BUNDIBUGYO, Uganda (AP) — The drunken man kicked the pot off the fireplace and demanded to know why the food wasn’t ready. He then hit his wife with a piece of firewood, sparking a fight. They struggled before being separated.
The domestic violence skit was staged for villagers in western Uganda. Some watched in surprise. Some were amused. But others watched in horror as the drama mirrored reality.
Here, in a remote farming community near the Congolese border, domestic violence primarily targets women. Those who act out the skit are not immune.
Eva Bulimpikya, who played a woman who fought back, said her real-life husband attacked her the night before after he came home late.
“He was drunk. Out of nowhere he said, ‘Can you come and open the door?’ Because I was almost asleep, he started complaining when I delayed opening the door… Then he hit me,” she said.
Years ago, she said, she was beaten so badly that her hearing was affected. She still has headaches.
A local nonprofit that staged the skit says domestic violence is so widespread in this part of Uganda that it’s hard to find a woman who hasn’t been affected. The mountainous Bundibugyo district is about 400 kilometers (248 miles) from the capital, Kampala.
Representatives of the group, Ourganda, affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, said they were forced to take action in 2022 when they came across a woman and her child who had been attacked by her drunken partner. The child’s head was swollen and his mother feared he would die.
Ourganda led efforts to prosecute the perpetrator, who was jailed for six months and is now living peacefully with his wife. The rare prosecution energized locals and launched the group’s campaign to combat what they saw as the normalization of domestic violence. At the time, 47 of the 50 women they interviewed in Bundibugyo said they had experienced violence in the past week.
The group, which works in 10 villages, focuses on instilling fear in offenders, but also on educating them. An accused offender is asked to sign a “reconciliation form” in which he promises never to commit the same offense again.
Signing the form will prevent an escalation that could lead to police involvement, but it will also be kept as evidence for possible prosecution if the agreement is breached, said Vincent Tibesigwa Isimbwa, leader of Ourganda in Bundibugyo. Only five of the approximately 100 people have breached the agreement so far, he said.
Angella Akoth of ActionAid Uganda, an expert on gender-based violence in Uganda, said such work targeting perpetrators was advisable, calling it a “male engagement strategy.”
The men who separated the fighting couple in the sketch were members of a real-life “Mankind Club,” one of several Ourganda has formed to respond as quickly as possible to outbreaks of violence. Thomas Balikigamba, a local man who was jailed for six months for domestic violence, said he warns others about the harshness of incarceration. “At our drinking spots, I always tell members of our group that it’s very bad to fight at home,” he said.
The women who sat around the couple were described as ‘soul sisters’. They were tasked with guiding women or providing them with shelter and clothing when they were evicted from their homes.
Men who are “bleeding internally” – a euphemism for female-on-male violence – are also encouraged to seek help, Isimbwa said: “We cannot tolerate any form of violence.”
Domestic violence is a global curse. Figures from the World Health Organization from 2021 show that one in three women worldwide has experienced some form of it. In Uganda, a 2020 survey by UN-backed local authorities found that 95% of women and girls had experienced physical or sexual violence, or both, since the age of 15.
Isimbwa said he has been threatened by some locals for trying to empower women. But Ourganda wants to take his work to more villages and “build relationships” with local officials who can make or break the prosecution of offenders, he said.
“We have created more awareness in communities. People now know what to do. They are doing their utmost to ensure that they do not violate the rights of others,” he said.
Many in Bundibugyo who spoke to the Associated Press said domestic violence is often fueled by financial disputes and disagreements over sex, disputes that can be exacerbated by alcoholism and illiteracy.
Most cases are never prosecuted. Of the 2,194 cases of teenage pregnancy in 2023 — a broad category that includes some forms of domestic violence — only 54 were reported to police in Bundibugyo, said Pamela Grace Adong, the district’s probation and social welfare officer. Bundibugyo is home to about 20,000 people.
“It’s increasing now,” she said of gender-based violence. “For example, last year we had about 575 cases … But this year – it’s June now – we have about 300.”
She believes Ourganda’s mediation work is useful for police communities.
In the town of Sara-Kihombya, a cluster of mud houses across from the Seventh-day Adventist Church run by Ourganda, many men congregate in bars in the morning and stay there all day.
Domestic violence reportedly increases between October and February, the peak season for harvesting the cocoa plants that litter the volcanic soil, with some couples fighting over how to divide the income, many residents said.
When a man comes home from selling cocoa and asks the woman for money, “that is war,” said Linda Kabugho, a kindergarten teacher who said she was repeatedly attacked by her husband until recently.
Kabugho, 23, who dropped out of high school when she became pregnant in 2022, said she would argue with her husband when he came home and was miserable over his losses in football bets. “He takes all the anger out on me,” she said. “We fight, we fight, we fight.”
Last year she contacted local officials who introduced her to Ourganda. The couple received counseling from a group of Soul Sisters and she is now one of them. The husband was warned that he risked going to jail if he beat his wife again.
Kabugho said her husband had not beaten her for months and she considers him a responsible man.
“Now I can sleep. I can eat really well,” she said. “We are somehow safe, and I am somehow safe.”
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