Mutaganzwa who lives in the Munyiginya sector, Rwamagana district, says that he does not know when he started to live in conflict with his wife... because they have been in it for many years. During that time, he says that he abused his wife several times, and different people tried to help them to stop it but in vain.

 “First, came the family friends, who helped us understand our problems. After a good discussion, we fought again. The behaviour-changer came to help us but it failed. We always fought,” Mutaganzwa said.

This disagreement, he says, was mainly due to disagreements over the use of his salary from his work as masonry, depriving his wife of property rights, beating..., and having sex activities out of marriage.

His wife, Mrs. Mukarubibi Olive, says her husband has changed a lot, and their past relationship is very different from the present.

 “He married me when I was young when I was 18. He started harassing me when I was young because he married me and he was older than me for many years. He would see the cup on the ground and hit me, the child would make a mistake, and he would hit me.... He was drunk and called me to open the door for him, I was walking knowing that I was going to open it for my husband and he came and said ' I'm going to hit you, to show you that everything is possible', and I was beaten with a lot sticks... I was always sad in my heart, “she stated.

Mrs. Mukarubibi, who does not know how long he has been abused because of how long it is, says that she has gone several times to her parent's house and her husband came back to apologize, and they even fined him.

Apart from this, Mutaganzwa also denied her property rights but she kept silent because of her weakness.

“The behavior-changer came to teach us, Rwamrec also came to listen to us and teach us, then my husband was humbled a little but after they left, he returned his bad habits, so we continued the fight because we never calmed down. I saw what he was doing to me and I made a lot of noise. I put it on the ground with a lot of sadness. I was always sad in my heart. I couldn’t advise him so due to not understanding me, and he belittled me a lot,” she stated.

“I told him 'why this is like that [production] and you don't want to listen to me... he said 'it's not your father's house, and there is not your father's farm here!' Constant emotional violence and sorrow broke my heart," she added.

"When it's like that, we hear from Rwanda Women's Network that 'we went to the ground but I feel overburdened. I wondered what happened to me, and said ‘Am I now an old woman who grew up in her house, am I going to die of sorrow ...?! What will I do about it? So they taught us, they trained us. I appreciate Mrs. Mireille because she opened our hearts... they taught us how to breathe a little bit so that we can have love, but the husband had become a stranger to me."

Mutaganzwa said that he was a problem that he was always made noisy when he was called to a place, and he was ready to be in jail.

"But I kept saying that because of the constant wars we are in, we can get there and these people decided to jail me! I got there and called the person who had called me... I got there and we entered, they sent us a good teacher, so we studied on the first day (...) we finished training and we changed, but now we use that change” he mentioned.

Mutaganzwa says while he was studying, he watched how he abused his wife, so now they live peacefully. This is also confirmed by Mrs. Mukarubibi who says that she has recovered from his sorrow and that she has the right to the property, so she made a decision and consulted each other as a married couple.