Description

By Abigal Muchecheti

ISBN: 978-1-84991-958-6
Published: 2013
Pages: 192
Key Themes: Mental Health, Breakdown, Domestic Abuse, Disability, True Stories

Description

This is based on a true story of a young woman who was born disabled. Her name is Vimbai. She had elephantiasis of the arm and this condition shapes the future course of her life. The character she is based upon is born in a remote village in Africa where disability is not tolerated. She is ridiculed throughout her youth and this results in depressions which plague her school years. They do not however, inhibit her capacity to learn. While other girls are getting into relationships, Vimbai is shying away from people. Books become her refuge. She hides away from the realities of life by reading anything that comes her way. This behaviour may be a symptom of depression but it still leaves her wiser than her peers.

The attempted rape in her first year in the city obviously does nothing to improve the situation. She has low self esteem and she suffers from panic attacks. Then, the rape at University puts her in an abusive four year marriage to Pete whose proud family will not accept that he could commit such a crime. Life in general becomes unbearable for her in this marriage, which is punctuated by numerous hospital visits for gonorrhoea treatment in a continent where HIV AIDS is spreading like a fire. Her eating problem becomes the object of ridicule by her in laws and this makes her mental stress worse. She has problems with her fertility which are almost certainly psychological in origin. In a later, happy marriage she gives birth to two children.The abusive marriage leaves Vimbai with a mental breakdown that keeps her on the edge of sanity throughout her life.

The book also highlights the problems Vimbai encounters, wrestling her demons. She is, however, determined to fight them and shows this with terrifying visits to a clinic for HIV AIDS testing. She gets involved in the village fight back programme and proves in the end that disability is not inability.
This book should be an education to women in different parts of the world who, whether disabled or not, have endured abuse, ridicule, rape and sexual violence. The book gives everyone hope.

About the Author

Abigal is in her thirties and lives in Faringdon, Oxfordshire. Born in 1976 in the then Southern Rhodesia and now Zimbabwe, Abigal immigrated to the UK in 2006. She grew up seeing the distress of her half sister Vimbai and her disability. It was watching Vimbai struggle with ridicule, stigmatization, abuse and mental breakdown that resulted in Married to a Devil.
In addition, the author was also involved with the organisation that shelters abused women in Zimbabwe called Msasa Project. Furthermore her work with Msasa Project exposed her to abused sick women who were on the verge of both mental and physical breakdown.