For people facing domestic abuse or homelessness, charities have offered a way out when many of the usual routes to support have been blocked by Covid restrictions
When Mapalo* left her husband, she would sit and look at herself and think: “Oh, my word, I look so normal. How can people see that I’m breaking? That I’m broken inside?” She hadn’t just left a marriage; she had also escaped with her son from an increasingly dangerous situation.
Mapalo and the man who was her husband met and married in Zambia, where they were both born. Her husband’s work as an engineer took him to Abu Dhabi and then to Cardiff. When she arrived in Wales to join him, she realised he had begun to drink heavily.
