Everyone who knows Loy Uwamwezi knows her for the love she has for children. Some even think she had dozens. She lives in Kigali, in Nyarugunga Sector, Kicukiro District. The 64-year-old had four biological children, but she raised a total of 14, excluding many others who did not stay full time. She had quit her job as a midwife in 1997 due to back complications, and then her husband died in 2003. It was tough for her to raise all the children alone, without a job, a house and with her back that couldn’t allow her to try out chances at employment, although she was educated. When she quit her job and her husband was still alive, she had opened a diary at a place close to where they lived. It wasn’t earning her much, but people loved the milk there, so she got little money from the place, she says. She then talked to a friend, and she learnt she could sell milk at the then Kigali Health Institute, (KHI), which is now part of the University of Rwanda. But the place was later closed because of the government directives then, to not have canteens in schools. Her back would also disappoint her now and then, which further complicated her business prospects. The hardest part for her, she says, was having to raise school fees for her children, let alone feed them. However, she was lucky that her children were smart in school to earn scholarships to the university. Eventually, she only had to worry about their pocket money, after they all made it to college. New business takes shape She had visited one of her children at school when she saw a beautiful garden that only had a tent and toilets. This garden, she learnt, hosted weddings almost every weekend. This is when a new business idea hit Uwamwezi, who already had an expansive piece of land that her husband had bought before he passed away and she had failed to raise money to develop it. She started by clearing the land and planting grass as she could afford. This is how Parkland Garden, famous for hosting wedding receptions and other events came in being. She narrates that the best thing that ever happened to her family in their trying times was to eventually get a house of their own. “We were many, and this made rent even more challenging,” she says. Now, all her children have graduated, at least with a bachelor’s degree, some are married and have children of their own. She believes that what men can do for their families, women can. “What the husband does for his family is through courage and intelligence that God gave him. I believe that nothing can stop that from happening when a woman decides to get up and work.” Uwamwezi adds that widows should not settle for people who want to exploit them, just because they promise to provide for them. “When the times get tough, you only have to be tough like them so that you manage to even raise your children.” Uwamwezi is just one in 258 million widows around the world, where one in ten lives in extreme poverty. Every June 23, since 2011, is World Widow’s Day, a time to draw attention to the voices and experiences of widows and act, but also to celebrate their outstanding courage to take care of their families in absence of their partners. Due to limited access to credit or other economic resources, widows often face poor nutrition, inadequate shelter and vulnerability to violence. Sometimes they depend on the charity of their husbands’ relatives, and in some cases become liable for the debts of their deceased spouse. Their sexual and reproductive health needs may go unaddressed, and their economic insecurity due to widowhood may drive some women to sex work. The UN reports that in some parts of the world, widows are coerced into participating in harmful, degrading and life-threatening traditional practices as part of burial and mourning rites. Sometimes widows are forced to drink the water that their husbands’ corpses have been washed in, and mourning rites may also involve sexual relations with male relatives. Sometimes widows are disowned by relatives and made homeless. This could force many women to seek informal employment as domestic labourers or turn to beg or prostitution.
