Cry of An African Girl Child

Can you imagine what life could be like if you were rejected even before birth? Yes, you heard me right. An African girl surrounded with a million aunties and uncles but always feel lonely. Boys and girls enjoyed running and playing hide and seek under bright sunshine and bright moonlight. This is typically what life looks like to other girls who have opportunities of being nurtured and cared for by adults around them. Poverty and primitive cultural beliefs turn to stealing life from other girls who are being sent off to marriage too soon.

As an African girl child growing up and living with my grandfather, I had always wondered what happened to my own parents. The one who was supposed to be my mother, was hardly present in the picture. Worst still, the one who was supposed to be the father, was never in the picture. This obliqueness of an African girl, creates room for more vulnerability. The African girl child exists as a legal tender which can be used as a mortgage for the family to use in acquiring wealth or money to educate the African boy child in most cases. Early marriages to older men as a legal tender in exchange for their brother's education or for a piece of farmland. Girls are voiceless as to what they want to become or who they want to get married to. These girls are voiceless in a system that does not value their opinion. They cry in silence during sex with a man older than their father.

CRY for all you want, you must stay at your husband's house. Such words are familiar words from the mothers, fathers, aunties, and uncles who ate a piece of goat, pig, and chicken in some cases to sell you off to the old man as a wife. What have I done to deserve these? Am I a cursed child? Should I run away? where can I run too, without money, nor someone to run too. At age fourteen, my parents shipped me off to marriage. At age sixteen I am pregnant with my first child after a stressful home delivery by some local elderly woman who happens to be the community expert in child delivering at home. Crying in pain of agony for days almost meant little or nothing to my parents as they enjoy eating more food and drinking anything in the name of liquor from their rich in-law.

At age sixteen, while other girls are thinking of going to school and graduating high school, the poor African girl child is battling with pain from delivering another baby just like her. She sleeps through the night, sometimes more than the baby. Struggling to figure out how to take care of a baby, when she herself needs nurturing. She now has three full time jobs: taking care of her husband in bed, cooking food for him, and taking care of the baby. In most cases of such marriages, she will also have to deal with co-wives in the marriage and grown-up stepchildren. Where do I go from here, and how did I find myself here, crying the beloved African Girl child. This is the plight of some African girls who might never have a chance to love and be loved.

She wakes up in the morning at about 5 AM to feed the baby, that is if there is any food. She straps the baby on her back and carries a bucket on her head to go to the stream and carry water. She goes to the farm to look for food and firewood to cook. While the baby is crying on the floor as she cooks by the fire side, she tries to split dry wood with an axe for the food to cook quickly. Suffering becomes her normal, and she has no reason to complain because she is now someone else's property. These girls at some point in life become very bitter and rebellious to take actions to regain their freedom and happiness. As these so-called old husbands become older in satisfying the girls with sex and other social life functioning, they turn to start dating younger boys/men within the community. Such younger men in some cases, turn to be the real father of some of the children born into such marriages. THE CRY OF AN AFRICAN GIRL CHILD. We need to break this vicious cycle.