Games that adults play

 
One afternoon, I must have been five or six years old, my playmates came by and one took me aside to the maize field to show me what a man in her home had been doing to her. She carried a pack of sugar that a man who had been defiling her gave her as a price for the game that he played with her and for her silence. She asked me to lie on my back as she demonstrated what this man did and made me promise never to tell anyone. This went on for a while and I just remember feeling sick each time my friend came by and took me away to demonstrate, the last time being when she invited our other friends to watch us demonstrate and we were closed up in my mother’s house and the lady who looked after us when my mother was in school found us playing this dangerous game and beat us up and to my relief i think that was the last time this girl did her demonstration on me .I do not remember the name or face of this girl who might have been slightly older or same age as me but I remember the activities so vividly, I guess my young mind recorded them so deeply.

We moved homes but within the same teachers compound for the school. An older male from our neighbour's home gave me plenty of attention that I had never received from any male before. This man was actually interested to play with me and would single me out each time I was playing with my buddies and it felt good to be finally chosen compared to the man in a blue car who never chose me. 

One afternoon while I was at the neighbours playing, this man as usual chose to play with me alone and away from my friends. Of course I felt special and the two of us went to play and kept on it till everyone had left. What I specifically remember about this day is that, rules of the game changed the moment everyone left. He said we will throw ball while seated and he asked that whoever scores will have to move towards the loser while sitting and when one meets the loser to let our private areas kiss. He let me win each game and I moved towards him all the time and being small and tiny, i would find myself in-between his legs and feeling so scared and somehow knew that this was wrong. I threw the ball away from the designated game area and run to pick it and decided then to run home but told no one about it.

The man in a blue car

My memories of being young are filled with much fun and yet at the same time periods of longing to know whose I was.
My first memories of my mother were those of a very angry person but also of someone who cried a lot. I did not know why she was usually angry or crying till much later when I was older.
My father left my mother alone in his rural home village and never made contact nor provided support to her to raise the 2 young girls that they had . He left the village to go and seek employment in town under the promise that he was going to come back for her. My father re-married in town  and my uncle who lived in the same neighbourhood told my mother about it. I think my mother held on to the hope that he was coming back for her and as the years passed on she grew angry and sad.
In the years that I lived in that village I do not remember seeing families with dad and mom , either it was something beyond my comprehension or truly many were female headed families left behind by their 'town' job hunting men that I didn't know what fathers meant. I really don't remember seeing many males or I was simply unaware of the gender divide.  I have no recollection  whatsoever of my friends with fathers or of what fathers did with their children. Its either I was too young to remember or this was not part of my world. My mother told me that we (my sister and I) were bought from the hospital and that was the only truth I knew back then and that was enough. 

My world changed though when one afternoon while we played by the school where my mother taught , a blue car stopped near where we were. Our instinct was to run away but we didn't because the person inside on passenger side was known to us.This was also my first encounter with a car. Before this moment, the only thing in the car categories I had seen in my entire 5 years of existence was a bus that passed by the road through the school each single day and we would stand by the road to wave or simply flag the bus down and we would be too happy when we were acknowledged by driver or the bus passengers. I also don't know how I got to this village but my mother says I was born in a mission hospital some location north of my father's village.

Back to the blue car story, a man followed us and specifically asked my sister to get in and said he was her father from 'town'. I don't remember if my sister got in the car but what I remember is that my sister didn't get home to my mother with me that day and my mother was very upset . She told me that the man was going to poison my sister . I later found out from my friends who had followed the car that this blue car was parked at my grandmother's house and from then onwards I was told I could never visit my grandmother again because they were going to kill us( this grandmother was my father's mother, I later got to understand).  I was confused because I loved my grandmother and was treated preferentially and enjoyed being at her home because of the so many treats she had waiting for us when we visited which was every other day.
That day marked the journey of intense longing: to know this man in a blue car and why my mother didn't like my grandmother and this man in the blue car.
One other specific thing I remember with the blue car encounter was that this man only claimed to be my sister's father and never mine which I didn't mind, but this too set me on a journey of wanting to know then who my father was.