Perfect SCARS

1

  As a child, born into this world. You can't decide what home or family you want to be born into

Some get really lucky when born into a home with love and comfort and togetherness. They grow under the supervision and care of their parents and family.

They experience the wonderful feeling of being loved and loving others right from the day they were born

And the responsibility of such child is now something the family must carry and protect their offspring like an egg

Ohh how lucky is that child, to be a part of something beautiful and amazing

I was never a lucky child.
Not even for one day

My mother didn't even live to hold me in her arms for one second, I was lucky to come out of her womb before she drew her last breath

I was born in a local midwife's home,where my mother has been receiving treatment for her illness since I was due two months ago and I was named after my mother who was a teenager when she had me, she was just eighteen years old

They named me Agnes and apparently I had no family... My mother came to lagos from her village.. Lord knows where and got pregnant out of ignorance and died the minute I was born

And then they handed me to a wretched drunkard named Kofi who apparently thought he was my father because of a short lived relationship he had with my mother
I was born fair skined, while kofi was as dark as one's shadow  and my mother herself wasn't light either

Kofi may have discovered I was not  his daughter but he didn't abandon me. He took me to his half empty room because he had sold most of his things 

I don't know how I survived the first few years of my life but I somehow did. He was never at home except when he manages to get home after drinking himself to stupor.he works at a mining company during the day and resumes to a bar parlor at night where he spends all his earnings on alcohol....   He did  enroll me in a nursery school and later primary school but it was never the same

Growing up wasn't easy. Infact things got complicated when I started growing
At age nine, men had started raising my skirts and touching my thighs and carrying me about

Mostly our neighbors and the friends of well my father. Kofi was my father at that time

The day I started bleeding everything changed 

My class teacher. Mrs Nwosu gave me motherly advice on how to handle my puberty and felt I had an incompetent guardian and needed to be probably taken care of. Although she meant well but her overzealousness put my life in ruins 

She had noticed how unstable and deprived I was, she had even visited our home and saw our living  conditions

Our room was partially detached and we have to fit in different bowls and bucket when it rains because the rain falls  directly inside through the holes on the roof

We had a single mattress on the floor, our cooking stove and pot at one corner, then our clothes hanging all around our small room

We had no Television, no disc player, no chairs.. Even our celling fan is faulty  faulty and instead of repairing it, kofi wants to sell it he just hasn't found the right buyer

Mrs Nwosu expressed her complete anger to my living condition and promised to find a solution, she also lives in the neighborhood so she knows how often my father patronizes the bar parlor and how he keeps humiliating himself every now and then

She called in child services and my living condition was weighed and I was asked if I would want to continue to leave with Kofi or move to the foster home

As a child, I thought of how barely we eat good food, how Kofi was always unavailable and always drinking, I thought of how often he throws up and mess himself every now and then and I have to clean up every time.. I thought of how often he changes my school when we can't pay off the school fees and always causing trouble when he's not meeting up. And he spends so much money on drinking than my wellbeing... I own very few clothes and shoes. I always envy others when I see them in beautiful new outfits

I thought about everything and all I could think of was all the negative attributes  he portrays and I couldn't help myself figure out that even though Kofi was not good enough, he tried to take good care of me and give me the best he could afford and keep me safe because he sees me has his responsibility.. He did all this despite knowing  he was not even my biological father

And I made the biggest decision of my life based on material things and ruined the next years of my life

I said yes to Foster home and No to Kofi detached roof