Rest in peace Yetunde - The story of my lost sister..

My dad worked as a carpenter in the local market. He made a living fixing anything and everything that needed to be fixed around the market- from broken tables, failing roofs and anything that needed fixing. On good days he was able to bring home a fish or two from work. I remember how he usually smiled crookedly as he walked up the pathway that led to our house. The crooked smiled that won mum over he always said. I usually waited for him at the market anytime I was done with school for the day so he could walk me home and tell me how his day went. I never got tired of hearing how he almost drove a 3 inch nail into his hand or how he separated fights between two women who quarreled for flimsy reasons. My father was a peaceful man and my mother loved him for it.


My mother on the other hand was a seamstress. She had a rusty old shack at the front of our house where she mended torn dresses for our neighborhood children. It was her dream to open a big shop one day where she could train little girls like me in the art of tailoring. My father always boasted that he was going to open up a shop like no one had ever seen before in the neighborhood for her, and she always laughed, telling him that we had to move to a better house before that could happen. All this was before Yetunde.


YETUNDE

I knew my mother had been acting a bit weird for a while now and I wasn’t sure what the issue was. She woke up later than usual and was cooking my father’s meals late. It didn’t take my father long to figure out that she was pregnant. My mother knew it was hard enough for both of them taking care of me as an only child and that this would definitely mean that our living conditions would have to improve because our one room house was no place to raise a new child.
My father started coming home later than usual. He was searching for more jobs he said, and my mother had to understand, she always waited up till he came while I slept and allowed my five year old mind to dream of mermaids. Soon he started coming home without that smile, and without that fish- our conditions were getting worse.
It seemed that as my mother’s stomach swelled with time, our living conditions fell also. Dad had started drinking and less money was coming to my mother for our upkeep. My mother tried not to complain about all of the changes she saw in my father but it didn’t get better with time. My father was killed on a rainy night by a drunk driver. The man at the morgue told my mother he wasn’t drunk that night, and my little brain couldn’t really process what it meant to be dead.
He had a small funeral. He was the only son of his parents and he had lost contact with all of his relatives so his burial was conducted swiftly and without any drama. He had left my mother a widow, but his death marked a turning point in our lives.

THE DAY THEY CAME

My mother had given birth to my baby sister. She named her Yetunde. She said the name reminded her of our father. We still lived in our one roomed house and my mother still mended clothes at her shack.
The women came in twos. They asked me for my mother and I pointed them to her. They had a conversation in low tones and even if they were audible enough for me, I knew I wasn’t going to understand much from what was being said. Their visits became frequent after a week. I looked forward to seeing them because they always brought sweets for me whenever they showed up at our doorstep. My mother’s countenance was dropping and she smiled less. After one of the visits of these women I walked in on her sobbing. It was so intense that she didn’t hear me open the creaking door to her shack. I walked up to her and asked her what the problem was and she told me that those women were from the ministry of child and women affairs and had come to take Yetunde away from us. My six year old mind couldn’t understand why my one year old sister who could barely walk had to be taken away from us. I had a lot of things to show her, a lot of games to teach her and lots of experiences to share with her. WHY DID SHE HAVE TO BE TAKEN AWAY???

DEPARTURE

The day Yetunde was taken away I was at school. My mother had agreed to have her put into foster care and be adopted to a family who had nicer means to take care of her. She knew clearly that I couldn’t have been able to stand the sight of seeing my only sister leave me so early. I came back from school that day and couldn’t find anything that belonged to Yetunde. Apparently her packing was done in such a way that made it seem like she never lived with us. I cried my eyes out and my mother consoled me with a packet of sweets that the women had left for me. It seemed liked they planned it all out neatly because I stopped crying immediately I tasted chocolate. Maybe my sister wasn’t so important to me after all.
Our living conditions improved immediately Yetunde left us. My mother received cheques from the ministry women who said they had found a good home for Yetunde and her new parents were interested in our wellbeing. This never seemed enough for my mother, but I was glad my fees at school could be paid on time for a change. The cheques stopped coming after six months and we never heard from the women from the ministry again. My mother tried all she could to gain access to Yetunde but apparently, we didn’t have enough money to do so. She never stopped trying to find Yetunde and this led to her untimely death. She was found by the roadside by trader that lived close to us. As we were all poor, they tried to revive her using whatever local means they had in their arsenal but everything failed. I WAS AN ORPHAN.

LIFE WITHOUT FAMILY

After the death of my mother, I moved to staying with my uncle at the big city. Life was easier there to an extent- I didn’t have to walk 2 miles to school and I ate 3 times daily. When I turned 15, my uncle made a move on me at night. He had been in two failed marriages and it seemed like I was going to be his third wife unofficially. I spent nights fighting him off and pleading. Sometimes he listened, sometimes he didn’t, I had to live through this as I had no other place to go.
I finished my university education at 25 and I ventured into human rights law as I had studied law. I worked pro-bono for a long time as no one really wanted to pay anyone who was fighting for the rights of families. I spent lots of late nights at the law firm I worked because like it or not, I had to find Yetunde. She was the only family I had left and I needed to know if she was alive or worse.
After spending 3 years looking for my sister without success, I stumbled upon some old case files I needed to study to prepare for a new case I had and lo and behold, as I opened the first file, I was staring at the face of my sister. She was older in the picture, but her birthmark and smile hadn’t changed. I sat on the floor of the office as I read with tears how my sister never lived with any foster parents. She was kept in a facility where other children like her were nurtured to venture into prostitution at young ages. The file never stated where she worked at as prostitute, but she died at the age of 17 from HIV/AIDS. My poor sister. Her grave site wasn’t stated but whether I liked it or not, I had found the closure I so badly desired all my life. I was without a father, or a mother, or a sibling. Whom the fault lied with I can’t tell till this day... image source