When I discovered that more than seventy percent of the sisters in the fellowship sleep with unknown men from time to time for survival, I wept and almost died in my room. I managed to walk up to a phone booth to call my elder sister who was my sponsor. I waited patiently for her to pick up the phone when it rang.
“This is Shelly, can I help you, please?” I was delighted to
hear her voice from the other end of the line.
After the normal greeting/protocols, I told her I needed some
money.
“What’s up, you got enough.” Her voice sounded light.
When there was no reply from my end, she said, “alright,
honey, can you please tell me what you need extra cash for. Trust me, honey, I
can help.”
I told her I needed to help a lady who was on the verge of
going into the wide life of sleeping with different men in other to further her
education. When I finished my pathetic story there was silence at the other
end, I could tell she was crying.
When she finally spoke up it was with a cracked voice. “that
lady’s story sounds like mine,” she said with a deep sigh.
“I don’t seem to understand…” I tried to say something but she cuts in when she asked. “Would you like to hear my own story?”
“I found myself in a dubiety in 1993 when daddy died. I was like the Israelites bounded by insurmountable mountains, the red sea before me and the Egyptian army on my tail. Mummy, broken and shattered by daddy’s death, lies bedridden with diseases and weakness. The fat red eyeballs university registrar looked at me in the face and said, “the university is not a charity organization. Your story is pathetic, never mind, you got two weeks of grace to pay up else you’ll be thrown out of the campus without a certificate.
No uncle or aunty could help. Some of daddy’s friends who think they could help wanted to share my bed before they would give me a dime.
Finally, I ran to my pastor. I asked him to loan me the money from the church purse, I promised to forfeit school for two weeks and see if I can raise half the money by doing odd jobs. I will pay the rest with whatever I got from the farm during the holidays. The pastor smiled at me and used the pastor’s sentence, ‘it is well’ when it was not well. He reads from the Bible that God will provide for my needs and prayed for me. He claimed there was no money in the church purse yet the church bought a set of drums that cost thrice the money I needed that same week.
Confused, helpless, and hopeless I went back to school to pack my little belongings back home. But my best friend Mimi wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted that I see her daddy. She wasn’t the type that will easily give up. Convinced, we went to see her daddy. The black potbelly man was kind, he gave me the money and said I could be part of the family.
This new God-sent-helper so much pampered me with money and goods that I allowed him to play with my boobs in his office. It later degenerated into a relationship. He funds me and I provide him with fun.
After about three semesters, he told me he was through with me and that he never wanted to see me again. I was pretty and was already involved; to stay in school I had to look for another sugar daddy who could fund me through school. I remained that way all because I was determined to be educated at all costs.
It was very terrible sleeping around with different men all in bade of survival. I was traumatized, a complete wench, a shameless campus prostitute. A vulnerable young schoolgirl alone in the wide wild world. I hated and was ashamed of myself.
You can hate me for all the things I did, it was shameful,
dirty, and ungodly but I had to do it to become what I am today. Of course, I had
many choices, one of which was for me to suspend my education and jerked off to
work for money to sponsor myself through school. Two facts stopped me; one, nobody
was ready to offer me a job except they first slept with me. I could have opted
for odd jobs, yeah, odd jobs wouldn’t be enough to see me through school even
if I had to work for ten whole years. I would have been glad to do that to keep
my faith and body intact. But I could never have helped my dying mother and my
younger siblings. I was alone and helpless so I sold my faith, pride, and
integrity for a future of guilt.
This is the sad fate
of many young African ladies.
