curled from The Little Pieces of Trauma
‘A lion entered the farmland of our village. It started to kill goats and sheep and other animals. So the hunters of our village gathered to go and kill it. My father was the head of the hunters. They did not know where the lion was so it surprised and attacked them first. They killed the lion, but it wounded my father very much. He died. I was only four years old then’.
She is crying.
‘It is alright, it’s alright my friend. You can rest now. We will continue tomorrow’.
It is evening time and they are in Anja’s office.
Osareme has removed the wig and heavy make up. Her true age is now fully revealed. She is really a teenager and pretty one too.
She is sitting on the visitor’s side of the office table. Anja is sitting on her official seat.
“How do you feel today?” She asked Osareme.
‘Fine ma’.
“Hope you slept well, they treated you good?” At her affirmative reply the lady nodded. She pulled back her chair and stands up.
“Lets have a coke as we talk. You want one don’t you?” She looked at Osareme who nodded. She is not so worked up today but not too relaxed either.
The lady returns with two cans of coke, offers one to Osareme and sits down carrying the other. She flicks it open, takes a sip and nods her satisfaction. Then she smiles.
“Okay, lets continue from where we stopped yesterday. You were telling me about your father”.
Osareme runs a hand across her face, closing her eyes for a moment as she takes a deep breath. Then she started speaking.
“My mother had four children. My older brother John, myself, followed by Isoke and then Mabel the baby. Johnny was the only boy and he was two years older than me and I am two years older than Iso”.
She takes a sip of her coke and continued.
‘My father was a very rich man in our village because he had a lot of land. When my father died his best friend in the village gave my mother money to buy many things to help her bury my father and to send us to school. According to my mother that was my father’s greatest wish. My mother promised to pay the man back when she sells some of our father’s land. But after my father’s burial things became difficult for us, as my mother had to mourn her husband for one year. The whole village just abandoned us, forgetting that my father died because of them.
Johnny started going to the forest to gather wild fruits and hunt small animals and sell them in the market. But mum will not allow him to do that. However, when my mother tried to sell our father’s land, my father’s brothers gathered and harassed her terribly. They told her that a woman could not sell land in our place, as a woman is not even allowed to own land. It is only a man that can do that. It is only Johnny that can sell land in our family. But they now say that he is still a boy. It is when he is up to eighteen years of age that he can be a man, inherit, own and sell land”.
The policewoman listened with rapt attention, nodding her head intermittently in response to the captivating story.
“As we grow up, Johnny and my uncle always quarreled. Johnny threatened that he will show them all that he is the son of our father when he becomes a man. He said that he will revenge on them for the way they have treated us shabbily since our father died”.
“One day one of our uncles told Johnny that he can only do something if he ever grows to be a man.
It was two years ago that it happened”.
The police lady looked at her questioningly without saying any word.
Osareme continued, “Johnny had quarreled with one of our cousins that evening for throwing rubbish into our backyard. After that Johnny had left for the river. He never came from that river.
By midnight my mother had raised an alarm. A search for Johnny started. It was in the morning that they saw his body in the river. Johnny had died in the river. Johnny, who swims like a fish”.
The girl sighed and shook her head. Her eyes had gone red.
“Johnny was tough, and a good brother to us and a wonderful son to our mother. The cry that my mother cried that day, I pray to God that no other woman should cry like that. In my very eyes, my poor dear mother became an old woman in one day”.
The girl shook her head strongly, obviously trying very hard not to cry again, though her voice was starting to crack and shiver.
She took another deep breath, waited a couple of minutes then took a sip of her Coca-Cola. The older woman did not interrupt.
“With Johnny gone, we did not now have a man in our family. No one can now sell the land. In fact six weeks after Johnny died my uncles took the large pieces of our land. They claimed that those ones, by tradition a woman cannot farm on”.
“I was in Class Two when Johnny died, I had to leave school. Mother took me to her sister in another village who was teaching young girls hair dressing and how to sew cloth”.
“My best friend was Simbiath. We used to go to school together. When I stopped going to school, we still go to the school together as the school is on the way to my auntie’s village where I go to learn hair dressing and sewing. Sometimes I stop at the school and watch them learning through the window. When Simbi comes home from school, she brings her Home Works and we do them together. She teaches me what they were taught in the school that day. Mum used to say that I was getting second hand Secondary School education”.
The girl laughed. Her expression reflecting glowing nostalgia of happy memories.
Her moment of euphoria was short-lived, for soon again she sighed and shook her head. A habit she seemed to have developed over time to fight impending moments of sadness.
“When Johnny died, everything changed. Mum simply stopped caring. It was early this year, as I became fourteen years old that Baba Osunde, my father’s old friend came to our house to ask for his money of ten years ago. He said that the money has attracted twenty times ten, that is Two Hundred percent interest. The old man said that if my mother cannot pay then he will take me as his wife for his money”.
Whaaat!! The police woman could not hold back her shock …
The story of the Stranded Child continues next week
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