“I’m so sorry there’s nothing we can do. The HPV went untreated for a very long time and has developed into cervical cancer. The best we can do is manage it with drugs.”
“Thank you Doctor” I said as I left the office with my prescriptions. As I walked towards the pharmacy, I felt light headed so I took a seat at a corner, trying to understand how I could be diagnosed with cancer. I just turned 18 a few months ago. I’m too young for this.
My mind travelled back to when I was 7 and my mom was too poor to send me and my 6 other siblings to school, so all I could do was wait eagerly for my friends who went to the public school around so they could teach me what they learnt and we could play together.
On the eve of my 8th birthday , my mom didn’t let me go out to play, instead she sent all my siblings on errands, dressed me up and did my hair. She had this sad look in her eyes that told me something was wrong.
At about 3:00 PM two men and a young lady came into our room. They asked me to turn around so they could see all the ‘goods’, my mom asked me to do as they said, so I did.
My mom collected a bag filled with money and turned her back on me. The men took my hand and dragged me away, I cried for my mother, but she did not to come to my aid. The lady gave me a slap that shut me up. I got into their car where I was forced to drink a strange liquid and soon after, I fell asleep.
By the time I woke up, we were in a big boat and I was surrounded by other children that looked around my age. There were some children even younger than me and they all looked scared of the man that sat in the corner with a whip. It was obvious that he was not afraid to use it.
We got down from the boat and began our walk. Some of us dropped at some point, some of them died and some fainted. We walked until we crossed into another state. We had classes for about 6 months where they taught us things that children shouldn't know, then they fed us for another six months and when they were satisfied with our looks, they started prostituting us out to men and women.
That was the life I lived from age 9 to 17. They gave the females drugs to prevent pregnancy. On our birthdays, we would get checkups from the same doctor, but they never gave us the results.
On the eve of my 18th birthday, I was summoned by the boss. When I got into her office, she handed me a file containing my medical report and it said that I had Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and it had progressed really fast. They couldn’t let someone with such a virus work for them anymore, so they kicked me out; but not before threatening my life not to speak a word about the last 9 years.
I ended up working in a canteen where I washed plates and I also slept with men just so I could get a place to sleep and money to get food. Whenever I did not find any “customer," I would sleep at the side of the road; clutching tightly to my few belongings. I became the streets! A certain day as I began feeling these intense pains, I told my boss, Mama Diamond that I needed to go out and I took a bus to the hospital.
I used the little money I had to run the tests. I was in so much pain and I knew that if I was going to die, I would want to know that I tried everything to keep myself alive.
When the test results came back, the doctor told me that the HPV had gotten so bad that I now had cancer. She went on and on but my brain was not registering anything the doctor was saying. All I could interpret it was that I was dying.
I left the hospital that day and I kept walking. I don’t know where to but I didn’t stop. My life was over and I knew it. When my legs could not take me anywhere else, I laid by the gutter and for the first time since I heard the news, a tear slipped down my cheeks.
My mother had sold me into human trafficking and human trafficking had thrown me into the streets. I was all alone now; little me in my lovely world.
An enlightening piece this is!