The Girl Child.

I started reading novels when I was in primary school.  I would read anything I see and so my Daddy got me novels.  Mills and booms, historical romance, fear streets et al.  When I got to secondary school, it just grew to more novels and competition.  Then in JSS3 I dived into motivational and inspirational books, I remember Think Big by Ben Carson was my first. 

While I read these romantic novels, sex was portrayed as easy and enjoyable (which is) even when it is your first.  Those novels never prepared the minds of young girls that her first is painful and a few others may be like that till she is used to it.  Even when it is done in the heat of passion. 

I had a terrible experience yesterday and I have been wondering when we as a nation are going to put an end to CHILD MARRIAGE. I boarded a vehicle with a Fulani teenage mother, her son is less than 4months which means he is an infant.  The child was crying, I think he needed more breast milk but this teenage mother was Immune to his tears. She cared less, I was worried, I wanted to collect the child and put him on my shoulders and rock him to sleep but I could not. In fact I do not know who my sympathy is to, the teenager or the infant. 

This girl was lost in her thought while her breast wasn't in her son's mouth and he kept crying.  I saw through her eyes the unhappiness that has engulfed her world.  I mean this girl is not ready to be a mother, wife and woman.  She has grown beyond her age and still do not understand what it means to perform these roles.  This young girl needs love, she still needs the strong arms of her parents around her.  Why give her a role which is not meant for her? 

This girl has been slept with probably with a man old enough to be her father, her dream of a happy childhood has been snatched from her.  How then can she perform the role of a mother? 

Aren't children planned for? How do you entrust the life of an infant to a teenager?  The infant is malnourished, the girl equally looked pale yet she is breastfeeding.... Child Marriage is barbaric and sincerely not cultural in culture. 

Everyone woman should be happy about the birth of her child and she should be happy about nurturing,  nursing,  caring, loving,  consoling, pacifying, and adoring her child.  No child should be forced into marriage and grow over night to become a mother.  Motherhood is an art that comes spontaneously, it cannot be acted neither can it be forced.

This girl has been denied the joy of motherhood.  She is suffering, her baby too is suffering. To tell you how the cry of her child means nothing to her, she was watching a video from my phone that I was playing for my daughter to keep her calm because she was tired of the journey. This doesn't mean this girl is heartless, NO!  She doesn't know what to do.  She also wants to be carried around and played with. 

There are 1.1 billion girls today, more than 30 million girls around the world do not go to school, and nearly 40,000 girls under the age of 18 become brides. Girls are marginalised in learning, health, and livelihood and prone to violence of all sorts. Most girls who are forced into marriages before age 18 are most likely to marry men over a decade older than them. What this means is, they would most certainly be in a violent and suppressive relationship. 

I'm privileged to be me, to be where I am today.  I mean, that teenage girl and her son could have been me and my adorable daughter.  Child marriage is a no no(in my daughters voice). How do we tackle high maternal and infant death if we are quiet and we don't make our voices heard? Wake up Nigerians, if we educate a girl child we educate a nation. #IStandWithTheGirls