To be... or not to be.

Tears fall off my eyes when I remember the discomfort, the anguish and the rage.
All about one morning, I try always not to remember ….
But to let off myself was inconceivable, that awful episode cannot compare to the perilous pleasure intended.
The thought of the poisonous fluid from Kabiru constantly until I made bold to share the story with my husband fifteen years after, made respiration a difficult process for me.

Kabiru my mother’s houseboy or should I say her house keeper tried to estrange me in my parents’ house. I was an innocent teenager, whose mother had to travel a lot to do business in order to support the family and whose father was saddled with the responsibility of feeding the hungry sheep in the church. I was left under the care of Kabiru and other sexual addicts in my extended family.My father has been a very dedicated clergy to a religious mission that cared less about the welfare of its staff and family, so our survival burden was also shared by my mother.

We lived in different places at different times because of the regular transfer policy of my father’s employer and I was always a target of the abusers, maybe because of my unassuming lifestyle. I was fortunate to have noticed the red light when male friends and relatives would request me to visit them without informing my parents, which always got me curious. The most heartless were the patronizing and yet threatening members of my extended family.
The greater the income inequalities, the greater the sexual abuse in the society. My mother’s frequent absence in search of more money probably encouraged Kabiru ‘s immoral decision. Kabiru did not only receive his wages as at when due from my parents but also had welfare bonus he enjoyed from them.

Unfortunately and unknown to my parents till today because I never enjoyed the parent-children communication line as a teenager , Kabiru was not satisfied, he wanted to abuse their teenage daughter .Kabiru would always demand for sex or sexually related activities from me before he would give me my lunch and warned me not to tell anyone.
When sexual abuse enters into a life, it surely does affect every aspect of it. But healthy intervention through my psychological rebirth helped me a great deal. It took me a lot of efforts to decide to get married and now that I have a daughter I do not shilly-shally to educate her on the uniqueness of being a girl.

My daily activities since 1992 have supported and helped girls and young women to enjoy safe and healthy lives. Public enlightenment programmes on sexual abuse among girls and boys have been empowering to the participants.
Basically, to expand my intervention work , TEMIDAYO OGAN CHILD SAFETY AND SUPPORT (TOCSS) FOUNDATION was registered and through its partnership programmes with my personal funds and relevant networking , I was lucky to connect PulseWire and I must say, no regret .