A Young Mother’s Heartbreaking Journey to Truth

Falling in love with a soldier makes you a fool, or so they say. As a young mother, I learned this truth the hard way.

The day I said yes to Ikem, I knew I had just said yes to life on the battlefield, and the life that followed only confirmed it. Everything felt different from that moment forward.

It was as if I was living on borrowed time, living someone else’s life and walking in their shoes always. It was foolish of me to have said yes because that gave Ikem freedom and a place to cool off from the effects of the war. He was not from our town and was just there for a while.

Soon he was gone again; he said something about the war brewing in the North and that the soldiers posted to our town had to go and stop it. It suited him: fighting and being at war just in time after planting his child inside me.

I knew my mother would curse me if she found out I got pregnant by a soldier, so I hid it well, wondering what could have been and what was not at the moment. Days spanned into weeks and weeks into months; mother found out after I was three months gone and cursed me.

I felt the heat of her anger but not more than I felt the heat of Ikem’s love when I remembered our time together; on those nights when he and I were alone in his room at the soldiers’ quarters. It was love, it just had to be, but it felt different now, having to bear the results and shame of a pregnancy with a man unknown to my parents and even to my community. All those memories were what made me cry, not the fact that mother cursed me and threatened to drive me out of her house once I delivered my child.

Shame drove me insane as I counted the days and hated every part of my body, especially the area carrying the one who would soon call me a mother. I was due nine months later, and when I heard nothing from Ikem, I endured the long walk to the Post Office; clerks there could easily write one letter for a shilling and post it for five shillings.

I still had the money Ikem had given me, which made me feel special, but right now it felt like he had paid me off, particularly after making love to me.

“Write me a letter,” I managed to say to the male attendant in the post office.

It was when he asked for the postal address that I discovered I didn’t even know where Ikem was. I was a foolish teenager and a confused one at that. The tears welled in my eyes as the attendant waited for my response.

“To August,” I said and walked away shamefully under the full glare of the elderly cleaner woman. She would say I was stupid, but in truth, I was desperate. What was I going to say? Tell them I was pregnant by a man I knew nothing about his whereabouts, that I was stupid enough to get pregnant at sixteen? I just didn’t want to have Ikem’s child and not have him by my side. I wanted him to know of my predicament and just see how he would come home to me.

What I didn’t know was that halfway around the world, Ikem had been buried along with other fallen heroes on the battlefield. If I had sent that letter to the right address, it would have gotten to him, but it would have met his death.

READ ALSO: Embracing Love After Life’s Hardest Trials

About Author

Maryann Ijeoma Nwokoye

Maryann Ijeoma Nwokoye is a creative writer, storyteller and development communicator. She is particular about using her skill in communication to see that this world becomes a better place and for men to turn their spears into ploughshares.

Beyond writing and storytelling, she is enthusiastic about human development. She has also managed programs for Non-governmental organizations that are focused on human development through technology and entrepreneurship.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication and a Master’s degree in Applied Communication (In View) with a core interest in technology and development communication.

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