Sexually abused Girl-Child says: Zimbabwe neglected my childhood and Britain crushed my future dreams - pt2

True story of Nozipho Godlwayo,
Part two, - taken from the book 'Sweetmother'

We had lived together with my aunt for about two years. She had gone to Zimbabwe to visit her husband, but upon arrival, she told me uncle was coming to visit us in the UK. I felt sick, really sick, it was going to be the same old story, my aunt had long hours of work as a social worker. I would remain with this man again demanding the same thing to me, sex. When my aunt asked me if I was not happy my uncle is coming I did not answer her but gave an innocent smile, never show it, never. This funny uncle had a tricky language use that nobody actually got to understand. He would give jokes that are nearer to or exactly saying the truth. For example, he would tell my aunt in a joke, that if you come late from work well remember I have a young wife at home who would "look after me". That statement said everything but my aunt never really thought beyond it as it was a joke according to her but the truth according to him. When he arrived from Zimbabwe, sex abuse started too. He would tell me that I came to UK with his assistance so I needed to be overly appreciative of that. Again, in the bedroom there was a television and a video. I would be told to come to the bedroom and watch sex video films. If I did not come to the bedroom he would come and pull my hand, come to the bedroom before your aunt comes. I came to notice that he needed the assistance of a sex video to get aroused, for his member to get erection, he would look at the video and laugh at the acts, sex acts, he would be holding his member then that would be slimy sometimes, he would tell me to suck it so that it stands like it is in the video. I refused this, he told me how ungrateful I was, he is the one who told my aunt to bring me here to the UK, now I am refusing to do what he wants. I had learnt from the school that we can report abuse and sex advances. It was how I was going to do it that was a problem to me. Having refused to do oral intercourse with him he left me alone for a while as he had serious issues with my aunt. They was fighting going on that I vaguely knew from Bulawayo, it resurfaced here in Sheffield's again and in full force. My aunt would be beaten severely sometimes. She was away for more than one day when uncle asked me to come to the sitting room as he wanted to know something from me. There was something I needed to tell him the truth and if I did not he would tell my aunt to send me back to Zimbabwe.

