You Can Take A Horse To The River...

I met Comfort (not her real name) in the village as a member of the church. She was a single mother with a three-year-old daughter. I watched her come to the church for some months and made enquiries about her from the former Pastor. Apparently, when she got pregnant, her father was furious and nearly lynched her especially when the alleged father rejected the pregnancy and denied ever having a relationship with her. The father made her life hell. In fact, she was delivered of her baby inside her room almost with no assistance as the father threatened his two wives not to come to her aid. Her stepmother defied her father to assist her and got a slap in the process but was resolute and assisted her till she gave birth to the baby girl. The former pastor later came in the morning to sort out the issue and chastise the father for his cruelty.

That was three years before I got there. So I called her and asked what she had been doing since the time her daughter was born and she said “nothing”. I asked if she would like to go back to school but she was reluctant, saying that she stopped when she was in J.S. 2. It was then the interpreted told me she could not read very well. “How did she get to JS 2?” I asked. Many of them attend primary school in the village, junior secondary school in the next village but cannot read or write properly. Well, that is a story for another day.

I asked her if there was any skill or trade she would like to learn and she responded that she loved tailoring (fashion designing). I told my interpreter to make enquiries at the next village where she could learn it and we found a woman there who was willing to train her. I discussed with my wife and we paid for her enrollment at the mini fashion house. We sought the consent of her parents but the father was reluctant. He felt the girl was not serious and that we “should not waste money on her”. I however insisted that we should not allow her waste away, sleeping and waking up from Monday to Sunday, perhaps occasionally going to farm. After some persuasion, the father agreed and she was enrolled at the fashion house in the next village. Her boss was considerate. She would teach her from Monday to Friday and allow her to take Saturday off so she could attend to her personal tasks and also take care of her daughter. She became lively in church and her confidence returned. I kept track of her progress by calling her trainer and also instructed her brother to occasionally check on her at the fashion house. Everything went well and like a flash, one year passed by. I then relaxed the monitoring.

After one of our Sunday services, her brother called me aside and told me Comfort was gradually becoming wayward again. He said he noticed boys had started hanging around their compound because of her and whenever he came out to accost them, they would run away. I called her and told her she should remain focused, the village boys were probably coming after her now that she had a promising future. She thanked me and I left it at that.

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A month after, her brother called me that Comfort had disappeared. They had not seen her in forty-eight hours!

 “forty-eight hours!?” I exclaimed. “Why are you just calling me now? Have you gone to the police station?”

“No sir. We alerted the village vigilante and they are on the lookout for her.” I had forgotten there was no police station in the village except you go to the next village. I asked to speak to their father and his response was cold. He told me she was not missing giving the circumstance of her disappearance. She had come home early from her fashion school when nobody was at home, packed her clothes and left the house. It was when they did not see her and they searched room that they noticed her clothes were gone too.

When I got to the village on Sunday, I spoke to every member of her family and they all told me the same story. She packed her clothes and left. Her father accused his wives that they were hiding the truth from him. He had quarreled with them and they denied knowing anything about Comfort’s disappearance. I was extremely worried and insisted I would go to the police to report. I noticed they were uneasy so I studied their body language. I gave my bible to one of the younger sisters to take to my car. I met her by my car and I spoke to her to please let me know if she had any information about her sister. She nodded. I looked at her and I knew she had something to tell me. I gave her five hundred naira to use at any call centre to call me should she hear anything from Comfort. It was then she melted.

“Pastor, please I beg you, sir. Don’t tell anybody what I'm about to tell you. My father will kill me!” she then confessed that her sister had discovered she was pregnant and was scared their father would kill her hence she ran away to her boyfriend’s village.

“Please tell her to call me anytime she calls you”

I heaved a sigh of relief. At least we knew what happened to her.

I did not hear from Comfort until after she put to bed in her boyfriend’s village. She called me to beg for forgiveness and also to help beg and pacify her father. A year after she eloped, she came back to the village with a baby boy. We were able to reconcile the daughter and her enraged father. She returned to her boyfriend’s village with no known source of income and no plan for her future except to depend on the said boyfriend. At least the boy took responsibility.

But I felt betrayed and disappointed. I had planned with my wife how we were going to buy her a sewing machine upon the completion of her apprenticeship. All the time, effort and money appeared to have gone down the drain. I was encouraging her and hoping she would be a testimony to many other single mothers in the village but you can only take a horse to the river but you can’t force it to drink.

However, we can’t be discouraged. We must not be discouraged!

“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” Galatians 6:9