Dear Taiwo,
Please, help me. Save me from my mother before I do something drastic. I have made up my mind to run away to a place where she would never find me. But I remember that I tried it once and she found me.

The other alternative is death. I don’t mind committing suicide; at least, this will put an end to this miserable life my mother is forcing me to live. But a friend of mine who knew the genesis of all these advised me to tell the world my story through your column and then wait for your counsel and those of your readers before doing anything drastic.

I am 32 years old, with no future. My siblings and I are being made to suffer for our father’s sins. I believe only God can visit the sins of the fathers on their sons, but my mother is doing exactly this. At my age, I have no future, except the miserable life she is forcing me to live.

I grew up in a big polygamous family. My father, an ex-military man, had four wives. My mother was the second wife; she had a junior . We all lived happily until daddy brought another lady who according to him, he met during the war in Liberia. She came into our home and destroyed the hitherto peaceful co-existence which had always obtained in our home.
The woman, -Aunty Elizabeth, was very quarrelsome and fetish. She would quarrel with our mothers and even we the children. Mummy Agba, as we fondly called daddy’s first wife, had no children for a long time. This was why daddy married my mother. My eldest sister, Mopelola, the one after her, Diekola and Keji, the only son were older than Segun, who was Mummy Agba’s first child. After Segun, she never had another child.

I remembered that my step sisters from mummy’s immediate junior wife, Mama Baraka, were older than my immediate sister and I, because, according to my mummy, she had a little delay after Keji when daddy brought mama and her baby home. She had another daughter, Amirat.

You would be wondering why they had Muslim names. My father was a Muslim, but my mummy and Mummy Agba were converts and they preferred to call us those names. My immediate senior sister, Yemisi and I came much later and we all lived together without problems.

I could remember we were always happy and whenever there was any celebration, we were enough crowd for any event, without inviting other guests.

None of daddy’s wives had government jobs; they were all business women. My mother and Mummy Agba traded in fabrics and Barakat’s mum sold food stuff. Nobody coming into our house would know who was who; we lived together as one big happy family until Aunty Elizabeth came into our household. She made sure she gave all our mothers a bitter pill each to swallow before she left.

She killed Segun, Mummy Agba’s only son. She killed Keji and Seun, the only son, Mama Barakat, took her children away, but not before Barakat became paralysed in her left leg; she has remained so till today.

Aunty Elizabeth, we were told, confessed to all her evil deeds before she left. She had no child for our daddy and by the time he drove her away, dad had lost everything he had. His business had collapsed and our home had become something else.
My immediate elder sister, Yemisi, and I were in the boarding school for our secondary education and we came home on holidays at a time to find that mum had moved out of dad’s house. She had moved into one of her own houses and that was the beginning of problems for us. I am her last child by my father and until she met Kunle and Adebomi’s father, things were going smoothly.

Mummy remarried and had two other children, as I mentioned: Kunle and Adebomi. Their father was a no-good. He had a wife and children at home, several times, he would beat mummy up and destroy things in our home. In fact, at a time, my siblings and I advised mummy to send him away

We did not move into his house. Rather, he used to come to ours. When his problem was too much, mum asked him to stop coming. It took the intervention of mummy’s connection with some military men to stop him from killing her and my step-siblings.

Posterity, however, remained mummy’s friend. Her business was doing very well. She had several shops at the town’s popular fabric market and she was making good money.

The sad thing, however, was that my other elder siblings had no interest in education. They started going to the market with mummy, I told my mummy that I wanted to further my education and she did not argue with me. When I finished my school certificate, and I gained admission to one of the federal polytechnics, I discovered that it was not what I wanted, so I sat for Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination(UME); then, and got a university admission to study Economics.

During the holidays, I would go to the shop with my mother and gradually she encouraged me to start my own fabric business. Even while the school was in session, I sold fabric to my colleagues and I was making good money.

I really didn’t know what happened, but when I wanted to return to school for my second semester at 200 level, my mum said I would have to stop school because she had no money to give me. I was shocked. I knew her business so well when she said she had no money.

I asked her what she wanted me to do. “Stop school,” she said. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but my eldest sister came to my rescue. She and my immediate sister were not so lucky. I was able to keep and save the money I made from my trade in school, but they got paid by my mummy for their services. They weren’t as buoyant as I was but despite that, she sold some of her stuff to see me through 200 level.

When I came home on holidays, I worked extra hard so I could save enough money to go back to school. I didnt really know how mummy got to know that I had money, and she asked me to lend her some money when she needed to travel out of the country to buy goods for sale. I was surprised, I asked why, she said she spent a lot of money sorting out my step sister’s admission into a private university.

