By Amanatullahi Yusuf
It happened when I was about 7 to 8 years old. it was a child-on-child abuse. It was early nighttime in my compound and being a public one as it is, we the children were playing while our parents were scurrying here and there trying to put together our dinner. The night was dark as the electricity had been cut off.
I and my younger cousin who was staying with us then alongside my friend and her younger brother decided to play the popular game of Mummy and Daddy. I was the mummy and my friend’s younger brother was Daddy –I was about two years or a year and some months older than him– we decided to play nighttime and pretend we were all asleep. With the boy next to me and the other two at the far end, we all closed our eyes and lay down in front of their veranda with the sound of my mummy pounding yam making music, that was until I felt the boy stand up only to kneel by my feet. I felt his hand on my legs the next moment, moving my legs a little, all the while stealthy not to alert the other two.
I could have asked what he was doing or stopped him but I was curious to see how it would end. I felt his hands caressing my legs upwards before I felt his lips, they were steadily moving upwards, it wasn’t until he was advancing towards my inner thigh that I pushed him away. He was reluctant to let go.
The next day while we were playing hide and seek the others ran to hide leaving me looking for where to hide and the boy going after me only to lean in to kiss me which I dodged —come to think of it, I have been dodging a lot of kisses in my childhood— I had to tell him to keep off me because I am not interested in whatever it is he is trying to offer. He stopped his attempts after that day, I am sure it is because he is scared I would tell on him.
Although I didn’t like what he did and felt it was very wrong, I couldn’t help but blame his aunties and mummy who let him watch Ghanaian movies that my mummy always sent us away from because of the high adult content in it.
Now that I think of it, this incident is very similar to the saying, “Curiosity kills the cat”.