Lost Mum at 4, Violated at 7, R*p&d at 17 & Impregnated at 22 - Meet the Owerri Lady Who Has Seen It All

 

Ruth

A woman has told her life story featuring heartbreaking tragedies that have beset her since she was a mere child.

For Ruth, life is not a song worth singing; it’s a dirge, at best. A victim of ruthless circumstances, she had spent much of her 26 years on earth in pains, sorrows and tears. Today, her life is in turmoil even as she lives with the scars of the unkind blow life had dealt her.

“I have cried so much,” she told the reporter. “I cry but all these years I have learnt that tears won’t take me any further. Tears are for the weak. I have been wounded and I know that getting up will not be easy but I have to give it a try. I tried drink­ing, smoking, doing hemp. It doesn’t get me high as they said it does. So, I stopped. It only gave me momentary happiness and then disappears before you know it.”

Back of the book

Indeed, life has been ruth­less to Ruth. She had witnessed disincentives to living. As an innocent girl, she was sexually molested at seven while living with people she regarded as fam­ily. She would speak out timidly though rather than looking into what she said, she was accused of trying to tear the family apart and was beaten and ill treated with greater intensity. At 17, when she was about taking the school certificate examinations, she was brutally raped. She learnt to keep all scary thoughts to herself since nobody would believe her. At 22, she had a child and was thrown out of the house. And, later the child was taken from her. Ever since, she has come to hate the dark, her­self and, above all, developed phobia for living with people.

No longer innocent, she had grown wild, sleeping with all manner of men, with no feelings attached to them. And because it’s been hell with men, she sees men as beasts. According to her, the only reason she mingled with the man who got her pregnant was that she wanted a kind of escape. She thought he was real, thinking that she could be happy for the time at least but he too proved that he was not any dif­ferent from the rest.

Inside the book

Telling the story of her life was not an easy task for Ruth. For her, talking about it reminds her of the ugly past which she could not forget. Her voice shook with emo­tion as she told her heart rending story:

“I was born on January 10, 1991. I left our house in Owerri at four years for Calabar and it was supposed to be a holiday. But the woman I went to live with wanted my stay to be permanent. That was how I started living with them. The woman in question is my fa­ther’s younger sister. Her husband was a medical doctor and he had his own clinic. I wasn’t sent to school and at that little age, I was the one taking her child to school. She told my people that I was go­ing to school but there was no way to communicate with them. She seized all the clothes I came with, leaving just one for me. I was sent to the boys’ quarter to stay.

“I can’t say what I did to her but she was beating me all the time. My duties ranged from cleaning the house, fetching water from the well which was far from where we were living. I was expected to fill a big drum with water every day. I used to go and fetch the wa­ter with a – five litre can. Worst still, I won’t be given food. I was only served beans or cornmeal every day. I don’t know why she hated me so much; she beats me with that specie of flower that has thorns on it. Anytime she wants to enjoy herself, she would ask me to go and bring the flower and she will flog me until I start bleed­ing all over. You would ask me to undress before flogging me. And whenever the husband was about to return home, she would order me to go wash my face with wa­ter, threatening that if the husband found out that I was crying or if I ever complained to him I would regret the day I was born.”

False hope

“After sometime, the husband noticed. He would bring me into the room when I was seven and in the guise of comforting me, he started fiddling and inserting his fingers into my private part. At that age I could talk, so when I went out I complained to one woman. I fell into his trap because I saw him as the only person who cared about me. Sometimes, he would buy things for me, like abacha, a local delicacy. I didn’t under­stand until I started having pains around my waist and private part. So, I told her friend who comes to the house. The woman asked her about it and that doubled my pun­ishment. She said that I came to destroy her marriage. I never left the house, I was like a prisoner. It was when another girl, Nnenna, came that we used to go to a rock that water runs from. That was the only place of solace; it used to have a comforting effect on me.

“But after I complained, the man stopped violating me. There was nothing my aunt didn’t do to me. While pregnant, she would put saliva into tissue paper and order me to pick it with my bare hands. At about 13, I came to my father and I said that I was not going back but at end of the day I was compelled to go back. When I entered secondary school, I still went back during holiday period to continue my slavery.”

Worse nightmare

If the doctor did it with his fingers, the brother did it with his dick. Con­sider this: “When I was 17, my aunt’s husband’s brother raped me and he told that since there was nothing I could do about the situation I should just relax and enjoy it. Only two of us were in the house and he had his way. When I went back to school, I told my matron. She called my father and sat him but he said that nothing like that happened. He said that I was looking for a way to get away from the training they were giving me. Even when they relocated to Abuja, I also went with them. I don’t know if they bought me or something like that.

“When I was 18, I said that I wouldn’t continue living with them because I was getting fed up with the whole thing. The doctor came back to me again, saying he was sorry for what happened and he felt guilty about lying against me. He said he wanted to make up for what he did and those things that men will al­ways tell you if they want to sleep with you. He wanted to make me a sex toy, squeezing my buttocks and fondling my breasts at will. He said that if I gave him the chance again, he would be giving me loads of money.”

From frying pan to fire

One day, her aunt sent her to buy something and she ran away. But it was like running into an embrace of a mas­querade. “I left their house and came back but my father said he had nothing to do with me again if I did not return to Abuja. Since my father rejected me, I stayed with a friend. I did not tell any­body anything because nobody believed me. Everybody said it was my fault, so I stopped talking.

“When my friend gained admission into Imo State University, I went to my grandmother whom I never saw in years. I told her my story and she want­ed to make it a big issue but I told her to stop. I’m talking about my maternal grandmother; I have nothing to do with my paternal grandmother. Along the line, I went to Oko Polytechnic and fin­ished my ND programme. A maternal aunt paid my fees in school.

“There was a time I travelled to an uncle’s place in Lagos, something hap­pened and my father stopped talking with me. While going back to the east, we boarded the same bus but there was no way anyone would know that we had anything to do with each other. When we got to a place passengers were sup­posed to eat, he sent me a short message service (sms), saying that he wanted to eat. I also replied by sms, telling him that I didn’t want to eat. No one in the bus could have believed that he was my father except for the striking resem­blance.

“My only happiness is that after hav­ing children and training them, the fam­ily is not at peace. I know it is not good to be happy when something is going wrong but if I say that I am not happy, I am a big liar.”