United Kingdom-based lawyer Rumbi Bvunzawabaya has spoken about how sexual abuse while she was young shaped her adulthood until an encounter at church turned her life around.
Bvunzawabaya (RB) spoke about her life as a lawyer and author on the platform In Conversation with Trevor hosted by Alpha Media Holdings chairman Trevor Ncube (TN).
Below are excerpts from the interview.
TN: Today, I'm in conversation with Rumbi Bvunzawabaya, a solicitor and advocate for policy changes for migrants.
Welcome to In Conversation with Trevor UK Series brought to you by the Nyaradzo Group.
Rumbi Bvunzawabaya welcome to In Conversation with Trevor I'm excited to have you here.
RB: I'm excited to be here. I'm so honoured to be here and thank you so much for having me.
TN: Wonderful. You have had an amazing life 26 years as a lawyer, born in Zimbabwe, educated a bit there and then you came over here.
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I want us to start at a place where we look at one of your books.
You have written two books and you are currently writing another one whose title excites me, but let's go to the Girl In The Mirror and talk to us about the inspiration behind writing that book, which you published in 2016?
RB: Wonderful. Girl In The Mirror is a story about me and the inspiration came from my own journey of self-discovery and journey of healing.
So at the age of 38 I had a spiritual encounter. I would say in church where I was frustrated with life.
I was on the verge of going through a divorce. I just felt so unhappy and I didn't understand what was wrong.
I had a lot of anger issues and on the outside I looked like everything was fine, no one would even think that I had any internal turmoil that I was going through but that experience at church is where it actually started.
TN: Before you go to the experience of church, talk to us about the internal turmoil.
It sounds like it was pretty heavy, you are almost getting a divorce.
What are the issues that you are battling with at that particular moment? Let's describe that turmoil.
RB: I think the internal turmoil came from the outside. I'm a professional woman, married, and financially sound.
Everything seems to be okay but I had some issues from my childhood that I had never dealt with and they surface without you actually knowing what's causing you to have anger, to have rage that you don't know.
You like managing emotions, for example like even as a mom, even as a wife so managing my emotions and I think the people who were closest to me are the ones who would be able to see the real me.
On the outside you appear to be someone else to other people but when you are behind closed doors, I dealt with anger with rage with low self-esteem.
TN: What were the issues in your upbringing that were causing this, what was it?
RB: The root cause of this....what took me back to when I had the spiritual encounter and I went back to being a seven-year-old and the root of the problems that I dealt with that I was experiencing were from sexual abuse as a child, which then led me to be quite a rebellious teenager.
I think for my parents they didn't quite understand where this was coming from and they never knew the root cause of the problems that I had as a child.
So I also exposed myself to quite dangerous situations as a young child, as a teenager growing up early, pregnancy at university and I think it all stemmed from that childhood abuse.
I also witnessed domestic violence in the home which I felt was just normal, but when I was an adult and going through my journey I realised that the issues that I had came from stemmed from the abuse that I had witnessed growing up.
The abuse that I had experienced and I even had what I would say is an inherent hatred for men.
TN: Wow.
RB: So my husband suffered, so that's what led perhaps to the thought my husband was on the receiving end and he took the punishment.
He was on the receiving end because we grew up in a patriarchal society where women as well were abused.
I think it was something that I saw, I saw women being abused and that led to perhaps that without actually knowing that I have a hatred for men and any authorities for men.
If you put a man before me I saw red and I didn't understand why and until I had that revelation at that moment where I was able to start to understand why I was the way that I was.
TN: Let's go to that experience in church and describe it to us, what happened?
RB: So it's an interesting experience. My pastor at that time, I worked closely with him.
I was a leader in church and I often prayed for people. So we attended a church called Renewal in Sol Hall and I was just sitting at the back because that day I was having a day off.
So I wasn't in the front praying for people or doing any of the work, but he called me and he said ‘I can't see Rumbi where is she?’ and then he called me and said ‘Rumbi come’.
I remember that day I was wearing a wraparound skirt with elephants and a top and he kept saying where is Rumbi although he was looking at me and what he saw he says was a little girl, seven- -years-old, and then he only asked a question.
He said what happened when you were seven and all the repressed memories came back, all the emotions came back at that time and I just started crying and he just prayed for me and prophesied.
He prayed for me and then that's when the journey started because he said what happened and after that I had several counselling sessions.
TN: That's deep, when you look at that now with a review mirror kind experience do you feel you have arrived at healing, at wholeness or still a process that's going on?
RB: It's a journey, it's like onions.
I think you peel off layers because it's more trauma, experiences that are piled on and you have to continually heal and what helps me I think in my healing journey is that I wanted to just pass on the message to everyone.
I was so excited and said ‘Ooh goodness is this me?’ because it was absolutely a transformation of who I was and I remember my husband saying there is a God in heaven.
TN: Wow, is he a Christian himself?
RB: Yes, he is. I had to be carried out of church because it was such a powerful prophecy, it was a life changing moment for me.
TN: When you started you talked about your attitude towards men, that changed too?
RB: Yes it changed.
TN: We are not all your enemies now?
RB: No! No! I started to understand why because men were also broken.
They also had their own history, their own issues.
So it gave me so much clarity to understand people and to also be able even in my work as a solicitor to have a better understanding of why people are the way that they are…
TN: That's a very important experience that you have just shared right now, and you do work and you give talks on this matter in a sort of wholesome way.
What advice from that experience would you give to other people going through that?
RB: I would say to everyone that you have got to understand yourself and understand where you come from.
Don't negate experiences because oftentimes people will say things that happened when you were younger.
I think we normalise trauma and we are resilient strong people especially people from Zimbabwe.
I think we are quite strong and resilient and we end to just power through.
TN: It shows like you are saying you appear strong you are a professional whatever but it will surface?
RB: It will surface. So once you get to understand yourself because for me it was my own healing.
I took responsibility and ownership for my healing and not to blame anyone in the past, but to take ownership for where I am and move forward and that then had a ripple effect on my husband on my children on everyone around me.
TN: Let's move on to the other issues that your beautiful books identify, so you talk about identity, you struggled reconciling your Zimbabwe upbringing and your British upbringing, racism and discrimination.
You battled with that. We have already talked about mental health issues and resilience and hope which are very important.
Let's zero in on the racism and discrimination issue. What has been your experience in dealing with that because you are in a country where there is a lot of racism?
RB: Late 90s when I came here it was a shock because I was used to being in a country where we are the majority, where everyone else looks like me.
But coming here I was now a minority and I think the racism has manifested in from a personal experience of trying to break into law and trying to work in law firms as a foreign trained lawyer.
I experienced it at every level. I often say to people no one opened any doors for me.
They shut doors and I had to create my own spaces, someone said to me why didn't you just change your name to Smith.
TN: Wow
RB: Why should we say Bvunzawabaya, you know, and they wouldn't even say it so it would start with my name and the discrimination would start from there and jokes around that which people would just become familiar with and I think sometimes we would just smile and allow people to get away with it.
I started to see racism more institutionally through my work as a solicitor.
The whole system in terms of the immigration laws of this country are created to be exclusionist. It's a system which excludes people and wants you to go back to where you have come from.
- This United Kingdom series of “In Conversation With Trevor” is brought to you in partnership with Nyaradzo Group. “In Conversation With Trevor” is a weekly show broadcast on YouTube.com//InConversationWithTrevor.
