My daughter is 15 years old and she is the best thing that ever happened to me.
She is the only child I have and that is why I have kept her story hidden but now i can talk since we are all talking and hoping that our identities will be kept secret…
I was barren for more than 12 years after my marriage. I wasn’t even the type of woman who got pregnant and then lost it. No. For me, nothing happened. No missed menses, no feeling of being pregnant, nothing. My husband then was like many men, running from skirt to skirt. He told me he had two children before he met me and the only reason I wasn’t kicked out of the house was because he met me a virgin.
I endured all kinds of humiliation. Haba, I don’t need to go into specific details. You know how our people treat barren women. You can’t send your neighbour’s child on an errand, they will tell you to go and have your own children so you can send them. You can’t scold an errant child in the family or you will be told that is the reason you don’t have your own. You are expected to give people the exact amount of money they come asking you for afterall you’re not spending on baby food or school fees, so when you say you have no money, you are an enemy…for life.
So, there I was. I was working in advertising in Lagos; making good money but very unhappy especially with a philandering husband. I went from hospital to hospital; I went from one prayer mountain to another; I did a few herbalists, yes. I took herbs, concoctions, holy water, bathed in the river and threw the sponge away…I did all.
Nothing happened for 12 years. It didn’t help when my husband’s children came to the house demanding for money; many times, the loafer would borrow money from me to give them and never repay.
How would I have been able to get the money back when fear didn’t let me ask? I did once though, I not only got the tongue lashing of my life, he called a family meeting to tell them I didn’t want him to give his children money even when I couldn’t have children. After that, if he asked for money, I would give what I had and never ask for it again.
Then, one day a friend invited me to a new church. She told me the pastor was a great man of God who was doing wonders. She said he would pray for me and I would have children. She said there were many barren women who were joyous mothers of plenty.
That’s how I met Pastor Ken. He was in his late thirties at that time but he was no charismatic leader. Pastor Ken was a sex pervert! And his method was simple. I was to come for five days’ vigil. I was to sleep in the church fasting and praying and ‘God would do it.’
God had nothing to do with nothing; Pastor Ken took me into his room the second night and we had vigorous sex for the next five days; he would be on top of me and be shouting ‘receivaaah, reecceievah receive the infilling aaahh, receiveaah…’ for hours.
Ha, you are laughing?
Was I under any godly illusion?
Look, at that time, I would have opened my legs from Congo to Cairo just to have a child. I didn’t care who fathered the child, I just wanted a child to call me mummy. That I be called ‘Mama somebody.’
And I was not the only woman, so no need sugar coating it. That is why I called the Pastor a sex pervert.
See, there were three other women; we all knew Pastor was having sex with each of us; we knew we had been shamed by society over and over again for being barren. If this man could get us pregnant, it was a small price to pay for silence.
Once we hear ‘Rreceivaaah! rreeeeeivvvaaah!! takittaaa! It means one of us is ‘specially annointed’ by pastor Ken, Oh we all knew!
Then I became pregnant! I knew this was no miracle, I knew mine wasn’t the holy child. I just kept asking God for forgiveness because I didn’t know what else to do. I continued worshipping at the church but stopped going for vigil.
I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in the UK and I was over the moon with joy.
Then one midnight, my husband started his own wahala, he told me he couldn’t be the father of my child. He told me he knew he can never father a child and that I should leave his house with my bastard.
I said whosai! So, it also means those children you have been parading in front of me all these years are not yours? It means you will pay me back all the money I have been lending you for the upkeep of the so called children. It means I will have no choice but tell the world that you are not a man!
The man calm down, sharperly!
You see, for men; their manhood is the centre of their universe; my husband couldn’t afford to be shamed because at this time, after years of being humiliated by him, I was finally a mother, financially able to care for myself and child and him being in our lives would have been a small bonus not necessarily the most important thing.
At this point, as a UK citizen, I was already prepared to relocate to the UK to raise my child. When I brought it up, my husband followed me like a sheep and he kept his gob shut until he passed away from cancer six years ago.
So when they say, my daughter is a ‘miracle’, like I overcame some barrenness, no, she is a product of a sperm donor named Pastor Ken who probably still lives in Lagos.