On being a good neighbour

I think it was the great Ngugi Wa Thiongo who once said in an interview a long time ago that writers are like Cassandra (from Greek mythology): doomed to prophesy but never to be believed. There are times I scare myself by writing stories I am sure I have made up, only to have the same scenarios as in my story play out in real life. Earlier this year, I started working on something new, and convinced the plot was getting out of hand, I paused the project. A week later, I read a post on Twitter that seemed like it was lifted from the plot I was sure I’d made up. The distressing thing is that the real life story is even wilder than what my imagination had conjured up.

The story I saw on Twitter was of a pre-teen girl who was working as a domestic help and nanny – aka nwaneku- to three children. A 12-year-old. The illegality and unethicality of employing minors to work for one aside, her male employer – a husband and father – was also both physically and sexually abusive to this child.  The little girl had the presence of mind to befriend another adult tenant, and it was to this woman she told of her tribulations at the hands of her 43-year-old oga.

She asked her friend to help her call her parents so she could return home. While the 12 year old’s new friend and neighbour was looking for ways to get her out – including via NGOs as she couldn’t get the parents, an incident occurred that pulled a crowd and hastened the girl’s removal from the home of the pedophile.  Her benefactor got the police involved, the man was arrested, and she took the girl to Mirabel Centre, Lagos where tests were carried out on her, and the medical report forwarded to the police station holding the criminal. Unfortunately, the latest update is that the monster has been released after “settling” with the girl’s family.

It is clear to me that this 43-year-old man didn’t just want a house help, he wanted a sex slave. There is no mention of his wife coming to the little girl’s aid, and as there is no way she wouldn’t have known what was going on, she is completely complicit in this. Shame on her. To keep a child in your home to look after your own children, and watch your pedophilic husband sexually abuse her night after night is a different level of evil. To live with a man like that, to have him near your children even though he is the father makes you as unfit to be a parent as he is.

The little girl has now been returned to her parents in Abia State. I pray that whatever it was that compelled them to send her out to work, and to work for someone to whom they had no access (she couldn’t even reach them when she needed help) is removed so that she can stay home and be a child.

I am not oblivious to the level of poverty that encourages the ‘nwaneku’ industry: children from poor homes running after the spoilt children of their bosses, fetching and carrying for their age mates, cleaning and cooking for an entire family, just so that their own families back in the villages (mostly) are able to eat. I wish some charity would take up this particular case, make sure the little girl goes to school, that she has a life that would overshadow this terrible one she’s just left. And as for the couple she lived with, they shouldn’t be raising kids at all. They do not deserve to be parents. And they both ought to be properly punished. If I put them in a novel. I know just how I’d have them punished.

Perhaps, it isn’t so much that writers are prophets than that we are – by default- astute observers of our societies. And what we think are just stories we are making up are really scenarios our consciousness know are possible because we know our society. To keep from being overwhelmed, I always look for a silver lining, no matter how dark the story. In this case, it’s the neighbour who put herself at risk to help a child, and the Mirabel Centre which provided help, where all the other NGOs the woman called didn’t come through for her. Shout out to them. Both the woman and the centre show what is possible, even in a broken system. Writing isn’t merely about documenting reality. It is also about imagining what is possible.

*PSA: Located in LASUTH, Mirabel Centre is a Sexual Assault Referral Centre. It provides free and timely professional support to survivors of rape and sexual assault. Their phone number is 08155770000. Pass it on to anyone you know who (sadly) might be in need of it.