I am not making excuses for anyone; I am not saying anyone is right or wrong on this Chrisland wahala. All I am saying is that, at some point in our growing up years, we lied to our parents and with grave circumstances for some of us.
I have a cousin who died after an abortion; you won’t believe that until she breathed her last, she never owned up to the act. It was too late to save her anyway and who knows, maybe she even died, truly believing what she did was not an abortion. I will never know.
On my own part, I got pregnant at 16.
My parents are as liberal as Naija parents can be and from when I turned 13, they told myself and my siblings that having sex would get us girls pregnant and as for the boys amongst us; once they got to the age of producing sperms, they were told that they could make a girl pregnant if they had sex with them.
My parents weren’t the types to say, “If a boy touches you, you will get pregnant.” They said it as it was.
So you see, I had all the necessary education I needed to shape me right.
I finished school at 15 and went straight to university; that was where my problem began.
Yes, my parents taught me right but I wanted more freedom, which the university afforded me. I became a wild child!
Hitherto; I was the studious one
The scholar
The one my parents didn’t even worry about because I was the kind one,
The quiet one who had no friends but only read books…
I was the one they could count on to be home to do the chores and yet, when I got to university, my parents couldn’t even have regcognised me on campus.
I went to parties almost every night. I wore punk hairstyles with different colours,
I willingly gave my virginity to a cult guy, whom I knew was after just that and I wasn’t even drunk when it happened.
And it was just that one encounter that got me pregnant.
Because I had no lessons on what to do in case you had unprotected sex, I didn’t realize one encounter was all it takes.
I didn’t have sex after that because I hated the sex.
It was bad.
The boy was rough and I wondered why girls were so crazy about something I had a nasty experience from.
So yes, I partied, yes, I even began to smoke but after that first time, I stayed off sex because I hated it. I concluded it wasn’t meant for me.
But I got pregnant! See, I was smart and yet foolish!
I was pregnant and had no idea because I didn’t see my period for the first month but then again, my period had never been regular, so I thought nothing of it.
The second month, I saw spots of blood and concluded, it was my menses misbehaving.
By the third month, what was supposed to be my period was an unusually heavy flow…I was in school and so, I didn’t think anything odd, just nasty, nasty cramps that ceased my breaths at intervals, so much so that I couldn’t get up from my bed.
I took strong analgesics because I thought it was menses cramps.
The pain seared through my body and I was wriggling in pain.
My roommates had all gone for lectures and even if they hadn’t, they had learned to mind their own business because they had tried to advise me several times on focusing on my studies instead of partying virtually every weekend but I had told them they weren’t my parents. So they helped me buy my medicines but left me alone.
They thought I didn’t want to attend classes as usual but the truth was that I was in unimaginable pain and I was bleeding heavily.
I didn’t realise I was dying.
But that day, I guess God didn’t forget my parents’ prayers over me; my father came to the campus. He said he had a bad dream and wanted to see me by all means. He was told I was in my room. My father had called me several times but I couldn’t pick my calls because the cramps I was having that day was like none ever before.
Because I was bleeding heavily, my idiotic self-thought it was my menses.
Anyway, my father decided to take me to the hospital. He said he had never seen me in such pain. He asked if I had used any pain relieving tablets, I told him I had taken more than the usual dosage but there was no easing of the pain.
So he packed me up and drove me to the hospital. Thankfully my father knew the matron, so I was spared the usual card collecting, and all the registration issues, I was taken immediately to see the doctor on call.
He took a look at me and asked me when the last time I saw my menses. I told him I was having one right now. He checked my eyes, checked my pulse and asked me to lie down. He took a needle and pierced my abdomen, blood filled it.
The doctor looked up at my father and said, “Your daughter is pregnant”
I said, “Ha, I am not…” even in that agonizing pain, I was saying it loudly and at that time believed I was right. “I am not pregnant, sir…”
I reasoned, you get pregnant after sex, abi? I had sex three months ago and it was just once but even that once, I wasn’t prepared to confess to it. Even if science says I was…I kept saying, “I am not pregnant, I didn’t have sex…”
I wanted to remain the little innocent in my parents’ eyes.
The doctor said to my father, “…she has what is called ectopic gestation…the egg is fertilized in the ovary, travels to the fallopian and grows in the womb but hers is stuck in the fallopian tube and it has ruptured, that is why she is in pain….we have to take her to surgery immediately to save her life.”
Omo, in that massive pain, where my brain was screaming, idiot, confess you had sex three months ago, let them help you” I heard myself saying, “no, I am not pregnant…I didn’t have sex…”
Lo ba tan!
I heard my father echoing my words, “…my daughter is not pregnant, my daughter is a virgin…”
Ah, in my mind, I was like, “Virgin for where?”
But I passed out from the intense pain and did not come to, till after the surgery.
Yes, a surgery was done and the tube was cut off.
Hummn
I woke up after the surgery to see my father crying by my bedside. I was told it was a successful one and had my father not taken me to the hospital that day, I would’ve died.
I saw my manly father, my hard man of a father crying by my bedside, telling the doctor to save me, that he didn’t want me to die…I wished I had died, it was better than facing my parents with the truth!
And let me say this, my parents wouldn’t have beaten me, they would have scolded me, of course so why did I lie? Because I wanted to be their little innocent daughter…yeah, I know I deceived them big time but you know, I wanted to preserve in their hearts, the image of their baby girl.
Anyway, as you can see, I lived to tell my story.
I could have died.
They would never have found out what killed me. As a Muslim, I would have been buried immediately and there would have been nothing like an autopsy. They would have, maybe, believed their “enemies” got them through their daughter.
After that incident, I closed my legs tight!
No boyfriend till I finished uni and got my masters, sef
I wanted to be back in my parents’ good books. They were shocked beyond words at what happened! You see, like that Chrisland girl, kids play dangerous games they have no idea what the consequences would be. If I had been smart, there were several course mates at that time using pills, I didn’t, I had no idea about contraceptive pills, condom nko? Zit!
My parents had a rude awakening and through no fault of theirs.
They didn’t see me coming at all; they were focused on my two elder sisters who were always going to parties and had chains of boyfriends, but you see those one never got pregnant , until they both got married.
So my dear, teenagers are smarter than we think and can deceive us parents. Don’t believe me, just look at what I did at 16!
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)