Lesotho: Thirteen years with an abusive husband

I have not known the warmth of marriage for all those years I mentioned that I stayed in my marriage. I was eighteen years old when I married this man and he was twenty three. We got married happily because we loved each other.
In this marriage nothing was good for me at all, this man used to beat me twice or three times a week. He was a teacher in one of the schools in Lesotho Berea; he hurt me for a very long time while I was with him. He was a womaniser; he got involved with the girls that he taught, even the teachers. He hated me with a passion, especially when he came from school, where he met his mistresses. He used to walk where I could see him with his mistresses; he no longer cared for me at all.
I used to ask why he was doing this in front of me, but instead of answering me he would beat me. At the time I was expecting our second child, he kicked me in my stomach, the child I was carrying now has a problem with falling and there is nothing I can do because he was injured inside me by his father. Like I said he was working, but I never got to see his money, he did not even care to bring anything for his children.
I used to get through the month by being helped by my family and my friends, when he gave us food he would buy a small kilogram of mealie meal because he took care of his many girlfriends. One day it came to my knowledge that he had bought a cell phone for one of the students who happen to be his girlfriend, when I met her I took the phone away from her and when I arrived home my husband beat me up because the girlfriend had told him. I then requested his parents to come and intervene, his father told me to move out but I saw that was not the solution because the main problem was his behaviour which led him to beat me up.
My mother-in-law died, even before she was buried my father-in-law asked me to sleep with him. He slept inside the other room alone where most of the things were kept so he asked me one morning when I was going to take the pot. I refused and asked one of his daughters to bring things for me. He then later called me to come and tidy his bed and I refused again because I saw what he wanted from me. The time for the burial came and we went with my husband and suddenly the wind came, it took my dress up, he made as if he did not care. When we returned, even before we reached home he slapped me and told me that I let the dress go up for all the men to see.
One day he came home late as usual and that day he told me he was going to kill me, I did not know what to do because I knew that I was going to be killed. I was just a woman who took care of her children. I did not have anywhere to go and I did not know where I had gone wrong. When he arrived I dished for him, and ran away and slept in the house of one of the security men. In the morning I hid under the trees nearby, I waited for him to go to school the next morning so that I could go home.
When he got home after work, he beat me as though I was just a thing to him. The other time he beat me because he said that I insulted one of his mistresses, I was already in my bed sleeping when he came. He beat me and I tried to make a noise but no one heard me and even if they did, people had just had enough of us. He suffocated me, when he saw that I was tired he told me to lie down, he beat me on the buttocks to such an extent that I could not sit down and after that he would have sex with me. Every time after he had beaten me he would have sex with me.
When he was not beating me he would take all of my clothes and give them to his sisters without my permission, his other sister also came to tell her brother that my children are not his because she claimed that I have many boyfriends. She even told her brother to marry his own wife who will have his babies and will even have a boy since I had only girls. The most hurtful thing is that she has a child out of wedlock now and I am the one who has to take care of that child. No matter what has happened I am still a strong woman who takes care of her children.
This story is part of the “I” Stories series produced by the Gender Links encouraging the view that speaking out can set you free.