Mauda's life Mauda is now eighty-five years old and lives in the tiny village of Burimba overlooking Punishment Island.

As she sits in a chair by the window of her small, dark hut, she recalls having had a good life. She and her husband enjoyed raising seven children, one of whom passed away too early. Her husband also passed away a few years ago, but her many children and grandchildren, one of whom teaches people in the community to swim, are always around to keep her company. She still thinks about the baby she lost at the hands of her own father, and as she talks about it and describes her pain to me with tears in her eyes, she signals for her daughter to leave the room.

Nothing is known of the young man who made her pregnant. In those days the man would not suffer any consequences, but Mauda tells me that times have changed. -Today young couples can have babies without being married, and I am happy to know that no young woman will ever have to go through what I went through, she says.