets by relatives. Some of these women decide to go to court but are frustrated along the way so they decide to stop pursuing the case altogether,” she notes.

Rose says the widows association trains and advises women on how they can be productive instead of being dependent. “Through groups we teach them how to save and use money to support each other by coming up with projects they are capable of doing. This includes sewing, farming, animal keeping and so forth,” she highlights.

“We also provide legal counsel for widows who were denied of their inheritance by relatives,” she adds.

Rose says a comprehensive national policy that safeguards the rights of widows and their children is needed. She also points to the shortfalls of customary laws that recognize a male child as the only inheritor in a family. “Having religious and traditional laws which are contradictory creates problems for widows,” she says.

Mwenda Jacobs, a human rights lawyer working in Dar es Salaam says that the legal framework in the country doesn’t favour women when it comes to property rights. As a result, when a husband dies, the wife, left with children faces an uphill batlle fending off greedy relatives. “We need definitive laws that safegaurd the rights of widows,” he says.

Before starting the widows association, Rose had to overcome trials and tribulations after her husband died. It’s these hardships that influenced her to make a keen follow-up on the challenges that widows face, consequently starting the widows association.

Her husband died eight years ago. At the time of his death the couple had four children. Their first born, who’s currently working, was in form four then, the second born who is currently in University pursuing a degree in Medicine was in form two, third born who is about to complete standard seven this year was in nursery school and the last born who was almost three is currently in standard four.

“As a wife, I was denied the right by relatives to bury my late husband. I was told that in their clan, a woman cannot decide on anything. My husband wished to be buried at a specific location, something he intimated to me when he was alive. However, his relatives were against his wishes. This created a huge misunderstanding and so his body had to stay in the mortuary for nine days. I had to fight for my right till I managed to rest my husband where he wished to be laid,” Rose speaks.

But that wasn’t the only challenge the widow went through. “They wanted to have the rights to the property my husband and I owned, because of that I had to give up a six acre farm. I tried my best to fight for my family’s interest,” she reveals.