My name is Terry Gobanga and this is my story.
It was going to be a very big wedding. I was a pastor, so all our church members were coming, as well as all our relatives. My fiance, Harry, and I were very excited – we were getting married in All Saints Cathedral in Nairobi and I had rented a beautiful dress.
But the night before the wedding I realised that I had some of Harry’s clothes, including his cravat. He couldn’t show up without a tie, so a friend who had stayed the night offered to take it to him first thing in the morning. We got up at dawn and I walked her to the bus station.

As I was making my way back home, I walked past a guy sitting on the bonnet of a car – suddenly he grabbed me from behind and dumped me in the back seat. There were two more men inside, and they drove off. It all happened in a fraction of a second.
A piece of cloth was stuffed in my mouth. I was kicking and hitting out and trying to scream. When I managed to push the gag out, I screamed: “It’s my wedding day!” That was when I got the first blow.
The men took turns to rape me. I felt sure I was going to die, but I was still fighting for my life, so when one of the men took the gag out of my mouth I bit his manhood. He screamed in pain and one of them stabbed me in the stomach. Then they opened the door and threw me out of the moving car.
I was miles from home, outside Nairobi. More than six hours had passed since I had been abducted.
A child saw me being thrown out and called her grandmother. People came running. When the police came they tried to get a pulse, but no-one could. Thinking I was dead, they wrapped me in a blanket and started to take me to the mortuary. But on the way there, I choked on the blanket and coughed. The policeman said: “She’s alive?” And he turned the car around and drove me to the biggest government hospital in Kenya.
I arrived in great shock, murmuring incoherently. I was half-naked and covered in blood. Something must have alerted the matron, because she guessed I was a bride. “Let’s go around the churches to see if they’re missing a bride,” she told the nurses.

By coincidence, the first church they called at was All Saints Cathedral. “Are you missing a bride?” the nurse asked. The minister said: “Yes, there was a wedding at 10 o’clock and she didn’t come.”
When I didn’t show up to the church, my parents were panicking. People were sent out to search for me. Rumours flew.
After a few hours, they had to take down the decorations to make room for the next ceremony. Harry had been put in the vestry to wait.
When they heard where I was, my parents came to the hospital with the whole entourage. Harry was actually carrying my wedding gown. But the media had also got wind of the story so there were reporters too. I was moved to another hospital where I’d have more privacy. That was where the doctors stitched me up and gave me some devastating news: “The stab wound went deep into your womb, so you won’t be able to carry any children.”

Harry kept saying he still wanted to marry me. “I want to take care of her and make sure she comes back to good health in my arms, in our house,” he said. Truth be told, I wasn’t in a position to say Yes or No because my mind was so jammed with the faces of the three men, and with everything that had happened.
A few days later, when I was less sedated, I was able to look him in the eye. I kept saying sorry. I felt like I had let him down. Some people said it was my own fault for leaving the house in the morning. It was really hurtful, but my family and Harry supported me.
The police never caught the rapists. I went to line-up after line-up but I didn’t recognise any of the men, and it hurt me each time I went. In the end I went back to the police station and said: “You know what, I’m done. I just want to leave it.”
Three months after the attack I was told I was HIV-negative and got really excited, but they told me I had to wait three more months to be sure. Still, Harry and I began to plan our second wedding.
Although I had been very angry at the press intrusion, somebody read my story and asked to meet me. Her name was Vip Ogolla, and she was also a rape survivor. We spoke, and she told me she and her friends wanted to give me a free wedding. “Go wild, have whatever you want,” she said.

I was ecstatic. I went for a different type of cake, much more expensive. Instead of a rented gown, now I could have one that was totally mine.
In July 2005, seven months after our first planned wedding, Harry and I got married and went on a honeymoon.
Twenty-nine days later, we were at home on a very cold night. Harry lit a charcoal burner and took it to the bedroom. After dinner, he removed it because the room was really warm. I got under the covers as he locked up the house. When he came to bed he said he was feeling dizzy, but we thought nothing of it.

