The first time I saw someone who had been raped was in university, I was attending pre-degree classes as I didn’t meet the cut-off mark for Bachelor degree classes the first time around. A virgin living close to my hostel has been raped by 6 armed robbers who came to rob, no one knew if all 6 actually raped her, she was silent for days, wouldn’t give us details, until after 4 days when she slit her wrist and bled to death in her room.
I was very afraid and sad, because I paid her a visit to express my sympathy, I thought she heard me, i felt our visit made all the difference, i thought she was healing… We even had a meeting that anyone found insulting her with it would be banned. I was young and naive, we all were… She locked herself in and did what she did… From that day, the fear of rape was instilled in me, i saw the damage it could do.
In 200 level, I left my house to a friend’s place, she had a textbook I needed to complete my assignment. It would only take a couple of minutes, I thought. My small bag in hand with my books, my 3-quarter pants like it was called then, a long top and a scarf over my head…
A few minutes shy of an hour later, I was done, took a couple of spoons from the rice my friend was eating, then I left… It was the road I always travelled on, it was wide, popular, usually busy and it was just 8pm. A guy was walking towards me, i clutched my bag tightly, he was on the other side “thank God” – I thought, if he tried rubbish, I will just run, I kept saying to myself.
I walked briskly, turning to look at the guy beside me as he walked away, there was another guy in front of me, on the phone, walking on the same side I was… He didn’t seem like a threat, but all the same I went to the pavement close to a big church in front of me and continued walking… He was close to me now and walked past me, my phone rang… I opened my bag just so I could put the phone on silent mode, when someone held me by the neck… I couldn’t breathe….
“if you make any noise, i will blast your head off” – he said, pressing the cold edge of the gun onto my face, he dragged me by the neck into the church. It was a big church, a big field filled with short cut grass covered a few acres before the actual church building, it was fenced all around and I could see that church service was going on. “Lie down here” – he said… I was slow, he slapped me, his hands felt like Iron covered in flesh… I could feel my face swell.
I began to cry, begging him not to rape me, that I just gave birth, I was saying anything to get myself out of that fix, he removed my glasses and flung it to the other side of the grass… I closed my eyes,praying for this church to close and for any, just any of their members to come out.
He tried to kiss me, I moved my lips away and he hit me with the gun right on the bridge of my nose, the pain shredded my entire will, I gave up… I was going to be raped… This was happening, I couldn’t fight him, he kissed me and i allowed him, I have never felt so disgusted in my entire life, he removed my trousers and my panties, I couldn’t fight, didn’t want to, I cried, prayed to God to help me, to send even one person out of the church, is he going to allow me be raped in church, in his own house?
He kissed me again amidst the tears, not letting it bother me, this rapist bent down and licked my pussy, just to wet it enough to gain entry. My body writhed in disgust, my back scratched the grass and I could see the ants feeding on my skin… “stay in one place” – he shouted, his voice masked by the speakers at the front fence, praise the Lord and hallelujahs spurting out of the speaker.
Which God, which Lord, here I was being raped in his own home by someone I didn’t know just because I could not afford textbooks and needed to use a friend’s own…
He thrust in and out of me with brute force, no condom, sometimes kissing me, other times choking me… There was something about me being out of air, this rapist enjoyed. Somewhere in his twisted mind, I was his girlfriend, he would rub on my nipples and kiss me. I prayed to die, I saw her, chiamaka, the girl from my predegree, I finally understood what she felt when this happened to her… “Help me” – I said to her ghost, but it just stood there watching this animal violate me constantly. “help me” – I said, my eyes fixed at the church, hoping that this silent scream would travel to someone’s ears and they will come out to the gate and rescue me. But no one came, nobody at all… He was grunting, the grunts brought me back here, to reality, to this animal that laid on top of me… “do you like it” – he asked? Taunting me, breaking every iota of my soul, laughing at my weakness. I didn’t respond, so he hit my head with the gun, the blood trickled down my face… He got up and used his dick to rub my face. Then he pressed the gun to my head and said ” suck it”. I sat upright and started to beg him, “please sir, I can’t sir, please let me go, I won’t tell anybody.” I was barely 2 buildings away from my hostel and yet my life was ruined so close to my home, my mind drifted and I started to think, why was the field inside the church not lit up, why can’t no one hear me, why don’t they have security patrolling the field around the church… This was a very big expanse of land. Why hasn’t thunder hit this animal on top of me for doing this to me inside the house of God.
The more I begged, the more angry he got, slapping me to shut up and lay back down…. The beating was too much, I was loosing every strength I had, I could either die or let him have his way…. But this was not a person that could be pleaded with…
So i laid back down and let him rub his dick on my mouth, he was laughing as he did so… Each laughter pierced my soul, I was breaking away into nothing… And then the rage began to brew inside of me… I was alone, no one would help me here, I was either going to die or live the rest of my life an invalid because you do not get over things like this… In my heart, I accepted my end.
I thanked God, thanked him for removing me from this world, the pain was too much for me either ways, I prayed for my mama because I knew she would be heartbroken. I was heartbroken, death or accepting to die is such a lonely cold road, you can feel your soul leaving your body, beckoning on your body to go to waste… I opened my mouth and when he put his dick in, I licked it slowly at first, he touched my face with the hand holding the gun and with the other hand, he rubbed on my pussy. He wanted to touch my face again but the gun was in his way so he dropped it by his side. If i stretched well enough, I could touch it, so i bit him a little. He slapped me hard – “take it easy, do it the way, you have been doing it”. I replied “sorry sir, let me adjust, ant is biting me, i will do it how you like, so he dragged his knees backwards and pushed me closer to him. I could touch the gun now.
I continued licking, afraid, the cold air killing me, the ants running away from my dead skin. I closed my eyes, opened them, closed them again and opened them to look at the sky… “mummy I am sorry, God Please Forgive me” – I said… And then I…..
