The joy of starting University can be so overwhelming for most girls and it makes them begin to draw out plans on how to live their Campus life.
What to do, who to roll with, category of guys to date, girl friends to keep, kinds of hair to fix and braid, shoes and dresses on fleek, parties and clubbing etc top their priority lists.
Once the good girl from home arrives Campus, she begins to reason as one who smoked 3 jars of apple sisha and gulped down codeine mixed with coke and and is suffering from the aftereffect of the combo.
This is a story of my junior student back in Secondary School. Her name is Grace. She was petite in size, timid in nature and didn't have that much confident in her back then but guess what? She is very confident, bold and to crown it all, a top shot! I guess the Campus life has a way of changing people to what they want.
I boomed into Grace on a Sunday in our local cinema and she wasn't alone. Her oversized, "just a friend" guy of about early 30s was right there waiting for her to exchange pleasantries with me so they could go in to see a movie. I got chatty with Grace and she disclosed to me how University life is bringing out the best in her after many years of living under a tight bottle watch of her parents.
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I mean, who could have thought Grace would be this exploring? She looked totally different, so naïve and oblivious of how this "heaven on earth" for her could endanger her life. "Be careful young chap'', I said to her and left.
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I was given a call by Grace to honour her invitation for her matriculation party later in the afternoon which her parents came up with to celebrate her. We ate, drank, chatted, laughed about old memories and school life generally and finally the party came to an end.
As usual, some students organised an all night party at their homes or hotels to celebrate themselves on that day while others who doesn't want such celebration or doesn't have money for it, keep it low and return back to their houses or hostels.
Grace phoned me again same day by 6pm asking me to accompany her to one of her friend's party in an hotel. I told her it wasn't a good idea and besides, the street where the hotel is situated, is very dangerous at night especially for young girls.
[Source] (www.shuttlestock.com)
She didn't listen to me, afterall, this wasn't secondary school I could order her around and she would obey. Hmph!
It was 8:30pm when I saw an incoming call from Grace. This time, she was crying and asking for help. She told me where she was and I called a friend who is a medical student to accompany me and we rushed down there. She was lying on the ground in the middle of a primary school field in that street.
Guess what? She was raped by 2 guys who caught her going home alone. She was in lying there helpless in her own blood. Like the First Aiders, we came to her rescue. We clean her up and managed to back her down to the school's medical center.
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There, Grace narrated the story of her rape experience to us and how the guys gave her 8,000 Naira to be used for her treatment.
Now it's "hell on earth" for her because she has just been dragged out of her heaven. She lives in regrets and is traumatized.
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I keep having this reoccuring thoughts of those guys that raped her, to have given her STDs. No rappist in his right sense can be so generous to give a rapped girl such a whooping amount of money and tagged it, "for treatment". I really fear for Grace.
To my fellow young girls aspiring to be "slay queens", "small girls with a big God", "Divas" etc... Be careful of what you wish for in life especially in a new world that have people of all sort in it. Remain the good homely girl you are known for. And if you must change, change to a better, best girl.