I’ve heard stories about fathers having sex with their daughters. Some even impregnating them, never in my life did I think it’ll happen to me. It’s a taboo!
My own daughter, having a child for her father! This kind 9f thing 8snt even whispered not to talk of it being discussed. So I really don’t know what kind of talk you’ve come to have with me today. It’s a smelly, stinky kind of talk and I’m not at home to hear it.
Where do I start from?
How do I explain that what my husband did to my child is against the earth and the heavens have already cursed him? The child my daughter is carrying is a taboo, one that will bring ill luck to anyone who keeps it?
I moved out of my matrimonial home because things were hard for my husband and he always came home drunk. I became his punching bag to relieve his frustrations.
See, I tried to stay for my children’s sake. There are four of them. Three girls and one boy. But with a man who spent all the money he earned buying kaikai and coming home drunk and beating me on top of it. I would not agree to sleep with him. He wasn’t bringing money for upkeep, he wants to sleep with me? How will that ever work? If I get pregnant again, who’ll take care of the child?
I walked out of the marriage
So I spoke to my legs one day. I carried my load and ran away with my youngest daughter who was just 3 years old then.
I told my daughter, this one that is now pregnant to take care of her younger siblings, that I would come to check on them. She was 14, going to 15.
I knew their useless father would hardly care for them but I never in my wildest dream ever imagined he would start sleeping with his own child!
Taboo!
I have this small phone I left with my daughter so I could communicate with her and the rest of my children.
I would struggle to buy and sell. Run around, hustle and buy food stuff for them because I knew their father would not do it.
And in all the 1 and half years I left, my daughter didn’t tell me her father had been molesting her or any such thing.
I would have poisoned him, I swear!
How can a father have erection for his own child?
She didn’t say anything.
When I go to visit them, maybe at school or home before their father comes, not once did she say, “Ma’ami, Ba’ami has been doing this and this.” No.
If she had even said, he touched me here or he did this, I swear, that man would have been dead.
But he’s their father, if I was afraid of anything for my children, should fearing their father will begin to have sex with them, be one of them?
The child he carried from when she was a baby…ha, ha, ha!
I don’t know know about you but where I come from, its a taboo!
You can never prosper after this kind of thing.
He crippled me with what he did to us
I was struggling out there for these children. She’s my firstborn, I know it’s not her fault that she’s in this condition but why didn’t she confide in me?
Why didn’t she tell me this is what is going on?
Whenever I visited them, I would ask about their welfare. This one needs new shoes, and that one needs a bag. The other one isn’t doing well at school. I tried to meet their needs. Believe me, I tried. I tried. Is this my reward for trying?
The useless man has been arrested but where does that leave me with a pregnancy we can’t even announce?
How do I start… What kind of tribulation is this?
Where did they send me that I met a taboo like this man I called husband for more than 14 years?
He is the devil itself.
He got your own child pregnant and even though he is in jail enjoying it.
He’s enjoying in jail because in jail he will eat and sleep without worrying about what will happen to his child and grandchild. He won’t worry if they eat or sleep or what people will say about them because he is hiding in jail!
But we are outside; we bear the disgrace of his actions.
That’s the dilemma I am in right now.
It is very painful because my daughter could have prevented this if she had told me. just discuss the thing with me, small, I would have killed her father and we won’t even be discussing this matter we are talking about right now!
And I hid nothing from my children. I let them know how hard things are for me out there and why they must behave themselves.
I tried to be a good woman
They must never join bad gangs and they must never let any boy fool them to give them an unwanted pregnancy. I told them!
I hope she delivers the baby well…or what else do you want me to say?
I have no choice, I guess…what will I do? Throw my grandchild, who will also be my step-child, away?
When I think about it, I stay awake all night!
Maybe I should have stayed and get beaten by my husband because this pregnancy will beat me for the rest of my life!
(Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)