A SOJOURNER’S TALE

They always say life happens in stages, just like we grow from being a baby to a toddler, a teen, a youth, to an adult and then finally old age. Same can be said for all aspects of life.

For some, the journey started with furtive kisses in dark corners to secret romps in uncompleted buildings, before graduating to full scale prostitution, while for others it was as a result of a bad turn of events.

Ask any of us here, none of us wish to be here, but we are even without choice to determine the course of our destiny. Talk of Angela who was standing by the entrance watching my interaction with my son: she had been married to a very wealthy chief and had been sent packing when he died because of her inability to bear a child for the chief before he died. She had struggled to survive, working in the market as a laborer, sleeping in uncompleted buildings and had been raped severally before she decided to charge money for each subsequent visit by working in a brothel.

Mine was even more pathetic, I had been in my final year in the university when a cousin had come around seemingly from the United States and promised to help me secure a visa to move there and complete my education. I had been very elated. I left all preparations to him, my family paying him lots of money only for me to find myself in Italy.

I was packed with other girls into a building to be sex slaves, and could only watch in tears as my cousin went away, leaving me to my fate. I later heard he sent money to my parents yearly in my name, silencing their fears as they were money minded individuals.

It was different faces every day, different fetishes been acted upon us; from beatings, to being forced to drink piss, and other weird deeds. I was finally rescued by the government and deported with a seed in my womb, but there was no home to go. I could only resort back to laying my back on the ground, and many customers did I have, for many people wanted the perverse pleasure of sleeping with a pregnant woman.

I gave birth to my son in the brothel, a fair looking thing with sharp features signifying his foreign descent and I slaved myself to no end to send him to school, rapidly working myself up the ladder till I struck jackpot with a customer who gave me money with which I started my own brothel and beer parlor.

Luck shined on my son and he was awarded a scholarship, and for twelve years now, he was gone, lost, to me as all communications ceased as soon as he left.

“Mother, I’ve come to take you to the states,” he said softly when he came back suddenly and tears cascaded down my cheeks.

“It‘s too late.” I broke down, weeping heavily.
“What is wrong?,” he said worriedly and my tears only increased.
“She has cancer,” Angela had said softly, answering him. “She had gotten it after treating an STD wrongly under a fake doctor.”

He had shaken his head softly. “I have money now, I will surely see that you get the best treatment money can buy,” he had promised.

That was three years ago, and for the first time in my trade as a prostitute I will see a prostitute’s story end happily ever after.

I watch my grandchildren play in the snow and smile as a ball of snow hit my shoulder.

-Olofinnika Omobolaji