Terry Gobanga – Women not only in India but in all the other parts of the world are treated as an object by some people.
On the daily basis there are stories in the newspapers and television about women being trafficked, kidnapped, raped and domestically abused which is becoming one of the biggest issues in the world now.
Recently I came across a story about Terry Gobanga who was raped hours before her wedding.
This story literally bought tears to my eyes and I am sure, the story will do that to you as well.
This is about a woman named Terry Gobanga from Nairobi and she was raped hours before her wedding. She was at her place when she realized that she had some of the clothes which belonged to her husband Harry’s wedding dress so as in her culture it is prohibited to meet your spouse before the wedding she decided to give it to a mutual friend before early morning who would give it to her husband early in the morning. As she was returning back she saw a guy sitting on the bonnet of a car who shortly started following her, pulled her and pushed her in the car. There were 2 other men in the car who pushed a cloth in her mouth, she was kicking, moving and trying to shout but they didn’t stop. She somehow managed to throw the cloth out of her mouth and yelled “It’s my wedding day” to which they replied “co-operate with us or you’ll die”.
They raped Terry Gobanga in the car one after the other because of which she bit on one of the men’s penis after that they stabbed her in the stomach and threw her out of the car on the roadside. She was miles away from her home, luckily when she was being thrown out of the car a child saw her and called his grandmother who later called the police. The police came and checked her pulse but they weren’t able to find it and declared her dead, they wrapped her in a blanked and were about to take me for the burial but she suddenly chocked on the blanket and coughed. The policeman said “she’s alive” and immediately took Terry Gobanga the biggest government hospital in Kenya.
The doctors couldn’t recognize her face because it had swollen-up because of their punches so they started calling random churches to check if they were missing a bride and by chance, they called up her church, and they came to know that she was the one they’ve been searching for. As her parents were informed about her case, they came running to her and so did Harry who came with her wedding gown. As this case was in news, the reporters came there too so they shifted Terry to another hospital who told her that the stabs wounds have gone deep in her womb, so she won’t be able to carry any children ever”.
She felt so guilty and asked Harry that she’s sorry for whatever happened, Harry kept repeating that he want to marry her no matter what. She couldn’t forget the faces of those three men. The doctors gave her pills to protect her from any HIV viruses. The police kept bringing men to her, but she couldn’t recognize any one of them and she dropped the matter. After 3 months the doctors told them that she was HIV negative but they had to wait for 3 other months. Harry and she still started planning for their second marriage.
A woman named Vip Ogolla who was a rape-survivor came to know her story and asked her that her wedding would be for free and she’ll handle all the expenses, she said “Go wild, have whatever you want”. In July 2005 she got married to Harry in a bigger and better wedding style. Everything was going fine until one cold night, they light charcoal in the room for heat but both of them started feeling uneasy. They passed-out, Terry Gobanga woke up and threw-up; she gathered strength to call her neighbor and told her that something was not fine as Harry was not responding. Next day she woke up in the hospital and asked them about Harry to which they said that he was no more, the postmortem reports revealed that the carbon monoxide filled the room and suffocated them both.
She was really devastated, and told everybody that she will never get married to anyone. There was a man named Tonny Gobanga, who kept talking to her and kept reminding her about the good time she had with Harry which kept her positive somehow. Once, he didn’t turn up for 3 days which really disturbed Terry and that’s when she realized that she had fallen for him.
Tonny proposed to her for wedding but she told him about her past to which he said that he still wanted to marry her, she also told him that she cannot give birth to children to which he said, “Children are a gift from God. If we get them, Amen. If not, I will have more time to love you.”
Tonny’s parents especially his father after listening to Terry’s story didn’t want him to marry her as they thought that she was cursed but Tonny still did without the presence of any of his family members. After a year of her marriage one day she felt very uneasy and was taken to the hospital to which the doctors confirmed that she was miraculously pregnant. She had to take a lot of care of her baby and also of herself because of the old wounds in her womb. She named her baby girl, Tehille. After 4 years she gave birth to another baby girl and named her Towdah.
Today Terry is the best of friends for her father-in-law who hated her once, and is running an organization for rape survivors (she doesn’t call them rape victims) named Kara Olmurani and also written a book expressing her story named “Crawling out of Darkness”. She has also said that she has forgiven those who raped her but she ensures that other don’t go through what she had to.
TERRY WE ARE PROUD OF YOU! You are an inspiration to all the women in the entire world.
