By: Amanatullah Yusuf
From the last abuse till the next harassment was just a series of unwanted remarks/advances and invasion of personal space from older persons and younger ones alike.
The major harassment that happened next was in my senior secondary school years. It was night and everyone was in the dining hall for dinner. Our dining hall has a small door entrance that leads you from the kitchen to the dining hall and on this particular day, there were about five (5) to ten (10) boys there who came late to dinner and we were waiting for their pardon food.
It was at this time that the house mistress asked me to take stuffs to her car for her and since those studs were a bit much, I had to go in rounds. As I was taking the first item to her car, I passed by the boys and one of them was making crude jokes about my body and how I should let him touch me in inappropriate ways. It was at the point when I was insulting him and daring him to touch me that he spanked my butt and ran off. A good part of me wanted to go after him and teach him a lesson but I thought against it because I didn’t want people to see me running around like a child and the other boys were already laughing and having their fill of entertainment, I would just be making more of a fool of myself. I decided to just let it be and catch while going on my second round. If only I knew.
By the time I was going on the second round with stuff filling my hand, I was looking around for him when I got to the entrance leading to the dining hall, he spanked me again and I could faintly see him in the darkness running away, my embarrassment traversed space and my anger skyrocketed.
I sadly couldn’t do anything as I could only bow my head in shame and swallow my anger. At the time, I believed the best thing to do was to swallow my anger and let the matter die down so nobody else would find out about this embarrassing moment, they would only mock me further.