Noone To Save Me

It was a normal Friday evening, a day like any other. I had just come from school. As usual, I had to walk kilometers to get home. As I neared our homestead, I realized that we had visitors. Some two men my father’s age were having beer with my father. I passed them to go to where my mother was but my father beckoned to greet the visitors.

I later went to the kitchen and my mother was all tears. “I am sorry my daughter, but your father has decided to marry you off”. Her statement put me in a state of shock but I managed to ask her to who I was getting married to. She informed me that one of the old men was meant to be my suitor. I nearly fainted and my body became numb. How could my father decide to marry me off to a man nearly his age? As if to answer my question my mother said “Times are hard and we cannot afford to educate you and your brothers” “You will have to go to your home so that we can get dowry to support the family and pay for your brothers’ education”

For the days that followed, All I did was cry. My father ordered me to stop going to school. I contemplated escaping but to where? In our community no one would accept to take in a girl who had disobeyed her parents. I had great dreams of becoming a doctor but they had all been shattered. I was only 14 years old, why was this happening to me?

I recalled my friends who were almost my age and had gotten married. One of them died while having a baby as she was too young to have one. The other had resigned herself to motherhood and had now four children after giving birth to them year after year. I feared for the worst. I feared that I could get mad if I started thinking about my situation. As the days neared for my suitor to come I decided to accept the situation. Anyway what can a village girl like me achieve? Maybe the education could have taken me nowhere. At least my brothers will go to school and I can resign myself to what society expects me to be.