It was so cold we couldn’t sleep, so I suggested getting another duvet. But Harry said he couldn’t get it as he didn’t have enough strength. Strangely, I couldn’t stand up either. We realised something was very wrong. He passed out. I passed out. I remember coming to. I would call him. At times he would respond, at other times he wouldn’t. I pushed myself out of bed and threw up, which gave me some strength. I started crawling to the phone. I called my neighbour and said: “Something is wrong, Harry is not responding.”
She came over immediately but it took me ages to crawl to the front door to let her in as I kept passing out. I saw an avalanche of people coming in, screaming. And I passed out again.
I woke up in hospital and asked where my husband was. The doctor looked at me and said: “I’m sorry, your husband did not make it.”
I couldn’t believe it.
Going back to church for the funeral was terrible. Just a month earlier I had been there in my white dress, with Harry standing at the front looking handsome in his suit. Now, I was in black and he was being wheeled in, in a casket.
People thought I was cursed and held back their children from me. At one point, I actually believed it myself. Others accused me of killing my husband. That really got me down.
The postmortem showed what really happened: as the carbon monoxide filled his system, he started choking and suffocated.

I had a terrible breakdown. I felt let down by God, I felt let down by everybody. I crashed.
One day I was sitting on the balcony looking at the birds chirping away and I said: “God, how can you take care of the birds and not me?” In that instant I remembered there are 24 hours a day – sitting in depression with your curtains closed, no one is going to give you back those 24 hours. That was a tough reality.
I told everybody I would never ever get married again. God took my husband, and the thought of ever going through such a loss again was too much. The pain is so intense, you feel it in your nails.

But there was one man – Tonny Gobanga – who kept visiting. He would encourage me to talk about my husband and think about the good times. One time he didn’t call for three days and I was so angry. That’s when it hit me that I had fallen for him.
Tonny proposed marriage but I told him to buy a magazine, read my story and tell me if he still loved me. He came back and said he still wanted to marry me.But I said: “Listen, there’s another thing – I can’t have children, so I cannot get married to you.”
“Children are a gift from God,” he said. “If we get them, Amen. If not, I will have more time to love you.” I thought: “Wow, what a line!” So I said Yes.
Tonny went home to tell his parents, who were very excited, until they heard my story. “You can’t marry her – she is cursed,” they said. My father-in-law refused to attend the wedding, but we went ahead anyway.
It was three years after my first wedding, and I was very scared. When we were exchanging vows, I thought: “Here I am again Father, please don’t let him die.”

A year into our marriage, I felt unwell and went to the doctor – and to my great surprise he told me that I was pregnant.
As the months progressed I was put on total bed rest, because of the stab wound to my womb. But all went well, and we had a baby girl who we called Tehille. Four years later, we had another baby girl named Towdah.
Today, I am the best of friends with my father-in-law. I wrote a book, Crawling out of Darkness, about my ordeal, to give people hope of rising again. I also started an organisation called Kara Olmurani. We work with rape survivors, as I call them – not rape victims. We offer counselling and support. We are looking to start a halfway house for them where they can come and find their footing before going back to face the world.

I have forgiven my attackers. It wasn’t easy. My faith also encourages me to forgive and not repay evil with evil but with good.
The most important thing is to mourn. Go through every step of it. Get upset until you are willing to do something about your situation. You have to keep moving, crawl if you have to. But move towards your destiny because it’s waiting, and you have to go and get it.
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My name is Gabourey Sidibe and I’ve spent a large part of my youth being anxious. I was mocked because I’m part African [my father is from Senegal] and because I was overweight. There were times I felt so lost, like I would never find my true calling.

I struggled to get work and I had to take a job as a phone intimacy operator to survive. The company would only hire me if I could make my voice sound 100 percent white because that’s who the men on the phone wanted to talk to. It was hilariously ironic though because the company was run by 95% plus sized black women who could make their voice sound white over the phone. It was strange to go from being undesirable in reality to “I love you, I’ll call you everyday” when I clocked in at work.

