Browsing Category

Childhood Trauma

Growing Up In A Boarding School By Jasana Uandia

 

I spent my entire school career in a boarding school, where I was expected to look after myself from the tender age of 8, in Grade 2, until I graduated in Grade 12. I remember when I started boarding school during the second term of Grade 2 in the…

The Joys Of Motherhood By Adeoluwa Deborah

Postnatal care seems to go hand in hand with the familiar scent of Dettol, the warmth of pap, and the soft puff of dusting powder. But once a child is born, not every mother steps into celebration; some step into waiting rooms, where the air is heavy with exhaustion,…

Between Village and City Life~ By Joy

My name is Joy. I am a Nigerian woman, the second of five children. My family lived in the city and came from a lower-class. While my parents and siblings stayed in the city, I was raised by my grandmother in the village.

Growing up in the village, life was…

Unapologetically Me ~By Miss Bridget

Hello! My name is Babirye Bridget. I’m 20 years old and from Uganda. I come from a family of three boys and one girl, raised by a single mother. She worked so hard—taking on multiple jobs just to feed us, send us to school, and keep a roof over…

YOUR GROWN DAUGHTER

The joy of knowing I didn’t lose you—
The solace of knowing it could have been so much worse.
The pain you carried,
The self-hatred that consumed you,
I felt it.

The feeling of helplessness,
hopelessness, and despair
You tried to cover with your jokes,
I felt that so painfully
When I saw you on the
hospital bed in…

My Name Is Magdalyne, And This Is My Story

Mama feared the river for what it took; I loved it for what it carried away.

The river knows my name. It has whispered it since I was a child, its voice curling through the reeds, dancing over the rocks, and sinking into the depths where secrets sleep. The current…

POEM: African

My name is an African daughter
They took my childhood from me
I became the daughter of Achilles
I’ve been worried
I’ve been hungry
I’ve suffered
I was a kid.

I grew up early,
Like all the unfortunate women of this land
Life is too hard –
Life is cruel, unfortunately cruel

Life is unfair to women of this land
Life…

A Daughter’s Silent Pain: Growing Up in the Shadows of Cultural Expectations

I was 12 when my world crumbled. It happened suddenly, without warning, like a storm that had been gathering silently in the distance. My father married a second wife, and my mother, his partner of so many years, found out about it the same way I did—when my father…

Golden love story

My name is Christian Mwandingi. I’m from Namibia and a single mother of 4 sons.

This is my love story of going through rejection by all four fathers of my 4 children when each one of them abandoned me the day he found out that I was pregnant.

My family and friends also…