I see him everyday as I walk home from work. I see him at the front of his Barber’s shop, always grinning, staring at me. Perhaps wondering if I still remember what he did to me, perhaps wanting to do more. His face is like a bad memory that isn’t quite straight forward. Like an assortment of all the terror I had experienced. So when I see him, I gag. I try to place where exactly it hurts. It hurts, it hurts everywhere.
I was not quite five. My family was trying to move to a better house so they shipped my siblings and I to our uncle’s house. The air in that house was not enough for us. Like the times we were allowed to watch TV and play with our toys, it was too little. We were kept in a room like prisoners and never allowed to the sitting room. It was an unfamiliar feeling for children used to playing around the house, we played around the house, but we adjusted. We were good children.
Our uncle was an unmarried man who lived by himself with another family relation, Funsho. Funsho was like a fixture in the house, unlike my uncle who was always out on business. The first time I saw him all I knew was that I didn’t like this uncle who took so much time curling his hair and didn’t know how to tighten his trousers well enough so it won’t fall to his butt. Then when he warned us never to leave our room. I disliked him for much more.
Five days after, while I was in a heated argument with my elder sister on something I can’t quite remember, he called me out. He allowed me three hours of uninterrupted movie watching. I felt like a traitor because my siblings were locked up In their rooms while I was watching “karishika”. The guilt disappeared mid way into the scary movie. When he threw me back into the prison , I did my penance by telling my inmates, in the most exaggerated way I could, the movie’s storyline.
The next day I waited, he didn’t come for me. The day after he did. This time around the water pump was bad so I followed him to fetch water. I was excited. When we had finished filling all the cans with water, it was time for me to be cast away again, but this time he took me to his room. I liked the feel of his blue rug under my feet. He asked me to sit beside him, I did. Then he lay down on the bed and put my hands on his p*nis. He said “play with it”. I didn’t know what a p*nis was. I knew it was awkward. I was a child that who was used to awkward. I was a child that was dumped and imprisoned in her uncle’s house with no explanation as to why my mother hardly visited us.
So I rubbed it. I pressed it down and massaged it like one would massage a back. Then he assisted my hands in raising it and stoking it up and down. “Are you enjoying it”, he asked. I laughed. My laughter was what struck me the most. “Kiss it” he said… years after I wonder about the laughter. I would say if I could laugh then, why do I still think of it now and feel like I was tortured. As though with every stroke something that was loose inside me tighten.
The next day my mum came for us. I hated to think that he did same thing to my sisters. I want to ask them but I couldn’t. How do I ask it? It’s been almost Twenty years. It’s not been my worst experience with the opposite sex. But it was the one that spiralled the rest. It turned abnormal to normal . After that experience, I learnt to allow. To allow them do to my body what they pleased. I learnt to allow the hands and tongues and words that cut sharper than the touches.

Read more: https://9jalife.com.ng/molested-five-years-old-girl-hurts-everywhere/

#CC Seun

Na wa o. The federal government must look into these sort of cases. This is becoming far too common in Naija now.

Bolowolowo:
Na wa o. The federal government must look into these sort of cases. This is becoming far too common in Naija now.

Through policy that prevent and protect the girl child