Monica, 27
Real names withheld for the purpose of privacy.
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“Ignorantia legis non-excusat”- ignorance of the law is not an excuse. I heard that phrase a lot during my arraignment and subsequent bail hearing.
About a year ago, I found out I was pregnant. This news came as a shock. Granted, I had been a bit promiscuous in the past but I always thought I was careful. I couldn’t bring myself to terminate the pregnancy. The thought of terminating the pregnancy made me feel as though I was exercising a power I had no right to – like checks and balances. With much loathing, I kept the baby. I knew that very soon, I would start showing and that would raise eyebrows in my village, so I hatched a plan. I started packing my things little by little, giving things away and saving up to move away. The plan was to tell people I was travelling and never come back.
Four months into the pregnancy, I had started showing and gaining weight enough to make the people around me concerned but not enough to make people conclude that I was pregnant. Surely enough, the rumours started but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. All the rumours did was tell me that my time there was almost up.
Three weeks later, the money I saved up was finally enough to move. I had given out a lot of my belongings so all the luggage I had to carry was this small DKNY travel box I had inherited from my mother. Night came, and everyone had gone to sleep, it was now time for my escape. I could not leave from the front of my house because there was an old woman who lived across from me who spent the night looking out her window. I snuck out through the back of the ”face-me-I-face–you” block I lived in. I made sure that no one saw me.
I was gone by the morning. I boarded a night bus heading to Lagos. The boarding was rough and everyone was pushing just so they could get a seat in. Someone had hit my belly really hard on my way in but I didn’t think much of it. Half way into the journey I started experiencing some pain in my belly. It started out small but the pain kept on increasing by the hour. I pushed through the pain until I got to the new apartment I had paid for. It was a ”face-me-I-face–you” block also that was slightly more spacious than the one I had stayed in previously. I managed to unpack and lay the bed through the pain. I laid on the bed and slept.
An hour later, a sharp pain in my stomach woke me up. It felt as if someone had stabbed me with a cooking knife. I felt as though I wanted to defecate, so I went to the toilet with a toilet roll in one hand and Dettol in the other. As I sat there, I heard a loud thump. I quickly stood up and realised what had fallen. It was my baby, premature, just laying there in the toilet bowl. Not knowing what to do, I cleaned up and ran outside hoping no one would see me. I knew no one there, so I didn’t know who to call. I just laid in my bed, horrified throughout the night.
The following morning, I heard screaming and shouting. They had found a baby in the toilet – my baby. I didn’t think much of it, I thought that even if they found out it was mine, there won’t be so much rebuke for it, after all, the baby was already dead. Apparently, someone had seen me leave the bathroom the previous night with blood on my tissue and reported it to the village chief. I was arrested and taken to the police station by noon.
I did not know that it was a crime not to report the death of a baby even though it was technically never alive. But that was my charge – concealing the death of a baby. I have been granted bail and an amount has been set but until the bail is paid, I remain in this cell and my trial continues from here.
