My Mother Dumped Me in the Toilet Immediately After Birth

 

“I was born at home, on the Third day of June, 1985, to a single mother of one. Immediately my mother gave birth to me, she dumped me in the toilet…”

 

This is the story of Martha, who like many others, came to learn later in life that motherhood does not always come with love for the offspring. She narrates how her complicated relationship with her mother drove her into countless convenience marriages and almost suicide. 

 

“I am told that well-wishers who heard a baby crying inside a pit latrine rescued me and took me to the Thika General Hospital. On arrival, the doctors cleaned me up and stabilized me. There was a couple that was having a difficult time getting a child, and they happened to be at the hospital at the time of my admission. As soon as they heard the story, they offered to 'buy' me.  

 

The nurses and other hospital staff were secretly conducting my sale. My auntie, who had accompanied my rescue team had briefly left to record a statement with the police when I was being traded off. When she came back, the hospital staff told her I had died. 

 

She demanded for a body, but the hospital couldn’t produce one. After a long week of police intervention, she recovered me and took me home. By this time, my mother had been arrested for dumping me in the toilet. However, when I was brought back, she was released. 

 

My mother later got married to the vilest man I have ever seen when I was around five or six. He would come home drunk and start insulting and threatening us from a kilometer away. There was a time I witnessed him stripping her naked, dragging her out of our house and strangling her almost to death. I threw a jerrycan at the man to distract him and save my mom. He came for me and beat me so badly that I passed out. I still have a scar on my face and arms from that beating.

 

We begged our mom to take us to our grandmother but she refused. She took us to a nearby farm and laid leaves on the ground, and we spent the night there. 

 

The following morning, she went to beg my stepfather to take us back in. I later came to learn that my grandparents had told my mother she was not welcome in their home and should do what all women do to maintain their marriages. 

 

She left the abusive marriage after two years. By then, I had endured every harrowing experience like sleeping outside, going without food for days and everything other evil thing. The man would beat me so much that sometimes he broke my fingers in the process, and I’d have to go to the public dispensary alone. 

 

We went to live with my grandmother but that place was worse than the man’s house. There was this uncle who would beat us with nyahunyo and electric wires at the slightest provocation. My mom became very hostile to me after leaving the marriage and I almost slept under the granary every night. When I was left to care for my grandmother who had TB, and auntie came visiting and saw the potential of a good house help in me.  My mother had started working as a barmaid by this time. I was shipped off to Mombasa when I was nine.

 

Adjusting to the new life wasn’t easy. People tell me I used to yell a lot-I guess it is because that’s how my mother, stepfather and uncle used to speak to me. I also used to use very abusive language in normal speech. I’d call other children dogs, demons and even corpses. The Gikuyu word for a corpse is Kîimba, which my mother used to call us daily. It wasn’t until one kid beat me for calling her that when I realized it wasn’t okay to do it. 

 

I was shipped off to live with a cousin who was always kind to me. But his wife started claiming I am eyeing her husband so I had to go back to my aunt. There was a man old enough to be my Dad who would make shameless advances at me, including touching me inappropriately. One day I slapped him to protect myself and he reported me to my aunt. 

 

I was given a proper beating for being disrespectful. By this time I had developed ulcers. The medical tests showed I had ulcers but everyone in the family kept saying I had contacted STDs from sleeping around.

 

I finally took off and went back to my mother’s maternal home. At this time I believed I was terrible and unlovable, so when a certain guy came to my life and showered me with love and attention, I fell head over heels. Sadly, his parents heard that I was a child of a prostitute (Bar attendants were commonly called maraya, which means prostitute). They rejected me.

 

I went back home pregnant. My mom wanted compensation for my pregnancy, so she denied me food until I agreed to accompany her to FIDA. We were told to come after delivery. 

 

I think I have been in countless convenience marriages to escape hostility at home. when my second marriage ended, the insults at home where so much that I took some agro chemicals intending to end my life. I spent an entire week unconscious and was really disappointed when I woke up on a hospital bed.

 

My mother got sick in 2007 and I started taking care of her. I remember that whenever I’d visit her in hospital, she would ask me whether I have gone to check if she is dead so that I can inherit her things. 

 

She violated me verbally and physically throughout my life even as an adult. Even while I took care of her in the hospital bed, bathed her and changed her, she’d still tell me that she would still dump me in the toilet if she got another chance. For the entire two months  she was hospitalized, her mother never came to see her. She even asked me to beg her to go see her, but her mother never cared.

 

 I still cried uncontrollably on the day I went to see her and found an empty bed because despite everything, I wanted her to be there, to fight with me as usual-I guess my trauma bond with her was really deep.

 

I still struggle with self-worth and have a hard time with relationships. But I am hopeful, and your community gives me some encouragement to keep going for my kids.