A couple who have been married for 30 years experienced problems which threatended their matrimony only to be salvaged by counselling. The couple, Buleriya Mukankundiye and Ejide Gasana, residents of Kayonza district later rejoined in 2008 after going through a counselling session. The counselling sessions entailed the couple sorting out their differences by having the man admitting his past mistakes. ‘He (husband) approached me and confessed his past misgivings saying that he has been abusing me in part due to drug abuse. He assured me that he was now a reformed person who wanted to live happily with his children and wife. I first hesitated but later on I accepted to have him back in my life’, Mukankundiye, a farmer told The New Times on Tuesday. ‘In the initial days of our reunion I used to fear him thinking that he could kill me because we had separated due in part to his brutal nature,but I later realised that after being counselled he was harmless’, she added. Before they separated, Mukankundiye said, she had never got peace of mind from the time she got married because her husband Gasana, started abusing her physically only eight days after their marriage. The situation continued unabated, she added, even after giving birth to five children. Gasana could beat her and the children whenever he could get home, she added, making the children to also live in constant fear. ‘It was hell on earth each and everytime my husband could be returning home from his errants. Whenever we could notice that he was returning, we could run into hiding and we did that for long’, she explained. Mukankundiye pointed out that after getting fed up, they decided to sell off some of the family property with an intent of buy land where she could settle with the children. On his part the man described the time they spent separated as a loss to the family. After the separation, he revealed that because he had taken to abuse of alcohol he sold the rest of the family property like land and goats in order to sustain this vice. It was only after reconciling with his family that he bought back the property. Gasana says that after receiving counselling, he quit alcohol and other forms of drugs and now works hard for development and welfare of his family. ‘I asked my children and my wife to forgive me and I was happy because they did. We are now happy and love one another’, he said, cautioning men against mistreating their spouses. According to him, men are the source of conflicts in homes because ‘they want to subjugate women.’ ‘It is only on very rare cases that women are considered the prime source of conflicts in society’, he observed. The story of this couple is among the few cases of domestic violence that come to be reported as it serves as a reminder to all couples to avoid such conflicts as parents should remember that conflicts affect children. Ends