The joke was on these men because we were all plus sized and normally they would not be into us except it was a fetish or something, yet look how amazingly dope and fierce and smart and genius we are to fool them into thinking we were white.

I struggled with depression as a teenager and people said I was too sensitive. My mother got married to my father to give him a green card, but after they got married he took her to Africa to meet his family and she fell in love with him. And I guess he fell in love with her too…but he had a whole other secret family in Senegal and it was normal for him, because his father had several wives.

It must have been really, really hard for this African man with African values and an African upbringing to go to work as a cab driver for 10-14 hours everyday and come home to American children. It didn’t work. So, my parents got divorced. It was dumb of my family to think that my father would be different because that was what he was obviously used to, that was the lifestyle for him. But I guess he really wanted to keep his two wives, and it might have worked if my mom was Senegalese…but she wasn’t. We were the foreigners in his life, so we had to go.

I hurt so bad when my parent’s marriage dissolved. I started having panic attacks. I would cry whenever someone said anything mean to me which was often. People would say to me “You’re just being a baby. You’re too sensitive. You take things to heart too much.” I was actually having a medical condition, I was dealing with depression and anxiety and nobody noticed.

When I auditioned for the role in Precious, I just thought, ‘I want my life to start, please, let it start.’ I didn’t believe it when I got the callback for the role. I just couldn’t believe it. My performance in that role earned me an Academy Award nomination. Can you imagine that? My first role, and I got nominated! Since then, there’s been no stopping me. I’ve worked on a number of Tv series, Empire being one of my favourites.

I lost a lot of weight and I wrote a memoire which just got published. There’s no stopping me now. No sir.

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Excerpts from Jumoke Adenowo’s narratives on Kemi Adetiba’s ‘King Woman’

My mum was my first role model. It took me a while actually to realize she was my first mentor. She didn’t tell me what a woman could do. She just did it and I saw it. I mean, she was all over. She traveled all over the world more than my dad did. My mum traveled a lot but I didn’t feel it. Because I remember she was there at 3:30 for lunch and will be there at dinner.

I think I lost a bit of my childhood there because I was her confidant and the things I had to cope with. I had to bear the burden of stuffs like her husband’s infidelity. That was a bit much. My dad and I are still close. I wasn’t happy with the choices he made as a husband but he wasn’t my husband. It’s an era of men who tried to have a monogamy but failed at it. They thought the tried enough. But they didn’t realize if you make a vow, you really should keep at it.

We were loyal people. Good people. So I was used to good relationships, intellectual people. Intellectual discuss. I didn’t know young people get up to things. I thought everyone was like me and I worked with that assumption for a long time. So it was a serious wake up realizing life was not the way I grew up.
My husband was my first real boyfriend. Others asked me but I wasn’t in love with them though I had ones I liked. I left university, started my business and met my husband through friends.

I knew he was the man God wanted me to marry even before meeting him. I didn’t see his picture or anything but I had a flash of him once my friend mentioned his name. But of course I didn’t show him I knew he was going to be my husband. Even when he proposed, I didn’t say yes. It amazes me these days when you see young people shouting yes, yes, yes. What is wrong with you people? It was not like that for me. I gave him a few days to stew. It was very important for me because I knew I can not marry an unfaithful man.

A man is a hunter. So you have to keep him hunting. Even in marriage, don’t be predictable. Don’t be boring. You have a purpose in your life that is beyond your husband because once that man becomes the centre of your gravity, you are finished.
You need to be a Queen mother. To be a submissive woman, first be powerful, you need to have enough power to be dangerous. If your husband asks you to stay home and not travel, you accept to stay home not because you can’t afford to travel but because you’re submissive. However,if the only reason you sit down is because you can’t afford to travel, then you’re just obeying, you’re not submissive…A traditional King will have concubines but the Queen is the one who has a voice. She ceased to become a woman. But she’s a mind and a soul.
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My dad died when I was two. I don’t remember him at all but I have pictures. My mum married my step father when I was 5, so he was the father I knew. My life was a privileged one, I grew up with drivers and cooks and absent parents. It was just me and maybe my cousins sometimes. This meant I could do anything I wanted.

