A hard lesson for one of our own
“I was walking along a main road about 5.30 in the afternoon,” she says. “I had been to see a friend and I planned to stay over in Maun before returning to our camp, which was two hours’ drive away.
“They came up behind me and put a knife to my throat. Then they dragged me into bushes. I don’t know how long it lasted. I just remember thinking, ‘This is not where I plan to die – in among the tin cans and dirty dustbins.’ Afterwards I felt barely human.
“Ironically, when we first arrived in Botswana, I spent a year working with an organisation called Women Against Rape, developing HIV education programmes and helping establish proper procedures for victims of sexual abuse.
“After the attack, I dragged myself to a police station. I have to say, all the training I’d put in place worked. I was treated beautifully and they knew to get me to hospital so that evidence could be taken.
“It was also essential to take anti-retrovirals. These drugs stop the transmission of HIV but only within 78 hours of contact. I had been raped by three men and, in Africa, one in three men is HIV-positive.”
None of the men was ever caught, an outcome to which Kate had resigned herself.
She says: “I was determined that my recovery was not going to depend on justice because I knew it wasn’t going to happen.
“There is a vast chasm between the number of convicted rapists and the number of rapes. The men who attacked me were on a spree. They raped three other women that week.”
While Kate is staunchly loyal to Botswana and Africa, she admits that rape is an endemic problem.
“Recently I was talking to a woman in the Eastern Cape in South Africa. When I told her what had happened to me, she was visibly shocked and said, ‘That sort of thing doesn’t happen to white women.’ I said, ‘But it has happened to you, hasn’t it?’ She said, ‘Yes, it has.’
“I’m sad to say it, but it’s a fact of life in Africa. In England, if you mention Botswana, people think of The No1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.
“He writes wonderful books but they bear no resemblance to real life. If you live in a rural community, you are at the mercy of what the guys want to do.”
At first, Kate thought she had come to terms with the attack. “I believed I was coping,” she admits, “but after six months I started to unravel. I know now that post-traumatic stress is a physiological response and there is nothing you can do to stop it.