Hello there,

It’s a brand new week. First of all, Eid Mubarak to all Muslim faithful out there. I like to think that you have had a great Sallah. For us in Nigeria, we are balling since it’s a parte after parte kinda new week with a line up of holidays and jolly activities inside one big HOLIDAY! There is Sallah break, Children’s day, NYSC POP, Democracy day…and of course the compulsory covid-19 lockdown break across most states of the Federation. So it’s happy holidays to every one of us.hehe.

Oh well, to the reason for today’s topic, I find it somewhat worrisome when I come across social media posts that seek to find medical solutions to obvious medical problems, online. Ever so often I see posts on say Facebook that goes, “please hide my identity. My baby has some type of rash and I have applied XYZ with no luck, please mummies what can I do to clear it? Help a sister” and almost always they end it with “please no insults.”

You have probably come across similar or even worse posts. My biggest worry always stems from the fact that firstly, with kids no one should even have to risk Facebook or internet diagnosis and/or treatment in the first place. Paediatric cases hardly thrive on trial and error medication.

Secondly, these mummies, and sometimes daddies too, don’t they get confused at the many different solutions peddled before them? I mean, for the post above you would get answers ranging from “rub the baby native chalk… give him/her agbo to drink… bathe with cold water henceforth… take her to those Yoruba women that sell herbs they will prescribe the one that you can rub and drink… burst the rash open then mix the water with camphor and rub on baby’s head… use lime and ginger to bathe… madam dry your baby under sun then afterwards take off diaper and rub Vaseline mixed with Indian hemp… please take her to a chemist they will mix kill and dry for you” …then you will suddenly sight a lone comment struggling to survive that says “madam take that child to the hospital” and perhaps another, “baby tribotan ma.”

Aha! Have you seen the ones for stooling and vomiting? Facebook doctors will prescribe all sorts for anonymous poster “please give him freshly squeezed scent leaf… no, bitterleaf works faster… wait, use lime ooo, grate a bit of the zest into it… squeeze his bathing soap and shove it down his anus jor… you must see “take child to the hospital somewhere” in the comments, it is usually always drowning. Diarrhoea that can kill the child even before the parent recovers from the confusion of different “solutions” offered on Facebook and decides he or she is ready to go with an option. My question is why do people do this? Which advice amongst the lot will the parent be able to choose from?

Okay enough, actually, today I decided to read randomly across the social media and I stumbled on an interesting post in one group I follow on Facebook. The poster was confused as usual, the garlic she shoved into her vagina had wandered away and lost its focus. The thing disappeared. Now she was worried and needed solution. I would love to think it melted away but my friend Dorathy believes otherwise. She says it was probably waiting for manual excavation once it finishes its job as a sanitizer. Hehehe.

Trust the Facebook doctors, ever ready to dole out generous advice, mostly hilarious but then it made me reflect on the need to share this message. As I rummaged through the barrage of solutions, I realised one thing, a lot of us women have relocated our kitchens. When it is not garlic we are stuffing in there it is cooking with boiling water or onion to kill germs, next we could be adding salt and seasoning. When we are not cooking away infections we are installing beads and pearls and crystals and tightening vessels and weapons – we just must be fixing something there sha. I am worried.

There is little we need to maintain our reproductive organs as women. The medical experts have repeatedly told us that the vagina is self-cleansing and does not need too much drama. Let us allow it rest too.

Meanwhile, there are those who swear by these alternatives especially herbs. The argument usually advanced is that our forebears used same and they recovered from whatever ailments. They may be correct. I am not a herbalist neither am I a fan of anything not prescribed by a trained medical practitioner for the treatment of ailments. I believe if you have tooth ache, see a dentist, even if extraction is the only remedy, the dentist knows why. If your obgyn suggests Csection, please go ahead, he knows why. If your mental health therapist suggests medication, please take it, he knows why. Not everytime we do trial and error.

I was participant at a seminar sometime in August of 2019 and the medical doctor who handled the health talk segment made a remarkable comment when posed with the question above, and which I find apt for responding whenever I am confronted with similar analysis.