“mummy I am sorry, God Please Forgive me” – I said… And then I bit as hard as I could on his dick, held it with every rage, every pain, every strength I could muster, I held his dick in my mouth biting on it as I stretched myself to grab the gun, I threw it far away from the both of us. He punched my face “leave my prick, leave my prick” – he screamed, but i bit down, the more he stretched to the opposite end to grab the gun, the more I dragged the dick with my teeth, bitting down hard on it, it choked me but i refused to cough.
The punches came from left to right, the blows landed on my stomach, chest, back, body and most especially my face. He was searching for a stone to hit me, the biggest one was a bit too far, all the others near us was small, so he picked it and hit me, but i didn’t leave his dick.
I was ready to die, but he wasn’t… I was going to die, I knew it… The amount of blood I had lost was too much, the blood trickled from my head to my eyes blinding me, i blinked fast, hard, I needed to continue seeing, I needed to know where he went so I could drag his dick the other way… If i die, you die… I could feel the blood from his dick spurting into my mouth…
“we are singing, we are dancing, we are singing, we are dancing hallelujah to the Lord… Singing x2” blasting from the church’s speaker.
Ohh i was singing blood, lots of blood… Dancing and soaking in it… Hallelujah to the most high… I locked my hands behind me, because if he held my hand, he could cause me pain, I didn’t block any of his blows, it landed everywhere… I was in Pains but I was prepared for the pain… I saw death through the blood that covered my eyes, I saw it… It waited there in the shadows, waiting for who dies first, which of us will it be… I knew it was me and i smiled in my heart accepting the grim reaper… Letting him know I was ready, but first I have to violate this animal who violated me…
I could feel his own life leaving him, he was now begging “abeg leave my prick”
In my head, I said, after I cut it out. He resumed a fresh set of blows to my face my teeth pressed harder on it, he dragged himself away and a small skin on top his dick pulled along with my teeth. He ran towards the gun, i got up and ran out of the gate as quickly as a breath in and out, in less than 2 minutes, I burst in through my gate, my gate man coming after me
“Ada, Ada Wetin dey pursue you” – he said in pidgin. I ran to my room, the blood dripping through my face. My room mate screaming “baby baby what happened to you” baby was her pet name for anyone she is friends with. She was a nursing student. I lied I was robbed, I couldn’t bear to tell anyone that someone raped me. The shame was too much for me, i had seen how girls who were raped were treated, they start the questions with what were you wearing like somehow clothing breeds monsters. I wasn’t going to let anyone do that to me. She cleaned me up and nursed my wounds, girls trooped to my room, bearing their condolences… And then I saw it, exactly how little these condolences meant in the face of what I just went through… Nothing would be enough except time… No amount of sorry, God will bring you a new phone was going to be enough… I was broken to my soul, this monster had taken something from me, nothing can replace except God and time… Yes God, still trying to understand why and how I could be raped in his own house… I didn’t sleep all night, I had visions he was going to blast through the hostel, guns blazing and kill me for mutilating him.
I cried, wishing I had died… Wondering why my father wasn’t rich enough to afford all my needs, why i had to get this punishment when I wasn’t even doing anything bad… Like I went to do an assignment at a girl’s house and I get raped on my way back home.
2am and I could hear every bird sound, every ant that crawled on the floor, every door that creaked, every girl on midnight call with a distant lover… I cried, angry at myself for not dying… My face swollen from the blows, my head cut, bruises and black scars every where on my body…
I cried, my hands covering my mouth, shoving my screams back down my throat… My room mate was insisting we go to the hospital tomorrow… “There might be internal bleeding, baby this wound is too plenty, we must go to hospital this night” – I refused, I didn’t want to be near anyone this night. I wanted to be inside my room, I was safe here, on my way to the hospital, I might be raped again. Nothing she said would change that, so she patched me up the best way she can.
The next morning, I walked to the church to pick up my books, some of the church members were at the gate. I walked past them and went in to pick up my bag, books and glasses.
I saw the blood on the grass. I was walking towards the entrance when I saw my room mate explaining the reason why I didn’t greet them and why my bag and books were inside their church, apparently they were angry about that. I didn’t care!
As I walked towards the gate, I heard a man say, I hope its only rob he robbed you, because if you guys had sex here, in God’s house, he will not take it lightly with you, he was pointing at me and the grass… I rushed at him, flinging my bag in the process, he fell to the ground and I kept matching him, I had an advantage cos he never saw me coming and he was slim and old.
Some guy grabbed me from behind, lifting me up, but i was angry… “God punish you and your church, God punish your entire fucking generation, where were you when I was being raped inside this church, where the fuck were you, I swear to God I will kill you, I will fucking kill you….. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…….ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…… I kept screaming like a mad person, my room mate begging me to stop…. “Haa baby, why didn’t you tell me you were raped” – she was crying… The boy held me, my room mate was directing him to our hostel, i was fighting and clawing and screaming, my room mate holding my bag and glasses, crying as she ran after us. “baby please stop, please stop… Baby please its me o, please I’m begging you” everyone looked from their windows wondering what the hysteria was all about, but i didn’t give 2 hooves, I wanted that man to chew back his words..
And so they dragged me to the hospital, my room mate spoke to the nurses on duty, the man who had carried me to the hospital, stood there, looking at me with that pity eyes I hated… I looked away, I wanted no one’s pity…. I and My room mate never told anyone… At least not until today… Years have passed for me…. But in Abuja some days ago, some girls were raped by men that were supposed to protect them… This is the reason why women who have been raped never speak up… We would rather die with our secrets than go through the millions of irrelevant questions that do not seek to help but rather defame us and our persons.
Injustice to one is injustice to All….
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