All Chapters of Mummy, i didn’t Run Away: The Unwanted Child: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The phone camera is propped up on a clean white shelf, but the girl sitting on the bed in front of it is broken into millions of pieces. I am here, but I am not really here. My body is no longer mine anymore. In fact, my own skin crawls and irritates me so much some days that I just want to tear it off, days when the weight gets so heavy I feel like ending it all just to make the quiet stop. I haven’t even started and I’m already crying, letting out a shaky, wet laugh as I lifted the back of my hand to wipe away the tears spilling over my cheeks. Mummy, how are you doing? I know you are probably wondering why I didn’t just call you instead of making this video. The truth is, every time I try to say these things over the phone, you don’t really give me the chance to speak. You don’t ask how I am doing or how I have been feeling. Before I can even say anything about myself, the conversation somehow becomes about what you need, what someone else needs, or the next problem that requires

Every single morning before the sun even dared to show its face over the horizon, I was already paying the price for a life I never asked for. While my mates were dreaming, I was scrubbing floors and balancing heavy bowls of water on my head down Jonathan's Street just so my siblings could wake up to clean clothes and a prepared breakfast. By the time I sat in a public school classroom, my bones were so heavy with exhaustion that I was already fighting a losing battle just to keep my eyes open. Going to school wasn't really easy. I always knew I would have to sponsor myself. Right from primary school to secondary school, I attended public schools, while my siblings went to some of the best private schools. You used every opportunity to tell me that I should be grateful I was going to school at all. You said I shouldn't complain because my mates were out there hawking on the streets, but at least I was in school. And I was grateful, Mummy. I really was. *(I paused for a moment, my vo

Madame Veronica didn’t look like a monster. She looked like a savior in an expensive lace gown, sitting in her plush office while the girls outside brushed hair and gossiped about campus boys. If I had known that the cold bottle of Malt she handed me was the down payment on my soul, I would have smashed it against her desk and run. Madame Veronica's promises felt too good to be true. She owned a very big salon close to our school hostel. Sometimes when my hair was rough, I would go there just to make cornrows, nothing too complicated. Madame Veronica didn't actually braid hair herself; she mostly stayed in her office, supervising the girls who worked for her. One faithful day, I was sitting in her shop while one of her girls was working on my hair. Suddenly, Madame Veronica walked out of her office. She opened her mouth in amazement, staring straight at me with her jaw slightly slack. Without a word, she walked right up to me and asked, "What is your name?" I told her my name was

Not quite long after we left, a white, luxurious 18-seater bus pulled into Madame Veronica’s shop. Veronica didn’t enter the bus with us; she said she would join us shortly and that we should go ahead while she came in another vehicle. We all lined ourselves up and got into the bus. The driver was a very dark man, about 5.5 feet tall with a big tummy and a heavy build. He wasn't even smiling, and right away he started barking orders for us to be careful. *"Do not stain my seat! Do not stain my carpet!"* he grumbled. *"I just washed this bus. This bus is just coming from the car wash. We don’t have to litter things up inside the bus."* Shortly after, we were on the road. After about a two-hour drive, the driver pulled the bus into a quiet compound. We were surprised and kept asking ourselves, *This is not an airport.* I had never been to an airport before in my life, but I definitely knew this was not an airport. The driver parked, came down from his seat, opened the passenger doors

The next day, the driver came into our room and told us we wouldn’t be leaving right away. We would have to wait until the evening. He explained that he was still making payments and handling the necessary arrangements for us to move deep into the Sahara Desert. Because a bus couldn’t navigate the terrain, they were arranging a large truck instead, meaning he would be leaving the bus behind. Someone else would come to pick up the bus and drive it back to Lagos. None of us knew what to think anymore. At first, we kept trying to convince ourselves there had to be a reasonable explanation. Maybe this was simply how people traveled to Europe. None of us had ever left Nigeria before, so what did we know? But the longer we stayed in that room, the quieter everyone became. Some girls sat on the floor hugging their knees. Others stared through the dirty window without saying a word. Every now and then someone would quietly ask, “Do you think we’ll really get there?” Nobody had an answer. W