Sickle Cell Warriors and Marriage
I have been of two minds about what I am about to write.
On the one hand, I feel it will be regarded as insensitive.
On the other hand, I feel keeping quiet will only lead to more lives and destinies being destroyed or at least injured.
I promise to be fair and that I will delete this if I discover that my observation on this matter is wrong.
I had dated one sickle cell warrior in my life.
I had also been friends with three or four.
I have a soft spot for those who have ill health or are facing health challenges.
I know for sure that sickle cell warriors thrive when they are loved unreservedly and boundlessly.
I also know sickle cell warriors are people, with a will and a determination to live their lives on their own terms regardless of what the doctor recommends or what they know is good for them.
Let me give you an example.
I was dating one Sister S in 2009, she was a sickle cell warrior, a graduate of fisheries from LASU and a proper born-again Christian.
Her father was well-to-do and the senior pastor of the church where I served as the youth pastor.
She woke up one morning and said she would be going to The Experience.
I was never a fan of crowded events and I said "Sorry, not for me".
On the day of the experience, Sister Shade came to my house and told me that I must follow her to the event because it is her dream to attend the event and her parents insisted she must not go alone.
Foolishly, I followed her.
Remember that I didn't want to go.
Also, remember that I am not the sickle cell warrior here.
She was the one with the medical issue and she had been dealing with it all her life.
She knew the dos and don'ts.
We left for the event at about 7 pm.
By the time we got to the Barracks bus stop, the BRT bus we took parked and told us to disembark because of traffic.
We walked from Barracks to TBS.
When we got to TBS we started looking for seats.
Suddenly it began to rain.
It rained all night, in fact, the rain practically ruined the event.
We ended up in one of the canopies erected by food vendors around the event centre.
The whole place was flooded and this sister was not supposed to be exposed to the cold.
Before I knew it she started shivering and gnashing her teeth.
I was twenty nine years old with only our transport fare in my pocket.
She was twenty-eight years old at the time.
I held her all night and covered her with as many clothes as I could find till daybreak.
When it was morning, I went to beg a BRT driver who was in the queue to please allow us to get on his bus because my friend could not stand for long due to her medical condition.
The man saw her and left the queue, he picked us up and rushed us straight to a hospital.
I reached out to her family members after she had been admitted in the hospital.
Guess who they blamed for everything?
Me!
Her father kept quiet throughout but the look in his eyes could have buried me alive.
Her mother said a lot.
I couldn't even imagine how I was the culprit.
I didn't want to go for the event, that was my first time at TBS, my mother should be blaming their daughter for luring me to an event I didn't want to go and exposing me to the rain and other hazards.
Why did her parents assume I was the devil when it was actually her doing?
Why did everyone make me feel like telling them it is her fault makes me lack empathy and compassion.
Somehow I didn't part ways with her after that event.
I wonder why.
On another occasion, she said we should go for Holy Ghost service at the RCCG Camp.
By nature, she is the outgoing type.
I would rather stay indoors and read .
We went to the RCCG Camp and suddenly she started having a crisis after the long walks and all.
She always had Aboniki balm in her bag and I began to massage her legs and thighs.
My nose is very sensitive to smell and the smell of the balm really bothered me but I persisted.
One of her uncles came into the room where we were (In her father's house).
He saw me rubbing her legs and thighs and left us alone.
Later, after she had slept off I left the room to get her some hot tea.
As I was coming back with the tea I heard the uncle talking to her in the room.
"He is not rich, he does not have a job yet, you cannot be walking like this and say you want to enjoy a good life, you need someone with money, someone who will get you a driver to drive you everywhere and make sure you have air condition and top medical treatments.
You must be pragmatic.
This boy that is rubbing your thighs and legs will eventually rub upwards and you will open your legs for him.
Once you do that you will see that you have entered into a life of suffering and lack.
You will not live long if you marry him.
He does not have the capacity to take care of you".
I entered the room and pretended I didn't hear a word of that exchange.
A week later, she called me and told me I must get a job and a car before I could talk to her about marriage.
I left her graciously.
The day she heard I had met another person, she fainted .
She was rushed to LUTH where she was hospitalized for weeks.
Guess who they blamed again for provoking her crisis.
Me!
They said I broke her heart and I almost claimed her life.
I was bad for her when I was with her.
I was bad for her after we had parted ways.
It taught me a great lesson.
The second experience I had with a sickle cell warrior was when a lady came to see me at my office to discuss her health and marriage.
All the things she kept saying her husband was doing which she counted as abuse or lack of empathy or care were normal things a man who didn't marry a sickle cell warrior would do in my opinion.
Her husband expected her to cook, to wash clothes, to do house chores.
When she does not do them the house gets dirty, and her husband then calls her lazy and dirty.
She would sometimes neglect the children and the husband who works out of state would get a call from the neighbours that the children were crying in the house.
He would call or get a neighbour to knock on the door until she woke up and then she would hand over the children to the neighbours so that she could rest.
The husband would call her a bad mother or sometimes "plastic hands".
This was verbal abuse and this makes the husband a monster.
She sees herself as a normal person but she could not do what normal people do.
Her husband was not a man of much means.
Sometimes when her crisis comes she would have to go to her older sister to get money for drugs.
This makes the husband seem irresponsible to her older sister.
"How much is her drug that he cannot buy it for her"
Sometimes when she told her sister the same sob story she told me, the sister would call the husband and start cursing or threatening him with "If anything happens to my sister, I will make sure you are locked up for life because you saw her fragile condition before you married her etc".
The third case was a guy called Koko, his real name was Lekan.
He was a family friend who wanted to date my older sister several years ago.
He was a sickle-cell warrior.
A strong-hearted young man whom I took at the time the way one would take an older brother.
One day he drove from Ibadan to Lagos for a meeting, drove back home, slept and died.
Thank God he went alone.
If my sister had gone with him and they were together in one hotel or somewhere and he died
Imagine what people will say.
And when it comes to death, people are usually very unreasonable.
When the married lady I wrote about died, her older sister made sure they took the children from her husband using all the resources in their power.
He was their father and the children were his but they were rich and they used everything they could to intimidate him so that they could have the children their sister bore for him.
I write this so that those who read it can make anything they desire of it.
I am asking the family of sickle cell warriors not to make life difficult for those who threw caution to the wind and married their son or daughter.
I am writing to sickle cell warriors to refrain from marrying poor people who lack the means to take care of them.
Life is hard enough for young men and women without the added burden of fending for someone they love who happens to need special care and attention.
I am writing to those who would marry sickle cell warriors to note that it is extra work that requires a lot of patience, resources and deep care.
If I have offended anyone, I apologise.
This is not meant to be discriminatory or dehumanizing to sickle cell warriors.
I just felt we shouldn't pin the death of sickle cell warriors on their partners just because we are hurting.
If you have a sickle cell warrior who is married and you see any evidence of abuse, you don't need permission to remove the victim from the relationship.
It makes no sense to accuse the partner of all sorts after.
You have a duty to tear the marriage to pieces to save the life of the sickle cell warrior being abused by his or her spouse.
If you can support your relative who is a sickle cell warrior financially even while he or she is married please do so.
If you can buy him or her a car and other things that will make his or her life more comfortable please do so.
It is better to preserve a life than blame its loss on someone else.
It is my prayer that everyone will find joy and fulfilment.
-GSW-
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