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One of those first lessons

  • I first learned about abortion when I was almost 10. I had just begun my first year in secondary school.

    I learned that our seniors- who were around the age of 14 and 16- had series of abortion after getting the results of their “improper acts” with the boys.

    The boys’ hostel was a good distance away from ours. The so called strict security system did not stop the boys from jumping over the fence and creeping into their girlfriends’ room. They threatened the juniors not to utter a word or we’d experience hell on earth.

    The senior girls too were “bold”; they’d squeeze themselves through the opening of our rusty gates and go off with the boys.

    One cold morning in the court yard, the dew was just settling and our bath water was almost ice- in our hostels there was nothing like air conditioning for hot weather conditions not to talk of heater on a morning like this one.

    The house mistress buzzed us up to get ready for the day at 4:30 am. Being first year students, we were the first batch of girls to have a bath every morning.

    The courtyard was facing an array of rooms- rooms one to six. My roommates and I just had to walk out of our room, jump over a tiny gutter and we were in our court yard- our open bathroom without a roof, tub, shower or tap.

    My friend Oyin was first to see a small pool of blood on the floor, some part of the blood was thick you’d think it was some internal parts of a chicken.

    We didn’t know whose blood it was or how it got there because hours before 4.30am, we all in the hostel were supposedly asleep. Was it Lady Koi-Koi - the ghost lady in red and black jacket, hat and shoes who haunted our school every night?

    We didn’t know and we did not really worry until Christina, a first year repeater, told us that a senior must have aborted a baby.

    We were shocked and could hardly believe her but she convinced us and even assured us that we’d see more of that.

    We spent the better part of our bath time staring from the blood to Christina as she told us how the seniors killed their unborn babies.

    “It’s easy! You’ll get a pail handle or an iron cloth hanger- the pale handle is better sha (Sha is a Yoruba word often added to the end of sentences for emphasis)” she started.

    “You’ll straighten it and then insert it inside your vagina, you push it in, and in, and then you’ll hang the womb with the little curved part, and then jack it down and out!” She explained with a demonstration of her hands and imaginary pail handle; and the force with which she yanked out the imaginary womb was the scariest I had ever seen.

    This was the trending topic among us first year students that day, and we wondered out loud how people would kill innocent embryos.

    In retrospect, what did a 14 year old girl, in Nigeria, 1999 know about sex not to talk of abortion?