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While She Was Growing Up As A Child
At the recent Daystar Leadership Conference, popular comedian Helen Paul was one of the speakers. The theme of the conference was Mindshift and Helen Paul who is now a Professor in a US University opened up on her childhood years and how the bitter experience she had then shaped her life. She spoke about Rejection.
“Some of us cannot take Rejection. Some of us do not know that the words we say can make someone feel rejected forever, but in the way it worked for me, it was different. What Yoruba call Akanda Omo (special child, appointed child).
Okay, so you must have heard before where I shared on a stage saying I was born out of rape and I grew up with my great grandmother, where everybody in the compound, in the area will call me Bastard.
So I grew up hearing that you are a Bastard. I grew up seeing my aunties come to give grandma money for feeding and they will tell grandma, don’t spend the money on a bastard, it’s you that know where you got the bastard you’re holding, it’s your feeding money we gave you. We are not saying you should use this money to take care of one bastard child, we’re saying you should use it to take care of yourself, buy your medicine and Mama will say okay. Once they leave, Mama would turn to me and Mama will speak in Pidgin “ you don hear wetin your auntie dem they talk, na like so this world be oh, na people wey suppose be your Mama blood be that oh but dem don tell you who you be, if you like grow up forget yourself say person wey no do well, nobody dey celebrate am” and Mama will turn to me and say again in Ishan. “Can you hear what I’m saying” and I will reply also in Ishan.
But I realized that everytime I offend Mama, Mama would not want to touch me because they’ve warned Mama not to beat me. Imagine a child that the mother gave birth to and the mother is feeling ashamed because everyone in the area is like, is that her? Is she the one that gave birth to that child? How old is she? Look how she is. So the shame, my mother didn’t know what to do, who to run to According to what she told me, so sometimes she will just carry me, without name, she will be looking for where to eat. She said one day, she went to Makoko, that she heard that there’s this church in Makoko where they share food for free and fruit and that was a cele church, open 24 hours”.
So, she will go there just to collect fruits, so she can press the banana and put in my mouth. She said one day she was in the church when a big pastor according to them that I discovered later was Baba Oshoffa, was passing and said, I’m looking for someone, she was at the back of the church trying to give the baby something when Baba Oshoffa came and said who is this? He said that they don’t know her in the church, she replied and told them not to be angry that she just came to sit. Then he asked what is the child’s name? she replied” I haven’t given her a name”. They asked how old she was, she mentioned and he said who was the first person that showed you Mercy? She said one aunty called Helen. The man said that is the name you should give her and you see that name, don’t play with it, you can give her another name as she is growing, you can give her any other name but don’t drop the name ‘Helen’.. My mother said yes. The next thing, it remains Surname. So, with the Surname, the one I remember very well, I can never forget when Mama took me to Onoyade Community Primary School, Fadeyi Yaba, Lagos and they wanted to register me to Primary 1. Because of my small stature, they said I should use my hand to touch my ear but it wasn’t touching the ear. Then they asked for Birth Certificate, Mama said she doesn’t have. Where would we find Birth Certificate for a bastard? Then the teacher said since you said this is her age, we will let her go but what of her Surname? You only mentioned Helen. So I saw Mama trying to call a meeting and most of my aunties were saying, No, she can’t bear our name, no she can’t bear our name and one man from nowhere stood up and said give her my name. So, imagine a small child looking at this one talk, looking at the other one talk, do you think the child will grow up with love? It was hell. I grew up with anger, with venom.
Don’t look at me less. I am a Comedian in Nigeria, and a Professor in the United States.
