Forced pregnancyI
‘I cost four million francs’
I
n my ethnic groups – I’m part Ndowé,
part Bisio, part Fang – a woman is
not considered to be one until she
has given birth. If I belonged to just one
Equatorial Guinean ethnic group, maybe
the pressure would come from just one
group. But I come from three of them.
My mother and grandmother have
reminded me, since I was little, that I was
born to maintain the family economi-
cally. That rich men would love me and
that we’d live off them because ‘you are
the prettiest of all my daughters. You
have the biggest heart, the heart of a good
person. You are the family’. My mama
and grandma said this all the time.
When I was 16 my family started to
complain about my companions: allgirls of my own age, and no boy. Mama
berated me for not looking at the boys
with admiration, just at the girls. My
female friends who also made love with
other girls advised me to bring home a
male friend. My mama and grandma
liked him. But soon another complaint
arrived: the boy didn’t sleep here.
The boy and I came to an agreement:
that he would come and sleep with me
from time to time. We were friends; at
school we were always together. I helped
him to approach girls, my friends. The
night he stayed to sleep at my house, he
stuck his tongue in me; then his penis. I
couldn’t defend myself. He was 20 and
was much stronger than I was. I couldn’t
shout. My room was right next to mymother’s and near that of my grand-
mother. How could I shout?
People said that when you had a boy-
friend he touched you, you liked it, it
didn’t bother you. That’s why they were
called ‘ boyfriends’. They wouldn’t under-
stand why I was upset that he stuck things
in me. Until then, the only things that had
been inside my vagina were the fingers
and tongues of other girls, never a penis.
I kept my mouth shut. My family were
muttering already. They complained that
I didn’t have a boy who brought money
into the house, despite my being so
pretty. I didn’t want to make things worse
by shouting that he hurt me in the night.
And it hurt. My hands, my head, my
heart cried out as he placed himself overNOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2019 65