This country has been at war and women’s bodies have been the battleground for longer than our grandmothers can remember. This is not new information, women have always been aware that, from the moment they are born, the system they have been born into is at war with them, in subtle and overt ways.
For a lot of women, the threat of violence is not out there, it is right in their homes. For some of these women, the men they love, create a home, and raise children with, will kill them. The father who raised their children, may rape them. And it will not matter how loud they scream; no one will hear them because society has grown deaf to women’s voices. It won’t matter how much you stomp your feet at the anti-GBV protest because Botswana’s society will shut their eyes to your rage and pain. It will not matter whether you run into the streets, blood trailing behind you, because your community will only smell the sacrifice in your blood.
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