He had said while it may be true that our forebears used herbs to treat themselves and our medications are mostly produced from herbs, what is certain is that some of these people did not also know that while one thing was being cured another was being damaged. This is because a lot of our herbs have not been refined and as such proper dosage cannot be ascertained. So the likelihood of using a particular herb to cure maybe a fever can lead to damage of an internal organ.

I remember once when I watched a baby die on the bed next to where my son was admitted. It was a pathetic sight. What was even sadder was the fact that the death was purely avoidable. The parents who got tired of handling their very sick child at home at the orders of an untrained doctor who also extorted unimaginable sums of money from them and would later refer them to the hospital when the child became too sick, ended up blaming the doctor for not resuscitating their child. It was a painful sight. It was also very shocking. The native doctor who treated them earlier was equally standing there, blaming them for not knowing when to seek professional help. This life is not just balanced at all.

If you want medical lecture, please go to the hospital. If you want to find a Facebook doctor because this post is titled so, please shift from my face first, go to the hospital, the real Facebook doctors work there. Hahaha.

Bottom line of this is simple, please, if you have medical concerns it is always safest to see a doctor. Leave Facebook and social media platforms generally, alone, these are not hospitals. The chances are slim for a “real” doctor to see and advice you properly on the social media. Go to a trained healthcare professional with your complaints.

Self-medication has almost always led to irreversible problems. If you still want to be heady because your ancestors used that route, please leave your innocent children out of it, these babies are helpless. Help them to stay alive. Then for the aunties who are cooking…hehe, abeg, your food don done ehn. It haff do.

Good evening darlings.

PYmusings

May, 2020

DISCLAIMER: This piece contains graphic description which may be sensitive to reader.

Tobi was the toast of St. Patrick’s High School, Igbida. At age 12, he already spotted a towering stature, paired with a confident gait and he appeared smarter than most of his peers.

Tobi spoke the English language with the most refined diction and was a pro at mimicking accents, an attribute which made him every teacher’s favourite and the envy of students at St. Patrick’s. He was an equally great sprinter and to the delight of his peers, could twang on a guitar in the most unconventional ways.

Tobi loved the Arts so much and was a budding star. At his young age, he was vast in his comprehension of the minutest details in literature and he understood blends of colours in Fine Arts, notes in Music and English language composition- all in great depths.

Everyone knew Tobi as a brilliant and confident chap and he was easily one of those in the class whose future was predicted to be unmistakably bright.

*****
Aunt Clara had fiddled with his genital severally in the past but that evening she had encouraged him to maintain his manly erection which had followed. Tobi remembered her taking off her purple thongs but he ironically did not realise his innocence was snatched in that split second.

He remembered feeling pleasure from the warmth of her lips on his swollen penis…he remembered the surge of adrenaline and blood building generously around his genitalia. Aunt Clara had secured a full erection before sitting on him and slowly lowering herself onto him whilst gently guarding it into her vagina.

She had let out a moan which Tobi found amusing. Suddenly she started to move her waist in rotations, albeit rather slowly before gaining momentum and doubling her pace.

Tobi had remembered the build up of what he felt was pleasure and mixed emotions that made him scream for a “leak” but before he could help it, he had emptied his “leak” in Aunt Clara’s vagina.

In that moment, he looked down at his genital, limp, wondering how the excitement and what he felt was heightened pleasure suddenly died and he had no idea if or how aunt Clara had enjoyed what had just happened. He deeply questioned his rationality as he believed he should have enjoyed every bit of it as aunt Clara promised. He rather felt a strong feeling of guilt, worry and shame.

Aunt Clara seemed unperturbed and had told him that he was “now a big boy” and was lucky to have been “exposed” on her watch.

She would repeat the act severally in the weeks and months that followed. Soon, for Tobi, it became something to look forward to.

***************

He stood in utter shock and disgust as to what had taken place yet again, a few minutes ago.