At the same time, my step brother also got admission into a private polytechnic. I told her she wasn’t even thinking of my education, she said she would give me the money back as soon as she sold her goods, so that I could use part of it to pay my fees and she agreed to pay me back later.

Unfortunately, this never happened, as she never paid back and I had to drop out of school in 300 level. She was always complaining that she did not have money. This, however, did not stop her from sending my step siblings to private higher institutions.

When I raised this with her, she advised me to follow my elder sisters’ steps. She said school was not meant for us, as our father was a no-good. I asked her to return my N500,000 so I could go back to school; she asked me to get her arrested by the police. Whenever I asked for the money, she would rain curses on me.

At a stage, my sisters told me to let her be. They made me realise that mummy did not want to pay my money as she did not want me or any of my father’s children to go to school or be better than our step siblings.

As ‘‘hard up’’ as she was, these two children got the best of everything. I wasn’t too young to know a lot of things. I know my father was better than Debomi and Kunle’s father.

I am 32 years old, I cannot even boast of anything of my own. I worked hard for her day and night. All she does is to curse, rave and rant.

My boyfriend is in the USA; everytime he calls he would tell me to go back to school. About two months ago, I went to see his mother and I over- heard her speaking with him on phone. She actually asked him why he wanted an illiterate for a wife. She didn’t realise I heard her; these words hit me like thunder. I spoke with my eldest sister about my intention to go back to school, she advised that I do so without mummy’s knowledge or else I won’t succeed.

Why is my mother doing this to us?

I don’t want to live my life the way my sisters are living. Both have children out of wedlock. As if that is not enough, they have children for every man that came their way. I don’t want this type of life. I want to live and make a life. If she won’t release me from her claws. I am prepared to kill myself. Taiwo, please, help me.
Omowunmi .

One in every four Caribbean men bisexual – study
Wednesday, August 15, 2012

KINGSTON, Jamaica – One in four men in the Caribbean describes themselves as bisexual, according to a study.
The study was conducted online by the Caribbean Men’s Internet Survey (CARIMIS) and involved 2,550 men. The findings are preliminary.
Fifteen per cent of those surveyed said they had sex with men but give no labels, such as homosexual or bisexual, to their acts. The results seem to challenge conventional beliefs about the Caribbean society and homosexuality.
Results of the study, which was launched last November, will be given to regional governments.
The project was funded by the UNAIDS, the joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.

http://www.missworld.com/Contestants/Jamaica/

For the past 49 years, Betty Smithey has woken up in a prison cell, the nation’s longest serving female inmate. But on Tuesday, she woke up a free woman.
Smithey, now 69, was granted parole by the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency on Monday. She was released from the Arizona State Prison Complex in Perryville, walking with a cane.

“It’s wonderful driving down the road and not seeing any barbed wire,” Smithey told the Arizona Republic. “I am lucky, so very lucky.”

At age 20, Smithey was convicted in the 1963 New Year’s Day murder of Sandy Gerberick, a 15-month-old girl she had been babysitting.

Smithey was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. According to Arizona law at the time she was sentenced, only the governor could grant her clemency.

She tried, appealing to then-governors Fyfe Symington and Janet Napolitano, but was denied until Jan Brewer, the current governor, agreed to lower her sentence to 48 years to life.

Smithey will live with her niece in Mesa, Ariz.

Smithey has battled breast cancer and “a myriad of other health issues,” said her attorney, Andy Silverman

“She’s absolutely not a threat to society. She’s almost 70 years old now,” Silverman said. “She’s done a lot of reflection. Forty-nine years in prison, you think a lot about what you’ve been through.”

– Residents of Kamirithu village in Limuru killed a man who was suspected to have defiled a 12 year old girl and stabbed the mother after she raised alarm.

The man gained entry to the home in the afternoon as the woman was working on her farm and the girl was in the house playing with her toys.

According to the woman she was walking home when she saw John Njoroge leaving her house. Concerned by what he could have been doing in her house, she rushed only to find her daughter crying and writhing in pain.

The girl’s mother raised an alarm but Njoroge instead of running away went back and stabbed her with a knife twice. He then ran away but residents who had heard the cry for help cornered him.

The girl’s father said he received several messages and calls from neighbors and rushed home from his jua kali business. He found his wife bleeding and his daughter writhing in pain.

He together with neighbors took the two to Tigoni Hospital and when he returned home he found the man dead.

Irate neighbors had beaten the man to death and police in the area arrived to pick the body and confirmed the incident.