“To look after him in his old age” the girl continued despite her single audience’s disgust.
“And how old is this man?” the white woman asked.
‘Pa Osunde?, I don’t know, but he was in the same age grade as my daddy and daddy was forty three years when he died ten years ago.
The police woman shook her head in disbelief. ‘Forty years difference, old enough to be her grand father’. The woman was muttering to herself in disbelief.
“My mum tried to immediately send me off to one of her sisters living in a distant town in the north. Baba Osunde came to our compound and warned my uncles that if they allow me to run away that it will be them that will pay the debt we owe. Baba Osunde is a very powerful man in our village”.
There is an empty look on the girl’s face as she speaks now. She is talking like a machine on automatic.
“That night my uncles came to our house to take me to Osunde’s house. I was ready for them with a large knife. I told them that if anyone of them touched me, I will kill him and kill myself. They said that if I kill myself, then they will take Isoke my little sister in my place. I fought them, but they were too strong for me and my mother. They beat me so much that I fainted.
I woke up in Baba Osunde’s house. In a room with it’s door locked. I shouted and made a lot of noise until Mama Shade came. She is the first wife of Baba Osunde. She told me to be quiet, that all will be fine. I pushed pass her and tried to escape but some village ruffians caught me and dragged me back to the house. Then Baba Osunde came, he told me straight that if I escaped that he will kill my mother. I was afraid after that. I knew he could do it. I love my mum very much. She and my little sisters are all I have left now. So I stayed”.
“They did not allow me to go out nor mum to come and visit me. I was a prisoner in the place”.
At this stage the perplexed police lady had to interfere once, this time with caution.
‘Excuse me Osareme. I hope you don’t mind my asking you this question. But before all this, have you ever, I mean, ehm, slept with a man. You know — had sex?’.
“No no, that time I was still a virgin. But not for long” she announced with deep irony.
“One night, after I had stayed in that house for a week, Mama Shade brought me some food and some sort of drink. She told me to take the drink. I did not know what it was but I drank it. After that I did not know what was happening to me. After a short time I knew that someone was lying on top of me and that I was naked. I could not fight off the person. My whole body was as if I did not have bones”.
The girl took another deep breath.
“I woke up in the morning feeling pains, especially in my virginal area. Then I knew what had happened. I felt sad. But I did not know that that is the beginning of my problems”.
She took a long pull from her coke bottle.
“That morning, as I was sitting in the verandah feeling very sorry for my life, I over heard Baba Osunde telling someone about castration, I mean circumcision. I did not know what he was talking about as I have never seen any one circumcised before. My mother had told me that daddy did not believe that women should be circumcised. He had said that it is barbaric. So my sisters and I were not mutilated”.
“That night Mama Shade came and told me to come with her. I followed her with two of Baba Osunde’s boys following us. We went to the house of on old woman. She is a well known woman in our village. She attends to women who are pregnant and helps them to deliver their babies. She is our local traditional Midwife. When we got there she had consulted with Mama Shade in the next room. After this the old woman had given me a drink similar to that Mama Shade had given me the other night. I was surprised and quite afraid. What is going on? I looked at Mama Shade who told me to go on and drink it. She tried to assure me that everything is all right. Bearing in mind what happened to me last night after tasting her drink and her assurances, I tried to delay. I heard a threatening rumble from the shadows and it was one of the Baba Osunde’s thugs. My spirit fell and I drank. It was harsh. Soon I started feeling woozy and everything became double then started spinning round and round”…