However, months down the line and little Tobi had become a shadow of his once bubbly self. He had no idea what was wrong with him and wondered why he was acting abnormally.

He could hardly live a day without craving Aunt Clara’s unclad body or even masturbating for relief whenever she was away. He had begun patronising the local film vendor for pornographic movies and the local newspaper vendor for erotic magazines. What was however constant was that with each act of masturbation he would feel a strong sense of guilt and filth.

Somehow he knew his life was messed up and there was no one he could really confide in. With every act he would recline into himself, unable to describe why he felt so guilty and dirty following what seemed pleasurable.

Who would he talk to about his fears and worries? Everyone would laugh at him. He was a big boy afterall. A lanky 12-year-old whom everyone in school wanted to identify with.

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**6 years later**

Back in therapy, Tobi recalled how following the incident he had reached out to his best friend Smart, who would later ridicule him for saying he was “disvirgined” by Aunt Clara. Smart had told him that he was a man and should have instead been grateful for the encounter.

He vehemently reiterated that he was not in anyway sexually abused by Aunt Clara as he thought he enjoyed every bit of what she had taught him even though it left him with guilt feelings and resentment for women in general.

In fact, he would argue with Dr. Damini that his marijuana and pornography addictions could not have been as a result of that experience. He had only always thought himself a bad boy who just couldn’t live right.

Tobi however recounted memories of the nights when all he could do was fantasize about Aunt Clara’s naked body and he would masturbate afterwards before he could find relief and sleep eventually. A situation which soon became an addiction that when Aunt Clara was unavailable to satisfy his sexual cravings he would resort to pornography and masturbation. Painfully, each time he orgasmed he felt so much disgust, pain, filth, shame and even frustration. He could never understand why he had to keep resorting to something that caused him so much agony because each time he had to wrestle with the after effect of his deeds.

He told of how he discovered a new addiction in a bid to distract himself from the “unholy pleasures” of masturbation and pornography. He had found solace in marijuana. The feeling which for him was intense and numbing in the beginning and he would even convince himself that the lust after Aunt Clara and the adult film stars in the X-rated movies he was hooked on, were no longer there. Unfortunately, in his low moments, he had realised that the marijuana even heightened his cravings for pornography and sexual acts.

He admitted he had battled severally with suicidal feelings and isolation, which the doctor told him was depression. But until therapy, Tobi had no idea how badly damaged he was from that early sexual encounter by his dear aunt Clara.

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I am Dr. Damini and as I look deeply into the dark and lonely eyes of my broken new friend Tobi, I can see through the masked bitterness and anger, the feelings of guilt, filth, betrayal, lost sense of worth, and above all, the heart shattering sadness of the bottled up pain… My heart bleeds for the boy child who has no voice.

In that moment, I managed to mutter, “let me be your voice my friend”… Let me be your voice, I said!

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There is a lot of girl child advocacy out there that we oftentimes neglect the equally vulnerable boy child. This piece is written to fill a possible lacuna in child advocacy.

Female predators oftentimes go unnoticed. The boy child also needs a voice. Statistics has it that more males commit suicide. A lot of boys are unable to speak up as society expects a false sense of strength from a male figure. Let us end the biases. The days where it was a taboo for a man to cry have long ended. Now we teach our boys that it is okay to cry, it is okay to have a voice too.

The male gender is less likely to seek help for depression and suicidal thoughts because society has placed a faux taboo on male “weakness” in moments of pain. This only makes them more susceptible to death by suicide despite having lesser statistics than women who are more likely to attempt suicide, but less likely to die by suicide.

ATTN: The story in this piece is purely fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

(C) 2019

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Yvonne holds an LLM in International Commercial and Maritime Law from Swansea University in Wales, United Kingdom. She is a Legal Practitioner, current Publicity Secretary of FIDA Bayelsa Branch and a Writer. She is passionate about Child Right’s Advocacy, Mental Health Advocacy, Rotary International, Teaching and Volunteering. She loves writing, baking, photography and the Arts in general. Yvonne lives with her familly in Yenagoa, Nigeria.