Wassis Hortense Léonie Abo (born 1945) was an activist during the

Kwilu Rebellion The Kwilu rebellion (1963–1965) was a civil uprising which took place in the West of what is the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. The rebellion took place in the wider context of the Cold War and the Congo Crisis. Led by Pierre Mu ...

. She was a writer who was the wife of the communist rebel

Pierre Mulele Pierre Mulele (11 August 1929 – 3 or 9 October 1968) was a Congolese rebel active in the Kwilu rebellion of 1964. Mulele had also been minister of education in Patrice Lumumba's cabinet. With the assassination of Lumumba in January 1961 a ...

Life

Wassis Hortense Léonie Abo was born in 1945 in a place called Malungu in what was then the

Belgian Congo The Belgian Congo (, ; ) was a Belgian colonial empire, Belgian colony in Central Africa from 1908 until independence in 1960 and became the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville). The former colony adopted its present name, the Democratic Repu ...

. She was brought up by adopted parents as her mother died giving birth to her; as a result of this last event she was given the name "Abo", which means "sorrow" in the Bambunda language. She witnessed her adoptive father taking a stick to his wife that resulted in her beating ending with a broken arm. She was well educated starting school at seven and moving on to a missionary school at nine. She was an early trained midwife and by the age of fourteen she was supervising births. She entered an abusive arranged marriage in Gaspar Mumputo in September 1959. She had been told about the temptations of the flesh by the nuns who educated her and she remembered her wedding night being filled with pain and blood. Her marriage ended after June 1962 when her husband took her and her prospective lover to court. She was sent to jail for a month. Abo was tricked into joining a group of rebels by her brothers. In January 1964 she was still part of that group when they rose as part of the

against the government. The rebel

married her and they spent five years alongside guerrillas loyal to Mulele. She was treated with disproportionate respect because of her husband. She was disappointed when her husband took another wife and planned to take a third. In 1968, after her husband's assassination, she fled to Congo-Brazzaville as she feared for her life. Abo has made a great effort to record the works of herself and Pierre Mulele.Gender and Decolonization in the Congo: The Legacy of Patrice Lumumba (2010)
Tosin Abiodun, NotEvenPast, Retrieved 26 March 2015 The Belgian book ''Une Femme du Congo'' (''A Congolese Woman''), by Ludo Martens, tells Abo's life story.

References