At the age of 17, I started attending private parties. I haven’t lived in Lagos but in Abuja, this was a regular thing amongst rich kids. We grew up too soon and mostly entertained ourselves but at 17, I, like every over exposed teenager was already bored and needed a new way to keep ourselves occupied. A friend’s brother introduced us to this private parties where everything was available from all types of drugs to exotic alcohol. It was fun.

One day, as I got back home from the party, I tried to sneak in through the kitchen, I saw my step-dad sniffing perfectly laid cocaine. Of course I knew what it was, I had seen it many times at the party. He didn’t panic, he just looked through me as I walked away to my room. I didn’t know what to think, I didn’t know if i should tell my mum what I saw, So I slept off.

I still don’t know what time it was but I woke up to my him slightly tapping my feet. I was immediately alert and he told me to “relax”. “Don’t tell your mum what you saw in the kitchen, I’ll give you some if you promise to keep quiet” He opened his hand to show me a small sachet almost filled with white powder. Did I want some? I wasn’t sure but if my dad was offering cocaine to me, it couldn’t be as bad as people said. So I took it from him. He said, “go ahead, try it.” So I put some on my index finger and sniffed it like I’ve seen people at the party do. I had seen people at the club rub some on their teeth too, and in the movies as well, so I did the same thing. It didn’t taste nice and my mouth and the back of my throat went numb. I waited a while but I didn’t feel any high as with alcohol.

My step dad asked me to try it again, so I repeated the routine. He did the same and after a while, he started kissing me. It didn’t feel right but my muscles had become really relaxed and I remember he asked me “are you a virgin?”. I said “No, I’m not”. We had sex, I was numb but I knew what was happening. That first night, he chanted “I love you. What we’re doing is special, every father does it to the daughter they care about. what we’re doing is special. If you tell anyone, you will die”. This continued for 4 years, (even when I knew I wasn’t going to die if I said anything to anyone), every night when I was in Nigeria and every time he visited me in school abroad. I used cocaine with him and without him. I became an addict, I didn’t care. I felt like filth and the only way to not think was to keep using.

Nothing significant happened, I just woke up one day and knew I had to change my life. So I went to my aunt (who was my guardian abroad) and told her everything. The next day, she put me in a rehab and visited me everyday but all I wanted was my mum. I spent three months in rehab and sent my mother a mail every day without getting a response from her. My aunt told me she said she could never forgive me. But she was still with my step dad, that really confused me. How can she forgive him but not me?

It’s been over 5 years I got out of Rehab, I’m doing great at my job with means to do drugs if I wanted but I’m not going back there. I am super proud of myself. my mother has still not spoken to me. My step father sent me two emails threatening me which I forwarded to my mum. Still, silence from her end. It’s okay, life goes on, one thing I know for sure, I’ll do better with my child.

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My Fiance’s Younger Brother Wants Me To Greet Him First…But Why Should I?

Yesterday evening, a friend of my fiance whom I shall refer to as O, told me he would like to speak with me on a certain issue. I was deeply curious. Although we are both on good terms, our conversations revolve round how to download free movies or which network currently has the cheapest data plan. So of course, permit my curiousity. O began a long sermon on how he had the best interests of my fiancé and I at heart and wanted desperately for us to succeed in our chosen endeavor. I thanked him. He continued saying that so far we have made him and his ancestors proud by how well we have both been conducting ourselves with maturity and purpose. I thanked him once again. Then he got to the crux of the matter. He said that he heard that I had an altercation with my fiancé’s younger brother over who should greet whom first. He looked like he had more to say on his mind, but at this point in the conversation he felt he should proceed only with a denial from me.. I smiled.

