SANTANA

By Okiyo Stephen

Seated on the floor of her almost empty single-room “house”, a great sob escapes her after two hours of constant sniffing as she tried to avoid the urge to cry. She kisses and holds on tight onto her cheaply acquired pillow in pursuit of a consolation. She longs for an assurance from anyone that everything shall be okay, including her pillow. She wishes the pillow could talk to her and encourage her that all shall be fine.
Her brain is a plethora of thoughts, bludgeoned with conflicting emotions on how she was going to break the news to her mother. She was raised by a single mother who has to maneuver between three jobs to keep her and her twin brother in the university. She has never known her father. He never turned up in their life. She didn’t know who she was or what her tribe was. Sometime, in her lonely night thoughts, she used to wonder why her father wouldn’t have used a condom or pulled out if it was in his plans to be an absent father. A daughter without her father’s love.
“……Mummy, not only has my degree afforded me an honors’ accolades but also a mother status, is that not wonderful….” She tries to make fun of her situation but ends up crying further.
She recalls how it all happened; a naïve campus girl from the village on pursuit of the Friday night campus thrill woke up the following morning on a strange bed next to a strange naked man. Her pelvic was in pain, drops of blood stains evenly distributed on the dull colored sheets. She lays on her back as she stared bluntly up on the ceiling while telling herself, ‘this is it; my hymen, dignity all gone in the name ya kuitiwa form.’
Now 15 days and counting since her cycle was due and still no signs of the flow, she knows what to expect next. A life will grow inside her and overtime her stomach will protrude due to kicks thundering her flesh. She will be forced to miss the morning classes because of its sickness, maybe just maybe she will have to defer her studies for a year or so to be a mother. A role she never anticipated to assume that soon.
Sitting on the cold floor, she wonders how she was going to support the baby inside her when her life itself is mess. She barely know its father. She had heard how expensive it is to be a mother; the cost of baby diapers was expensive. Babies are frail beings, they need constant medical check-ups that are very expensive for a poor campus girl. She struggles to have a meal per day, how will she manage to feed a baby who needs constant feeding?
These thoughts triggers a stentorian scream that is accompanied by acrimonious tears that runs down her cheeks. Pro-life? Pro-choice? What do they all mean? Where do I stand?
She believes that life is sacred and should be respected, even for the unborn. But then again what if the environment it is to be born in does not favor its growth and development. What if its future is vague as futility, full of hardships? Like hers?
“………yes, life is precious but the choice remains with me, to be a mother or not…”
They say abortion is bad. A crime? That is there opinion, she is also entitled to hers. Babies are blessings from God, a beautiful inexplicable gift, but getting one unplanned for is fast forward in life. It disorients one completely.
It is high time we have honest conversations on this topic; to create awareness and to clearly establish safest means on how to get on with it. And as such it will it will help avoid the miscarriages, bareness, internal bleeding and even death.
“….wait, am I keeping this baby or not…”

#YOKI