Growing up, I used to love tales by moonlight. Children of the 70s and 80s can relate to this. I loved stories about the cunning tortoise and how often his tricks had a way of catching up with him…in a bad way.
So, today is a day for storytelling. In my story, there’s the ubiquitous tortoise because no folktale is complete without the sly and cunning tortoise. Like most folktales, this one also has a lesson, a moral, something folks ought to learn from.
So, today is a day for storytelling. In my story, there’s the ubiquitous tortoise because no folktale is complete without the sly and cunning tortoise. Like most folktales, this one also has a lesson, a moral, something folks ought to learn from.
Me: Once upon a time…
You: Time, time!
Me: In a land not too far off from here, there lived a family; a father, mother and their five daughters. The father was a hunter, a man with a strong nose for sniffing danger. One day, the father brought home to his girls, a nephew. Now this nephew had lost his own father, who was the hunter’s elder brother. The nephew came in raggedly, a runt with plenty of ambition. The hunter and his family welcomed the nephew; they made him their first son, since he was much older than the hunter’s five daughters and in any case, the hunter had no son of his own. The nephew ate the same food as they did and because he was a male child, he presided over the affairs of his younger female cousins and so they lived in peace. Or so it seemed.
You: Aha! The hunter’s wife became jealous of the nephew?
Me: No. This isn’t one of those folk tales where you have a wicked step mother or wicked aunty thwarting every plan. No. The hunter’s wife was a good woman; she was even more gracious and accepting of the nephew than the hunter himself. She treated the nephew like the son she never had. Perhaps that was why the gods smiled at her one day. They opened her womb and she beheld a son. One she could truly call hers.
You: Now, she will begin to hate the nephew.
Me: No way, she treated him like he was her first son; she left him in charge of her children and would not listen to any word said against him, even by her own daughters. As far as the hunter’s wife was concerned, the nephew could do no wrong.
However, it was the second daughter of the hunter who began to notice all the wrong the nephew was doing behind the hunter and his wife!
You: Aha! There must be a twist to this story.
Me: Yes, there’s always a twist to every story. The nephew and the first daughter never saw eye to eye. The daughter was thought to be stubborn and heady and her parents didn’t quite know what to do with her as she was always getting into trouble with the nephew and many times, he beat her up, even with her parents’ consent.
Like many homes back then, the hunter’s wife was careful not to wrong the nephew, he was still after all, an in-law. She didn’t want the hunter to think she was taking sides with her children against the nephew, so she treaded carefully and instead, warned her daughters to avoid getting into trouble with the nephew.
You: Huummn.
Me: To make matters worse, this daughter was also not particularly as academically inclined as the rest of her siblings, so the nephew was mandated by the parents to teach her lessons on subjects she was failing at, since at that time, he was studying for his A-levels.
What the hunter and his wife did not know, what nobody could open up to tell them, was that the nephew had over the years been raping the daughter right under their very noses!
You: (Gasp) How!
Me: Na so dem dey ask persin!
Me: Several times, under the pretext of teaching her, he sexually molested her and silenced her with threats of more beatings if she talked!
You: But she should have talked!
Me: Remember, the hunter and his wife would never have believed, more so this happened when news about paedophiles and child rapists weren’t common, when children feared their parents wrath and older people were never made to account for whatever wrong they did to the younger ones.
You: Ohhh! So what happened?
Me: When the daughter confided in a few friends, all of them told her to keep quiet.
‘It’s a shameful thing’, they told her.
‘It’s your fault he continued for so long’, one accused her.
‘No man will marry you if they find you’ve been ‘used’’, another told her.
So she kept it hidden. She kept silent and endured her private ‘shame.’
But should she be ashamed of being sexually abused as a child?
You: No!
Me: Hummn. Eventually, the degenerate crimes came out, the nephew practically screwed himself, like the tortoise in many stories, he led the way to his own downfall.
You: (Excited) Yes!
Me: He literally dug his own grave and then forgot the hole!
You: He fell into his own trap!
Me: Like a hole in one!
You: Yay! Was he caught!
Me: He was caught in his own web of deceit. The hunter and his wife found out from the second daughter the years of abuse her sister had suffered. They reported him and their parents believed them! They sent the nephew away, away from their daughters and their lives.
You: At last! But he has done so much damage on the daughter.
Me: Yes and he is cursed! The hunter learned a great lesson, sometimes your senses can fail you. He didn’t see the danger up close; even his wife learned too, never shush your children up; let your children know they can talk to you and that you have their backs. By the way, this is a true story!!