“We began our life together from scratch. I was full of life, passion and blind love,” says mother-of-three Mwaka . “Then, later, you find out who the person truly is.”At 22, Mwaka married a man she met through her mother. He had been hired to work as a science and English teacher at her mother’s private school. Young and love-struck, Mwaka could not see the ways her partner was manipulating and abusing her. “He pinched me, made me feel insecure and irrational,” she told UNFPA, the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. “In the end, I was the one to apologize for all the mistakes I didn’t make.” Across Zambia, more than one third of women reported in 2018 that they had experienced physical violence since the age of 15. Meanwhile, nearly half of all ever-married women aged 15 to 49 said they had survived emotional, physical or sexual violence by a husband or partner.During Mwaka’s 11-year marriage, her husband became increasingly violent; he refu
Zambia
Mwaka
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Chewa
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