What had happened was simple. I was older than this brother by several significant years. I’d noticed after several occasions that the fellow never greeted me. He would walk right into a room where I was seated and plant himself comfortably in a chair without so much as a “Hi.” After greeting him once or twice, I made excuses for him. ‘I have a small stature, he probably thinks he is older.’ ‘ He wasn’t in a good mood.’ ‘ He was hungry.’ Etc…The situation however persisted so I decided to woman up and handle it. I called bobo’s attention to it and he called him out immediately.

Now this brother’s defense stupefied me. He said that “1, I was a woman and as such should greet him first out of respect. 2, I should have come to tell him myself instead of reporting to my bae.” At this statement, I realized his IQ was below par, so I decided never to bother my pretty head over that again. At this point in my narration, I expected to hear a firm approval of my behaviour from O who had been listening carefully. I was to be disappointed.

O clapped back stating that in his culture [Yoruba] the iyawo was expected to treat everyone from domestic fowl to ancient deity with deep respect, curtseying and genuflecting even in her sleep and woe onto her if the husband’s family greets her first. What a wawu! This would be the first I would hear of such a ridiculous culture. So, there is a problem if both men and women need respect?

It has become a very popular saying by family coaches, marriage counsellors and religious leaders. Every marriage seminar, handbook, relationship video or whatnot lists the number one rule as Respect your man. That’s all fine and good, I have no problems with that. However, I have come to discover that the basis for a large hunk of our ‘must-do’ rules in the area of relationships have hidden roots in our culture.

That’s right. No matter how enlightened we claim to have gotten, we seem unable to escape that chain round our neck, that brass clanging band round our waist that we have termed ‘culture’. Culture in its essence is not entirely bad, but neither is it entirely good. History has shown us that culture + relationships are a toxic cocktail for womenfolk as a large number of cultural do’s and don’ts have been oppressive to us. For instance, the cultural do of ‘Do everything to make your marriage work as a woman’ not only excuses the onus from the man but effectively ties the woman down in abusive situations.

Now, culture is defined as a ‘way of life of a people at a given point and time.’ What this simply means is that culture is progressive and can actually change totally depending on the age we live in. So, back to the question above, Is the number one need of a man respect? I proffer that the number one need of ANY MAN- male or female, child or adult is respect. I’m sorry I do not think that respect should be the prerogative of the male gender only.


A lot of the current brutality and terrorism in relationships we see today has its root in a lack of respect for humanity. Rape, domestic violence, abuse and a host of other vices has at its roots a deep void of respect. Everyone deserves to be respected. We should promote that the first and basic need of any human being is simply that the dignity of his person be respected. Simple.


NB: After being called out, Bobo’s brother has received sense and has started greeting me. Now, what would have happened if I had chosen the non-confrontational route instead? I would have had to endure a lifetime of disrespect even or especially in my marital home.
O’s status as official downloader of free movies has been reinforced. He tried and failed to escape the zone. I simply cannot take marital or relationship advice from the buffoon.

Written by whitemosquito for Diary of a Naija girl.
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"I was sexually abused right under my mother's nose"- Ayodeji Megbope

I had a rocky start…education for me was very tough, not because I wasn’t intelligent but because I was going through all these issues in my life and my family didn’t know about it. I was being abused by a trusted person and it went on for years, yet no one knew about it. The amazing thing was that my mum was a full time house wife, she wasn’t a working mother yet it was happening right under her nose; because she trusted them. That completely messed up my mind, it affected me academically.

Everybody[my siblings] went to the university, but I ended up in a Typing and Shorthand school. I wrote my SSCE twice and the second time I had one Pass and all the other subjects were F9. My mother looked at me one day and said, ‘I’ve concluded that you are the black sheep in the family.’ My father gave up on me. That situation created a lot of friction between my mom and I.

