SURVIVOR : chapter 1

Few days to the new year, the year 1993, my dad died. The news came to me on December 29th and obviously all plans for the new year were cancelled and for a Lagos girl like me new year was a big deal. As at that time my dad was my rock, the only person I trusted. I lived with my grandmother and she wasn't really a fan of mine, to say the least.  For months I cried my eyes out,  why did daddy have to go? Who would fulfill all the promises he made to me?  I was heartbroken.  

Even in the midst of all my mourning, "suitors" kept tripping in. People always said I was pretty,  not like I didn't believe it,  but unlike most Lagos girls, I didn't fool myself into thinking my beauty should make men automatically fall at my feet and money should keep flowing in.  I was going to make something out of my life independent and outside of the 'men should protect and provide' box.  Don't worry I'm not about to get all chimamanda or feminist on you,  but of a truth I've always wanted to be independent. 

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In Nigeria, when a person dies the loved ones of the deceased automatically become very important to the relatives and suddenly advice start tripping in from  here and there.

So for a young mother of three who lost her husband just 3 months ago her friends might say "mummy fogo, you know you're still pretty young, there are some of my husband's friends that are single o,  I could link you up with one of them because you know you need a strong man that is earning to take care of yourself and your children".

Statements like this makes you wonder whether this people dashing advice out aren't the same people who were very friendly to the husband before he died and you may even start wondering if they actually planned the death of the woman's husband . 

So as a daughter of a dead father,  I started receiving advice about marriage. My mother's siblings, my cousins, and long distant relatives all wanted to sell me out to a man as fast as possible. It was like they were waiting for my dad to die so they could marry me off. I was only 18, marriage wasn't even on my list so it couldn't be a priority. There are two particular "suitors" that I can't forget. They were both old enough to have fathered me. They both thought they could "take care of me" since my father had died. One of them had a son that was about 2 years older than I was, I had to ask if he was asking to marry me for his son. The man got angry and thought I was insulting him, but I had simply asked an innocent question, after all I was still a child by Yoruba standards. But I guess I was really beautiful seeing as old men were willing to marry a child like me. I got asked out by many people-boys, men and women alike. I remember one woman particularly, she invited me to her house that afternoon and served me rice, she treated me so nicely and we started talking, she wanted me to date her husband's younger brother. I was shocked and angry at the same time. So all that rice was just to ask me to date one guy, and why couldn't the guy approach me himself? To me any guy that was too shy to talk to me and had to go through his sister in-law was a complete no-no, I mean how would he have enough courage to talk to me if we actually go out?.

After my dad's death he was buried immediately because even though we were Christians most of our extended relatives where Muslims, so he got buried the Muslim way, my mother didn't have a choice. I went back home to my grandma's, I was the only one of my parents' 7 kids that lived there, as a  young child I used to think they dumped me there because they hated me. 

My grandma as I said earlier didn't like me much, when I got back home and didn't cry much about my father's death she scolded me for not crying, saying I didnt have feelings.

Usually when my grandma decided to make me think topic of discussion people came to watch,   yes she was that interesting !!

She would shout my name "tomisin, come and eat your food o,  I don't even know where all that food is going, you eat and yet you still look  thinner than a broomstick! "