By A Nigerian lady, Zainab Oladeinde has sparked outrage on micro-blogging platform, Twitter after she recounted how she was almost raped in the hotel room she stayed in Zanzibar, Tanzania.
In a series of tweets shared via her handle @zainabdehinde on Saturday, she narrated her horrible experience in the East African city as a young solo female traveller.
According to her, the incident happened in April 2021 when she travelled to Zanzibar, a city in Tanzania to celebrate her 23rd birthday. Upon her arrival in the country, she arrived at her hotel, Warere Beach Hotel in Nungwi Zanzibar on April 16, some hours to her birthday the next day.
Everything went well until the early hours of April 17, her special day, when she got perhaps the greatest shock of her life. Oladeinde said she felt a strange hand touching her breasts. She initially dismissed the feeling as a dream until minutes later when she felt her hands stroking a man’s penis.
“Low and behold, it wasn’t a dream. There was a naked man lying on my bed and touching me at 2am in my hotel room ! He started calling me “baby” and then I became scared cause the room was dark as I had switched off the lights before I went to bed. Now, I was extremely scared,” she said.
She was startled and stood in shock, wondering how a stranger got access into her locked room. Sensing that she could in real danger, she begged the strange man who, according to her, only spoke Swahili. Her saving grace was the lie she told him she had HIV, forcing him to leave the room with the word that he’d back with a condom.
Upon her abuser’s exit, Oladeinde tried calling the local police but her calls were left unresponded. She later found her way to the hotel’s reception but there was no one to attend to her.
She also alleged that $1,100 was stolen from her bag. With the assitance of a Russian couple she met earlier, she went to the police station where she faced another ordeal in the hands of the police officers.
Read the full account of her experience below:
It’s high time I told my horrible experience in Zanzibar as a young solo female traveler.
This incident happened a year ago in April of 2021 but I haven’t been able to talk about it cause I’ve been in therapy for a year to heal from the psychological trauma as this experience
— Zainab Oladehinde (@zainabdehinde) April 16, 2022
Meanwhile, the young woman’s traumatic story has riled up Nigerians and other Africans who condemned the hotel as well as the Tanzanian authorities for the ill-treatment of female travellers.
