This violence mostly targets girls and young women as an initiation rite, a reminder that even after you cease to be a frequent target you’re vulnerable. Each death of a woman was a message to women in general, and in those days I was tuned in to survival with a kind of dread and shock at finding out that I lived in an undeclared war. I wanted it declared, and I have to the best of my ability declared it myself from time to time.
