Nobody acknowledged these things as wrong. It became the way of life of the people... and as I grew into a woman, things kept deteriorating to the extent it grew into worse.
I hate the fact that women meant nothing and still means nothing to the people in this part of the world.
Bayelsa supposed to be the most beautiful state in Nigeria. Apart from her abundant natural resources, Bayelsa is naturally green, with beds of water crisscrossing the entire state. But unfortunately, we all have been turned beggars in our own father's land. Our waters destroyed and our farm lands polluted.
Pity any Bayelsan woman wherever you see her.
Go to school as a woman, try and get a school certificate, that's if you are lucky enough to come from a wealthy family. Many Bayelsa women are secondary school dropouts. Some managed to finish secondary school before running into the hands of men who never paid their dowry. It is a man's world remember.
Women were faced with the choice of being a young famer or a young mother that automatically becomes a wife to her baby father.
In the early hours of the morning, you must have seen lines of women, Bayelsan women, both young, old and small filling into the bush to farm.
Only a male child deserves education. A male child is exempted from doing house chores. Have you been in Bayelsa very early in the morning? You need to, so as to understand what am saying. The males are already at Ogogoro junction playing cards and drafts. With some hard wines to get high. The young boys in the field playing football.
Bayelsan women does everything including tilling of the ground, clearing and burning of Bushes, gathering and carrying of fire woods, processing of gari, processing of fufu and every other house chores. Not excluding the upbringing of their numerous children. Some of us are from Oruma, but have brothers in Imiringi and other places. Their mother have married unceremoniously more than three times, breeding countless children.
I was scared 😩
As a child I thought that was the fate of every girl child. To run after one seemingly faithful guy, get impregnated, give birth and then decide whether to be an automatic wife without a dime been paid, or be a baby mama and go for the next available guy with a rod inbetween his legs 🤦♀
These and much more are the things that inspired me as a child. To make a difference. To work hard and tell the story of that woman in the swamps of Bayelsa suffering to feed an entire family.
I was to pick up a pen and write something down. Even when nobody cared, even when I felt I didn't get it right, even though my effort and ideas were seen as a waste of time.
I wish things could change because these things keeps repeating itself every day with new generations adopting to it.
Please 🙏... you are the one person that has seen and believed in my effort and ideas even when I keep doubting myself. And I always feel I won't get as much courage as to start without you persuading me.
I want to start from somewhere, and this is what I witnessed. I want to write with facts and not just a story. So I always and will always need your support.
_________________________
DEAREST Happiness,
Your story is touching and I still believe in what you can do. You simply need to start and stop being your own judge. The world is thirsty for your work.
Please, don't keep us waiting.
Elochukwu Ohagi, Philosopher, Teacher and Activist
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