‘Hubby sleeps with knife’

MARY PHIRI writes A NDOLA housewife painfully narrated in a local court that she has been living in fear as her husband keeps his knife under his pillow each time they retire to bed. Nelly Nkole, 22, made the revelation when she was giving evidence in the Kabushi Local Court where she initiated a divorce case against her husband Alex Chama 25 of Mushili Township. She told the court that her husband was fond of beating her whenever they had an argument. Nkole said when she was nine months pregnant, her husband would tie her to the chair and beat her severely until she fainted. “My husband ties me up to a chair, beats me up and locks the house and goes away,” she said. The case came before presiding magistrates Mildred Namwizye sitting with Evelyn Nalwizya. Nkole said no one was willing in both families to sit them down because they were all fed-up and she too was now giving up on the marriage. “I just cannot take it anymore because I can end up losing my life in the process of wanting to hold on to this marriage. It is difficult for me to even come to terms with going back to a man who sleeps with a knife under the pillow and would hit me with anything that he gets his hands on,” she lamented. She said when she gave birth, she went to live with her mother because her life with her husband was not stable adding that after two weeks later, he followed her and beat her there. In his testimony, Chama agreed to the fact that he did slap his wife at times because that was the only way to stop her from nagging. Chama said his wife was full of secrets such that he would not even dare touch her phone and she was fond of nagging him a lot. “She is one person who can talk from 20:00hrs to 01:00 hrs, if she means to talk and what only stops her is if I slap her on the face. Her entire family is full of crazy people – who can even fight over a spoon,” he said. Chama stated that she lacked respect and when he asked her to shave him and to tell the child to go out, she insisted that she would still shave him in the presence of the child. The court granted divorce and ordered Chama to compensate his wife with K3,000 in monthly installments of K500 and K300 child support. The Sun