The Mother

The police officers arrived their shack at 7pm

They live in a slum

Their house was the very first on the street right beside the lagoon

They were eating Plantain porridge with crab soup when they heard the knock

Her first son opened the door and ran back inside without saying a word

“Who is it?’

It was the police

She was being invited to the station on the charge of kidnap!

She followed them

When they got to the station, she saw her accuser

Her cousin

Her cousin arrived from the village to live with her three years before

She was a very beautiful young lady

She had lofty dreams of becoming educated

But they were too poor to sponsor her education

So they put her in a Fashion designing school

Six months later she was discovered to be pregnant

The young man who impregnated her denied the pregnancy

She tried to abort the fetus to no avail

Eventually she delivered the baby

A red haired beautiful girl

A week after delivering the baby, her cousin abandoned the baby

One moment she was breastfeeding the baby in their shack, the next she was gone

The responsibility for the child fell upon her

She took it like a mother

Even though she had four children of her own

The baby became her fifth child

Four years later her cousin came back

Demanded that she wanted 300,000 for the baby or she will take the baby away to others willing to buy her

She needed the money to pay for her flight to Europe

Someone was processing her visa and work permit

But she has to come up with her own ticket fare

What she was saying made no sense

“You want to sell your baby?”

 “You want to sell my child”?

Her cousin kept trying to explain how dire her situation was and how desperately she needed the money

But she wouldn’t hear it

She doesn’t have a dime to give her cousin and she cannot also give up the baby!

It became a heated argument

Her cousin left

And now the matter has been dragged to the police station

Her cousin kept insisting she wasn’t interested in a police case, she just wants her baby

She carried the child in her womb and delivered the child all by herself

She just wanted her baby back

The police officers took their statements, asked questions

Eventually they granted the accused bail

That night a SAN heard the case and took it up pro bono

The judge was appalled

Judge: “Young lady, is it true you want to collect your baby from this good woman so that you can sell her and use the money to travel to Europe?

Her cousin: “The baby is mine. I was the one who got pregnant. I was the one who delivered the child. I am the mother and I want my baby back”

Judge: I am sorry to disappoint you but you are not the mother. You were just a vehicle through which the baby came into this world. The nurturer of a child, is the parent of the child!

The judge gave her full custody of the baby

That was the last day she ever saw her cousin

Eleven years later, as the child, now a teenager was returning home from school, she was kidnapped!

They searched everywhere for her to no avail

It was as if her heart was yanked out of her chest

Who could have done this evil to her?

Her other children tried very hard to comfort her

But one million other children can never replace a lost child

She bore it for ten years!

One evening she got a distress call from Emergency Management Agency

Some deportees arrived from Libya

Her daughter was one of them

It was true.

According to her daughter:

Her cousin often sneak to her daughter’s school to give her clothes and goodies

Her daughter always told her of such visits

She didn’t see anything wrong with it

She was also her mother, even though the law disagreed

She did this for many years until one day she executed her plan

She kidnapped and trafficked her own daughter to Libya

Threw her into prostitution

Became her Madame!

But she never forgot who her real mother was

One day she was arrested and weeks later she was deported!

She was happy her daughter came back alive

Her daughter wrote GCE

Her daughter gained admission into the University

Her daughter studied law

Her daughter now works with an anti-human trafficking agency