She was only 12...Part 3

In 1998, at the age of 16, my father invited me to a new town where he was working. He had told me that his friends kept telling him that he had not been fair to me for abandoning me in the village and without a chance to quality education.

"That is why I brought you to now live with us", he had told me as I was getting into his house for the first time.

He had a wife and two little kids already. I was definitely not on his priority list.

Not really weighing the impact of moving to his house, I stupidly walked myself into a den. I jumped in, actually. It was my biggest mistake so far, maybe.

Before I left the village to meet him, I was a very happy, lively kid. These parts of me were soon to be lost completely. I was left lonely. My father became a trauma.

The physical beating was nowhere near the psychological trauma he left me in and with.

In a simple, short summary, my father nearly destroyed me.

While I was in the village, I would imagine a perfect father-son relationship. I had even imagined how my father would buy me nice pieces of stuff - including shirts that wouldn't need washing because they had been specially made not to go dirty. Just for me. Fantasies.

Yes, there were all fantasies. I got traumas instead.

The truth is that my father, despite the fact that I had started living with him, never bought me any piece of shirt. The only shirt he gave me (not bought for me) was a shirt he had bought for himself which later became too small for him. He had no choice but to throw it at me, saying, "take it if you want it, or simply bin it".

I binned it.

One thing I had hoped would happen was that he would someday hug me, and be proud of me.

Neither happened.

He has never hugged me. And he had told me repeatedly that I was not good for anything. "Not even to be used as sacrifice for the gods", he once added.

I had come on top of my class in many school terms, but he would say that the people in my class were only dullards.

"You simply can't be the one on top of your class", he would say.

He had even concluded that I was not good enough for university education, rather, he suggested I become a taxi driver.

"They make money enough to feed their families you know; that should be good enough for you", he once told me.

When I newly arrived at his place, I was to enrol in a secondary school. The school had requested my birth certificate. I told him about it and he told someone in the Population Commission office to help. Without the birth certificate, I won't be able to continue schooling.

When the person in the Population Commission Office had called to know my date of birth, my father turned to me and asked:

"When were you born"?

I never imagined it was that bad. SO bad he did not even know my birth date? I was shocked because I had no idea when I was born.

Following some permutations with one of my aunties in the village, we arrived at a date that everyone else felt was near correct.

Now in my late 30's, I am still dreaming that one day, my father would tell me something nice. Or simply give me a hug.

From the look of things, a hug from him may never happen. We have not spoken nor seen each other in 10 years and counting.