His question was, are there men who came in the flat sleeping with my aunt? That question caught me unprepared, borderline irrational. I never thought he would ask me such a question, I was only 14 years old then. There were men who came and they slept in my aunt's bedroom. These men never spoke to me I never interacted with them anyhow. To say yes I was dammed and to say no I was dammed. Both ways I was a looser as a mass of confusion was going round my head. My mien must have told it all that what he asked was true, which child tells lies? I needed to say yes. Having told him that my aunt came home and the fight started! He had evidence from me that there were men who came in the flat and indeed slept with her. My aunt came into my bedroom and told me that I would leave for Zimbabwe, I cried and cried, but I never actually told the school that I had problems at home. I wish I did, too late. It was one fight that happened in my presence where my aunt told uncle that he was impotent and it was for this reason she was having extra-marital relationships. It also dawned on me how this uncle depended on sex videos ever to manage sexual intercourse. I hated the idea of being threatened with going back to Zimbabwe. I would do anything to stay in the UK. Because I was insecure, I seemed to be asking him if I was going to be sent home and he said no. I believed him because childhood is blissful.  When my aunt was away again for long hours my uncle told me to come and watch the sex video films together in their bed. I went there with the hope that he would tell me that I would never be sent home back to Zimbabwe. He was right on top of me when my aunt opened the door and found us making sex. She told us to continue as she would be standing outside until we finished. I was petrified with fear and my world fractured I felt I was really sold out by both. She did not ask me and that was a bad omen for me as I knew something was brewing, something very nasty. Should I tell the school? What do I do, should I run away? I did not know anybody in the UK apart from this weird uncle's sister who lived in Southend-on-Sea. I was ashamed to look at my aunt, the code between her and me was breaking to a point of no repair. My inner connection to the nerve centre had drifted considerably to the extent that if I knew how to kill myself I could have done it to leave this embarrassing situation in this home altogether. My aunt told me to come with her for a drive. I thought, well she wanted to tell me something. It was a long drive until I found myself at Gatwick Airport. She processed my documents and told the security to assist me to the Air Zimbabwe flight. I had nothing with me, all my dresses all that meant me were in Sheffield. I went to the UK Border Agency and gave myself up. I told them the problem but I never told them the whole truth, the fabric of my IsiNdebele upbringing hindered me to tell them about the sexual abuse I have had since I was 8, eight years old. I omitted so many episodes when I told my story to the Child Enforcement Agency, suspicious always of the consequences but however I asked if I could go and stay with the sister to this uncle who appeared sympathetic in my eyes. Both my aunt and uncle came to collect me at the airport. The Child Enforcement Agency was at work. My aunt was suspended from work as a social worker. The social workers came home to try to understand the whole situation and the logic behind the deportation. My aunt stood by one word, the narrative tensions between the requirements of the Child Enforcement Agency on one hand and the two of them on the other hand, she is sending me home because her marriage is violent, a moral exhortation. She showed the authorities the wounds she got from the beatings and they were all too visible and evident. She also omitted that she found me and uncle in bed making love! She told the authorities that I was not her daughter and she cannot subject me in such a violent atmosphere and as a matter of fact my father wanted me back home, she said it to effect my father's wish. All made sense to the Child Enforcement Agency but a run of luck for me. Everything that was discussed that day conspired to put me at a disadvantage. I was the loser all the way round because I was a girl, Black, poor, minor, nobody to speak on my behalf. I do not even mention the power play between my aunt and the weird Uncle Roy, there were contradictions at every turn by language and visual cues that insisted the opposite. The Child Enforcement Agency appeared to sympathize with the physically battered wife than an abused 14 year old girl, supposedly from the information they got from the two. My aunt exploited her accurate knowledge of the British system she was working for, to divorce her husband and to get rid of me, she was a social worker herself employed by the local government in Sheffield. I got deported back to Zimbabwe. It was good-riddance for the British government social system, one dependant out of the begging system, there are so many of them anyway. My welfare was sealed without my knowledge of what really was concluded in the entire discussions and nobody seemed to share my disposition. I just discovered everything regarding my welfare indirectly and intuitively, I had no right to know for whatever reason.  In the final weighing, I was treated inhumanly by all three parties, my Aunt, the weird Uncle Roy and the Child Enforcement Agency. I was made an item of their misunderstanding and I sometimes coveted in absolute ignorance and innocence, my shamed face could have interpreted the difference on the part of the CEA. It is also this shame that made it not possible to report abuse at school.  I was soaked in the worst circumstances ever and I suffocated, the atmosphere itself was suffocating too. I managed to pack what I could. The following week, I was at Gatwick airport en route to Zimbabwe. I was aware of the fact that I would not even stay in Bulawayo, but I was going back to Nkayi, to my father's home. I was welcomed by some people I did not know at the airport who sent me straight to the bus rank, Renkini. I was off to the tribal trust lands, TTL, where I was born, a heavy social come-down from Sheffield, UK to Nkayi TTL, North Matabeleland, Zimbabwe. All my dreams of being someone, somebody to assist my poor parents in Nkayi TTL crumbled to naught, to ground zero. My father was shocked to see me at his home. He had no idea about what happened. It was the first time I would tell my parents everything, everything, A to Z, the saga of what transpired. My father went to Bulawayo to collect my sisters who were still staying at this posh suburb of Hillside, Bulawayo. Their ordeal was the same as mine, they were abused by this Uncle Roy too, a serial paedophile, a distillation of everything twisted, bad and cynical. He abused them at the same time and using the same methods, showing them sex video films and then after that his member was ready for some sexual intercourse. He was no longer able to have any semblance of conjugal obligations with his wife, a fact I belatedly understood. He was only capable of doing those perverse sexual acts with children who had no idea about sex, he taught them sex and how he wanted it. This is how perverse a human being can be. Beyond the pale! It was a crime that went unpunished, just like many other crimes committed to girls of our age and poor, we are not an exception at all. It is this recognition how wrong everything turned out with all three of us!  It is because we are girls and therefore not valuable in the society we live in, young girls are nothing really. Even if they get abused sexually, it's nothing to write home about, there are better things to talk about than young girls, poor girls from the tribal trust lands, of Ian Douglas Smith, Nkayi. Think about the global village and how the tenor and timbre of the global economy works, deep recession, credit crunch, economy contractions, debt ceiling have to be negotiated in most developed countries. Where do we fit in, poor girls from the remote bushes of Nkayi ? Blessed are the meek, the poor, for they shall inherit this earth! We shall be considered later in our afterlives when we have died, we shall indeed inherit the earth. But I doubt too if we can qualify to be Catholics any more to inherit that earth. The moment they are told that we have experience of sexual intercourse, we would sent to punishment classes to clean ourselves from the sins we have committed.  In the mean time, we can be of use to these impotent men, pedophiles, when they can't sex anymore we could be of assistance perhaps to make their members stand and be counted, to regain their man power personalities. How are they going to make it if the member is no longer able, whose fault is it? The poor girls become visible and useful. They would get their fish & chips and ice-cream from Nando's after every sex escapade as payment anyway. Can they get fish and chips and plenty of ice-cream or that kind of treat in the Tribal Trust Lands of Ian Douglas Smith in remote Nkayi District? Where is the problem if they are remunerated with rich food to become fat from trans-fat. Before, we were sickly-thin when we were at our home in the rural Nkayi! That trans-fat, vegetable fat they use to make fish and chips would sustain our bodies for 12 years! 12 years! Trans-fat that is just one molecule away from plastic! It is good investment to suffer from diabetes mellitus in later years in our lives.

This man called Roy destroyed my life completely and nobody would ever care to put this man to face justice. He would forever go round a free citizen, scot free. He is one of the dignitaries of Bulawayo's high society. But because people have no conscience this crime is dead and buried, my sisters and I are the losers in it all at the end of the day. It is the price we had to pay because our parents were too poor to look after us. We were given to those ill-chosen parental substitutes who have no idea what are children and their emotional needs and protection. It is my society that condemns one if one is poor, young and weak. The moment the society knows that we were abused, we are condemned equally and labeled as cheap little girls who did not know how to look after themselves. Looking after ourselves indeed! We were manipulated right left and centre and dumped after that. I wish I do not get a child, a daughter who would go through all that I went through myself, dear Lord I beg you, no child for me. It was rough enough, no child no cry. I do not want to cry anymore, penis penetration at eight years was painful and I cried, enough. God willing, I hope to acquire some internal personal grace in all the trials and tribulations I have gone through. God bless us all women of all colors in our different ways!