Overcoming cultural taboos and widow’s fears, AP journalists tell the stories of women in West Africa, virtually abandoned after COVID claimed their husbands.
West Africa Bureau Chief Krista Larson had seen on previous reporting assignments how women in the region often face abuse upon being widowed. So when statistics showed how many more men were dying of COVID-19 than women, she set out to report on the treatment of these widows.
She started by looking at the countries in Africa where laws provide little if any protection to women regarding inheritance rights, and where statistics on COVID and gender were available. But on a continent where few are even willing to publicly acknowledge their loved ones died of the virus, the process of finding women who would agree to be interviewed proved extremely challenging.
Anayo Mbah, 29, holds her child at her home in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 11, 2022. Mbah was in the final days of her sixth pregnancy as her husband was dying of COVID-19 in another hospital across town. Just weeks into the mourning period that traditionally lasts six months, her late husband’s relatives stopped providing food, then confronted her directly. “They told me that it was better for me to find my own way. … That the earlier I leave the house, the better for me and my children,” Mbah, now 29, said. She left on foot for her mother’s home with only a plastic bag of belongings for her children.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Anayo Mbah gets ready to bathe her children at her home in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 12, 2022.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Children of Anayo Mbah wait to be bathed at their home in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 12, 2022.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Anayo Mbah bathes her children at her home in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 12, 2022.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
“No peace for the wicked” is written on the wall of Anayo Mbah’s room in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 11, 2022. Mbah is among the many women in the region widowed by the pandemic.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Anayo Mbah gathers palm leaves at her home in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 12, 2022.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Umuida, Nigeria, shown Feb. 13, 2022. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, some 70% of confirmed COVID-19 deaths have been men, according to data tracked by the Sex, Gender and COVID-19 Project. Once widowed, women are often mistreated and disinherited.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Roseline Ujah, 49, stands in her home in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 11, 2022. Her husband Godwin likely died of COVID-19, although no tests were available locally. Once widowed, women in Africa are often mistreated and disinherited. Laws prohibit many from acquiring land or give them only a fraction of their spouse’s wealth. In-laws can claim custody of children. Other in-laws may refuse to help, even if they’re the family’s only source of money and food.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Roseline Ujah sits on her bed in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 11, 2022.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
A photo of Roseline Ujah’s husband Godwin rests on his grave outside her house in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 12, 2022.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Roseline Ujah knits palm leaves in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 12, 2022.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Roseline Ujah’s children play outside her home in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 11, 2022.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Roseline Ujah exits her home in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 11, 2022.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Roseline Ujah, center, prays during a church service in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 13, 2022.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
A bible is open during church service attended by Roseline Ujah in Umuida, Nigeria, Feb. 13, 2022.
Vanessa Emedy sits on the grave of her late husband, Godefroid Kamana, in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, March 31, 2022. The night of his burial, extended family members came to the family home where Vanessa had just begun her period of mourning. “They didn't wait the 40 days,” she lamented. “I was stripped of everything, of all my possessions.”
AP Photo / Moses Sawasawa
Vanessa Emedy holds her son as they watch television in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, March 29, 2022. After her husband’s death, she feared her in-laws would seek custody of her son, Jamel, who had been adopted by her husband. Ultimately the relatives did not, because the boy, now 6, wasn’t his biological child. They did, however, move swiftly to amass financial assets.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Vanessa Emedy looks at photographs of late husband Godefroid Kamana in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, March 31, 2022.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
Vanessa Emedy dresses her son before taking him to school in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, March 30, 2022. She and Jamel now live in a smaller home her mother had kept as a rental property. She initially received 40% of her late husband’s salary, but those funds will soon stop entirely.
AP Photo / Moses Sawasawa
Vanessa Emedy takes her son to school in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, March 30, 2022.
AP Photo / Moses Sawasawa
Vanessa Emedy waits for customers, selling secondhand clothes at the Virunga Market in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, March 29, 2022. Her husband’s relatives didn’t wait that long to force her and her young son out on the street, showing up the night of his burial. And as a young widow, she did not have adult children to help support her.
AP Photo / Jerome Delay
The first country chosen was Nigeria, where long before the pandemic, widows had often been forced from their homes or land upon their husbands’ deaths. Nigeria correspondent Chinedu Asadu worked to identify several women who were willing to talk about widowhood despite cultural taboos about speaking of inheritance disputes or other mistreatment for fear of further shaming or retribution from their in-laws. Asadu and Larson then reported from southeastern Nigeria with chief Africa photographer Jerome Delay and Nigeria video journalist Lekan Oyekanmi.
In Guinea, freelance journalist Boubacar Diallo obtained a list of confirmed COVID deaths from a hospital worker and contacted dozens of women, nearly all of whom refused to be interviewed. When one woman made a passing reference to her late husband’s other wives, Larson persuaded her son to share contact details of the other wives; a younger co-wife ultimately granted them an interview.
Delay and Larson also traveled to Congo, where they were joined by freelance journalists Moses Sawasawa for photos and Justin Kabumba for video, who helped locate a fourth woman profiled in the piece.
The resulting all-formats package, part of a yearlong series on how the pandemic is impacting African women, revealed how extensive the practice of widow abuse is in Africa regardless of religion or economic class.
For determined, insightful reporting that highlights a previously unseen aspect of the pandemic’s unequal impact on women, the team of Larson, Asadu, Diallo, Delay, Sawasawa, Oyekanmi and Kabumba earns AP’s Best of the Week — Second Winner honors.
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