My mother never trusted me, she never believed me and a lot of people took advantage of that. In school, they would cook up lies and come home and tell my mother. I would be crying saying, ‘Mum, its not true!’ But my mum would believe them saying, ‘I don’t trust you! I don’t believe you!’ and she would beat me up. My friends would giggle all the way home, get to school the next day and narrate the story. I was at their mercy. I was stealing for them, I was stealing my father’s money so this people would not put me in trouble with my mother. And that was the type of treatment I was receiving from this person[my abuser].

He dared me to tell anybody and I couldn’t because I knew no one would believe me. So I kept quiet. There was a day he moved out of my house into his own apartment and he wanted me to come with him but I refused. He went to tell my mother that I was lazy and refused to help him clean up his apartment. Mom beat me and made me go with him…and of course, you don’t want to know the details of what he did to me that day.

I was about getting married when I finally told my parents. My father couldn’t believe it. I started getting over my past when I realized that I cant do anything about my past. It haunted me for so long. I lost self esteem, I lost concentration; I didn’t feel there was anything good about me…it[sex] no longer meant anything to me. The only thing I knew about sex was that it must be kept secret. I just didn’t care. It went on till I was 13…

I learnt a lot of lessons- that children shouldn’t learn about sex from their friends. That was what made it easy for my husband and I to introduce sex to our kids at a very young age. When I became more aware of the fact that the past has happened and there’s nothing I can do about it, I began to read books and learnt that for as long as you hold on to the things your abuser has done, you are actually holding yourself down. The abuser has gone and for as long as you hold the abuser in unforgiveness, you are still at that point where the abuser left you. At that point, I just decided. I rededicated myself to God again and began to make meaning out of my life.

When I met my husband, I had to tell him about this part of my life because it really affected me. I became uninterested in sex and all that so I had to tell him so he could know how to handle me. We celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary recently and in all of those years we’ve never had a house help. It was absolutely deliberate. We decided that whatever we would do, the children would come first. When I needed to get a job, because my husband and I had decided from day one that nobody would take care of the children for us, I took the job that afforded me time to do that. We just said to ourselves that if my parents did not know that this thing could happen, then we wouldn’t take any risks…and God helped us.

You really cant forgive until you heal. You must heal otherwise you would be hurting so bad that you would wish evil on the person who hurt you. You need to look at them with pity. I started feeling sorry for that man, because if only he knew what he was doing. He probably felt he had outsmarted everybody, that he was enjoying himself, but if only he knew what he was doing, that there are repercussions, consequences even though they are not immediate. Except such people ask for God’s forgiveness. When you realize that you’re not perfect also, you have to forgive, to let go…but it was easier to forgive that abuser than to forgive my mum. Because I felt that she should have had my back. I had to come to terms with the fact that my mom was limited by the things she knew, by her background. I know better now that’s why I’m able to do better. It was tougher to forgive my mom but eventually I did.

When I saw him[the abuser] for the first time, it was at a family function. I had forgiven him a long time ago so a lot of the bitterness had gone. I could see the shock on his face when he saw my husband and my children. The second time was also at a family function where I gave a speech, that was when he caught a glimpse of the woman I had become. He was shocked. He walked up to me and said in my native tongue, ‘I never believed you would turn out like this. I’m sorry for everything.’ The third time he saw me was at an even bigger function; and my resume was read out. He couldn’t look at me. He called me after the program begging me to forgive him and on and on. I told him the truth that I had forgiven him a long time ago. The happenings in my life are proof that God had gone ahead of me and that was enough to shame him. I didn’t see a need to confront him.


I’m glad my mother and I got to be very close before she passed on last year. I would never forget what she said to me after I came back from a meeting in the US with Michelle Obama. I had the honor of giving a speech and introducing the First Lady which I recorded on my phone. When I came back, my mother watched it…she said to me, “Ayo, is this you? God is great.”

And the scripture that talks about the stone which the builders rejected came to my mind.

There’s more, watch Kemi Adetiba’s KING WOMEN on acceleratetv... For more interesting posts, go to www.diaryofanaijagirl.com