Wiping tears from her eyes, she describes the first time: "Someone came and gave me a plate of sadza [the staple cornmeal porridge] and said, 'Go in that room with this plate of sadza.' And there was a man sleeping in bed and he raped me."
There are three women at the base, she says. The number of militia members there has dropped to 11 from 50 before the election. There are political meetings at the base, with songs and slogans.
"I just go to save my life. But I will never be ZANU-PF," Asiatu says. She has hated ZANU-PF since her mother's younger sister was kidnapped and slain in political violence after 2000.
Before the election, she says, she saw hundreds of people beaten at the base, about 10 to 50 people a day. She says she saw two MDC activists stoned to death. Militia members pelted the two with bricks and rocks, taking about three hours to kill the men.
"They said, 'They are activists of the MDC, so they should be killed in order to kill the MDC.' "
Elizabeth, 30, an MDC activist and vegetable seller, says she was raped at the same base before the election. She says some militia members wore sacks or cardboard boxes on their heads to hide their faces. (Elizabeth also is not known by that name in her community.)
As she was raped, militia members and other young women at the base sang songs taunting the opposition, such as, "Dig a hole and bury yourself, because your time has come."
"It made it more terrifying. I didn't think I was going to survive," she says.
Unlike Asiatu, she was not kept at the base as a sex slave, but raped as a punishment for her MDC loyalties. She later reported the names of her assailants to the police, who arrested two men. But they were released two days later without charges.
"Right now I fear they will come again," says Elizabeth, who has decided to drop out as an MDC activist. "I just want to live a quiet life. I'm just scared. But I'll still support the MDC."
Despite everything, she still believes that, somehow, change is coming. She stares into midair, a slight smile curling her lips. She speaks in a dreamy voice, almost as if she can see it materializing in front of her.
"I think it will come," she says. "I don't know when, but I know it will come one day."
Asiatu has given up believing in the possibility of her own freedom, yet she has not lost her belief that the country will somehow be transformed.
"If the situation continues like this, the country will remain ashes," she says. But when she expresses her hopes, the fear seems to lift for a moment. Her voice is firm and clear: "There's going to be a change. I feel change coming."
Then it is time to return to the base.
