It was not my fault
Was it my fault to be born a girl? Why has it been so
difficult to be me? The battered life I now live is the relic of age-long
discrimination and subordination of all women in my community. Countless numbers
of girls are suffering through the same
ordeal shoved down my throat . Why the loud silence to such a disease with
conspicuously devastating effects?
I was only eight years old, if I can still remember. Or perhaps
even younger when men (very old ones) started investing in my sexuality. Men
older that my father, my uncles started bringing gifts saying jokingly “
mother-in-law, this money is for my new wife’s nappy.” Or perhaps, as it turned
out to be, it wasn’t a joke at all.
As I grew up, more gifts, money and favours took a different
pace. My mother and father seemed proud to have been the parent of such
beautiful fruit. I experienced the title of ‘wife’ at a very tender age. This all
seemed so ‘normal’ in my village that I also started conceding to be ‘happy’
and looking forward to it!
The opportunity cost of staying and working hard in school
and the very frail possibility of reaching to university as a ‘girl’ was
thoroughly contrasted by the ease with which I reaped the fruits of my sexuality;
of my just being a beautiful young girl; ‘a fine pikin’ as they would say. And
even better, my parents prefered the quicker profits of giving birth to a girl
to that of tedious education.
It was the same all over my village. And even the surrounding
villages that I get to visit lumor days (market days). Everyone of us seemed to
enjoy this immoral predatory tendency.
At the age of 11, as the ‘my wife’ logo started to get more
serious practical, I started giving up on the tedious work at school. I came to
prefer learning take my rightful and perhaps only possible place in society; a
wife. This seemed and was made more natural by the norms and traditions of my
society.
At 12 years, it all cracked open as I was informed that I
shall be marrying the Pa Komrabai the regent chief of the neighbouring village
of Kamabai. I was asked to bring honour to my family, and I dared not defy the
sacred word of my parents lest I become disowned. It was less devastating that
I accepted.
I was very well taken care of by my husband as the ‘batheh’
(sweet heart) as I was called by the chief’s friend and kinsmen. I became very
effective in my office of ‘wife’ (and batheh for that matter). I gave birth to
many children in no time!
Clearly the new role of ‘mother’ withered away my beauty and
my grand title of ‘batheh’ and started looking old and saggy. While I suffered,
my ‘husband’, the chief, went out to look for another ‘batheh’ to add to his
growing football team of farming and child-bearing slaves.
Now, here I am, looking at, a young lawyer. How I long to be
like her! I heard she is 27 years old! Society failed me and it was not my
fault.
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