The year is 2017 and a young lady somewhere in the heart of Kenya sits outside her father’s house donning a free dress with her legs spread apart. For the umpteenth time in the last half hour, she spits across the compound. From disgust and well… biology.
She has had a really long day in the nearby town walking up and down trying to get outfits for that small human she has been carrying in her.
In three months, she will be ‘Mama Nani’. And the thought of it excites her. She hasn’t settled on a name yet probably because she has one too many on her mind but when the time comes the baby will get one alright. A fancy name.
But that’s where all the joy ends.
Society
See, in her community, getting children before marriage is a taboo. And as much as people around her smile and congratulate her in equal measure, she knows what really happens behind her back.
Tales of how she engaged in the “act” before the “right” time have been doing rounds. Others even vilifying her and the formal education her father struggled so hard to give her.
“These educated girls have no morals” , they whisper to each other in tangible disgust as she walks past them in market.
Her parents’ friends have field days trolling her folks for failing in raising their daughter properly.
She is ever on the receiving end of blunt jokes from her friends who are convinced she was a fool conceiving in an era where condoms and emergency pills are cheaper than a packet of maize flour.
Society is almost tricking her into believing she is a lost soul for having conceived away from her matrimonial bed.
Her young male partner?
Ironically, none of all those “opinion shapers” has an opinion on the father of the unborn child.
They act and behave like she is a self-pollinating flower, wholly responsible for creating that gorgeous being in her womb that just wont stop kicking. And it annoys her!
But she is not mad at the guy.
At least he was man enough to accept responsibility, which makes her friends think she is ‘lucky’ because most ‘men’ just run. But where is it written that a male owning up to making a baby is an option? Hell they make it look like a privilege to the lady even!
The child is barely here and if it’s not her body or mind, society is ever breathing fire down her neck. It’s like the two of them made a pact to give her never ending nightmares.
She wonders what will happen when the child eventually arrives. It’s a cruel society really!