My father-in-law thinks he owns me!
My tale is a tale of the bizarre but it happened here in Lagos.
I grew up in Surulere. My mother and father didn’t live together; but that didn’t stop me from being a happy child. My mum and I lived with my grandma in one of those council houses.
I stopped being a happy child at age nine. That was when my grandma enrolled me in the lesson class that one of her church members ran for local children. Now this lesson class took place in the evenings, after school hours. We went to lessons at 4pm and finished at 6pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The lessons weren’t held in classrooms. No, we held it under a huge fruit tree with several rows of benches lined side by side to aid as seats and tables for us children.
My grandma was a member of celestial church, and the teacher she entrusted me to was also a member of her church. He was in his late 20s or early thirties at that time when he began to abuse me.
I swear by everything dear to me, this man that I called Uncle, would finger me right in front of my classmates! he would be wearing his sutana, which, come to think of it now, he must have been naked underneath it!
He would position himself on the bench serving as table for me and three or four other pupils and his hand would be perpetually under my dress. Everyone could see it! It wasn’t hidden!
I never cried, I never cringed, I just smiled
Sometimes I would just keep chewing on my pencil until I had chewed everything up…mostly from fright which I never let anyone see.
Here’s the thing for me.
I never reported to my grandma or my mother. I was afraid. I was afraid they would beat me. I wasn’t even sure if what the teacher was doing to me was wrong…it had to be because he never flogged me the way he flogged the others. He never scolded me the way he did others, in fact, I was favoured. If he sent a pupil on an errand to buy roasted corn or boli, he would cut a piece and give me to eat. He gave me pencils when I had chewed off mine and never hit me when I got the answers wrong.
Did I feel special?
I was a child!
So, that child in me felt, I shouldn’t tell my grandma that the teacher’s hand was always under my dress. In fact, at some point, he told me never to wear pants to lesson and I never did!
I feared the teacher who flogged the other but never touched me beyond his hands in my vagina. I feared if I reported at home, it would be my fault he did this to me.
Looking back now, I wonder why no adult saw him doing what he was doing to me. Someone must have seen him. There were old men, old women who walked around the lesson area that period…they didn’t see him quickly pull his hand from under my dress?
I wonder why none of my lesson mates reported to their parents and they came to harass him for molesting a minor. Was it because I wasn’t their child?
Why didn’t anyone, any parent tell my mother or grandma to remove me from the teacher’s molestations?
I have no answers but life was going to get even worse for me.
I was failing at school.
I must have spent like two years of that fingering and yes…when I turned 10 years or 11years old, not quite sure now, this man actually penetrated me a number of times. in his house under the guise of me attending lessons!
I couldn’t tell anyone and so i began to day dream about me running away from home. My day dreaming had consequences. I didn’t pay attention to my class or anything around me.
You see?
My grandma and mother couldn’t understand how I was doing well at the lesson but badly at school. I pleaded with my mother to let me go live with my father. She finally agreed and that’s how I escaped the teacher.
It took a while but I began to improve at school…I wasn’t super brilliant but I wasn’t super dull, either. I was just doing averagely well and my father was happy with me. I often had bad dreams about the teacher but after some years, it began to fade. I went to the polytechnic in the state and came out with and HND Certificate after five years. Two years of OND, one year of IT, then two years of HND. I made it!
I met my boyfriend at the NYSC camp. He was from a Muslim home. Meanwhile before then, anytime I saw a man in a celestial gown, I would almost pass out from fear. That was what the teacher always wore to teach us way back in our lesson years. Same sutana gown he wore to sexually molest me for years that nobody saw fit to stop him from doing.
But I met someone. I met Lai. Lai, my boyfriend and I courted for a few years before we decide to get married. Though my father didn’t want me to marry a Muslim but the teacher had scared me off Christianity.
Anyway, we had the Nikkai and all would have been well if the teacher hadn’t turned up. He happened to be Lai’s estranged father!
Ok, roll back a bit.
Lai had always told me he had no father but an uncle who lived in Lagos. When we did our Nikkai, this “uncle” couldn’t come because he was sick. So basically, Lai’s grandpa and aunties in Ede wedded us. They stood in for him.
We had been married for a few years when the so-called uncle. He turned out to be his father. And the reason he came was because Lai’s grandpa died, so he came for a funeral, not even because he wanted to see us.
So I met the teacher again at the family house.
He had aged but not too much. He recognize me. How could he not? Even though I was almost 12 or 13 when I finally left Surulere, I too never forgot his face!
When my husband asked me to go and kneel down to greet him, I was just shaking like a leaf…but the teacher acted like he didn’t even remember me. He kept staring at me.
I knelt down and greeted him and he asked me what my name was, I told him…he pretended he didn’t remember. To be honest, I wanted nothing to do with him. He was a nightmare I was trying to forget.
But he had something else in mind as I was to find out.
We had the funeral party and the rest of the family went back to their lives but teacher didn’t go back to Lagos. He came to our house when he knew my husband was out and began to ask why I left Lagos without informing him.
I was speechless.
This man abused me as a child! And he still had the guts to question me right now?
I told him I remembered what he did to me and that I was going to report him to my husband. He asked me how could I be sure it was him who did what to me. He said children lied a lot.
So if he didn’t do anything to me, what was he doing in my house?
I have not reported to my husband…I know my husband is a weak man. All he would be asking for is peace. He had been estranged from his father and he really wanted to connect with him, again.
After some time, I had to tell Lai his father was a teacher who abused me.
Lai didn’t want the whole town to know about our secret…I don’t either but what do I do with a weak husband and a father-in-law who keeps showing up at our house?
I don’t want to leave my husband and his father won’t leave me alone!
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)