accommodation. At my age I need my own home. I don’t have a home in the rural areas. Our culture says once you are married you belong to your husband’s family and now he is dead. I would not be welcome in his rural homestead. My daughter is also a widow. Getting accommodation is very difficult. I tried to apply for a house with the city council in 1970 but never got one. Since then I have been renewing my applications. I had a lodger’s card, and was paying rent every month to prove that I qualified to get a house. Eventually I gave up. Sometimes they needed bribes. There was corruption in the city council.101 Eileen, who was pregnant, described the indignity of almost giving birth in the open to Human Rights Watch: I gave birth yesterday. We have been sleeping in the open for three weeks. It was terrible because I was heavily pregnant. Then yesterday I got contractions and well wishers quickly put up a wooden shack so that I wouldn’t give birth in the open and that is where I had my child. For now I am sleeping with the newborn in this shack while my husband and two other children sleep outside. We don’t know what to do.102 Human Rights Watch also interviewed a number of women who had children with disabilities. They were reluctant to go to the rural areas where their children were unlikely to receive adequate medical treatment. Justina told Human Rights Watch: My husband abandoned me when my son was born. He was born with Downs syndrome. I used to stay in a cabin and it was demolished and now I sleep outside in the streets with my kids. This is our second week of sleeping in the open. I used to be a vendor (informal trader) but I can’t work anymore. I can’t go back to the rural areas because both my parents are dead. I can’t think anymore.103 101 Human Rights Watch interview, Harare, June 29, 2005. 102 Human Rights Watch interview, Mutare, June 24, 2005. 103 Human Rights Watch interview, Harare, June 22, 2005. 24