Fragmented Yet One: Tortinah tells her story

By Dr. Stephen Adédọ̀tun Adésànyà

Trust may be lost if we disrespect those with little voices, because all human beings are important, and God calls us to care for his world. 'Fragmented Yet One - Tortinah tells her story' invites us to care for each other, into a journey of integrity which offers a new perspective on our personalities. We are called to clarify our experiences,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Westwood Books Publishing
• Release date: Feb 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888871850

Dr. Stephen Adédọ̀tun Adésànyà

Dr. Stephen Adédọ̀tun Adésànyà, an archdeacon emeritus, as a revered speaker and author has written extensively in the area of pastoral psychology, care and counselling. He served both in Ijebu and Akure dioceses, Church of Nigeria. He later ministered in the Church of England dioceses of Southwark, Leeds and Blackburn until his retirement from full-time incumbency. He presently holds a PTO in The Diocese of Liverpool.

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Copyright © 2023 by Ven. Stephen Adédọ̀tun Adésànyà, Ph.D.

First printed (Nigeria) 2014 by Adejobs Prints

First published (UK) 2014 by AuthorHouse UK

Revised & published (USA) 2022 by Westwood Books Publishing USA

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

The right of Stephen Adédọ̀tun Adésànyà to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is a work of fiction and except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

Illustrative pictures by Adéolu E. Adésànyà for EMADE Solutions

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Contents

Preface

Author’s Note

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Glossary

References

Preface

With special thanks to:-

God Almighty, for His ever - loving and healing power.

My family and friends especially to Christine Shore, for being enthusiastic manuscript readers.

The Academic Board and colleagues at The Evangel University, Osijek, Croatia.

To those who work behind the scenes in our parishes

To those children in care and their guardians, and for the generosity of all who support their wellness. Our parents are specially important.

To my colleagues from Ijebu-Imusin, Ago-Iwoye, Ijebuland, Akure, Ado-Ekiti, (Nigeria); Novi-Sad, Belgrade (Serbia); Ljubljana (Slovenia); Osijek (Croatia); Prof. Mirjana Kapetanov, Rev. Neil McKinnon, Pastor Damir Spoljaric, Ven. Titus Abolaji, Prof. Pastor Peter Kuzmic, Bishop John Goddard and Bishop John Packer for your faith and support.

Finally to the Dioceses of Ijebu & Akure, (Church of Nigeria); the Dioceses of Southwark, Leeds, Blackburn, and Liverpool (Church of England), for the fellowship and ministry.

This book is dedicated to development of all victims of gender and psycho-social violence in the society and to their healing.

Author’s Note

This is another enjoyable book written with human relationships in mind, for the need to nurture with integrity, especially those with little voices, and to support means of generating qualitative positive energy into our responsibility as adults. As a beneficiary of the immense universe of God’s graciousness, I shall point to those roots which may sustain and nurture the human family around us. How was life lived out in those days before social care were provided for the poor and their children, and in today’s world what are the coping skills for the orphans, and the poor children? I have decided to write on the amazing subject of becoming Christ-shaped people in our parental and marital relationships. I hope that this book would clarify individual experiences and further strengthen joyful family and social cohesion.

Ven. Stephen Adédọ̀tun Adésànyà, Ph.D

Liverpool, UK

December 2022

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CHAPTER 1

Piccadilly Park Meeting

The Vicar walked up towards the centre of Piccadilly looking for a place to sit in the expansive Park and ponder over the events of the past few days. He had deliberately left his new home in Burnley to lose himself a little within the crowd. In the last week, he had left his former home in Teesdale, a corner of Northeast England, crossed the Pennines and moved to Northwest England. The Removals Company had been arranged so that it was possible for him to have barely thirty minutes after his international flight from Lagos where he had been on a short visit to his extended family. He felt weary and conscious of the fact that there are now fresh faces and names to remember in his new parishes.

A man playing his guitar was at the corner to his right on the edge of the park, the reggae music that was coming from this one-man band was quite cool on a Friday afternoon. The vicar after a while opened his backpack taking out a pack of sandwiches which had been prepared for him at home before he left Burnley for the city of Manchester. A plastic bottle of lemonade drink was also handy. A young couple drew closer, sat down close-by, and greeted the vicar who was hoping that he would be able to have time by himself and that was what drew him to the very edge of the park. The voices of both individuals showed an African accent, as they introduced themselves, it showed that they were from sub-Saharan Africa, and yes, he could point to the assumption that they might not only be Nigerians, but they appeared to have come from Southwest Nigeria.

It used to be quite easy to know which part of the country or continent an individual was raised in from the way they spoke English, but things have since changed. The levels of education have kept rising within the continent and you must really understand the semantics of the people before you can make a good guess these days. Keallurd introduced himself along with Tortinah his wife. They were staying at a Guest House nearby, where bed and breakfast was on offer, and they had more days booked before their flight back to America where they lived.

A young child nearby was playing pranks obviously conscious that she protected from her mother who was wagging her index finger to put a stop to the child’s attempt to go a step too far. Those sitting around have learnt the art of keeping their peace even when they were tempted to judge the parenting approach of others. Those around could call the emergency number for the Police if they perceived there were manifestations of human flaw that could get a step too dangerous for the child. Surely, no one would personally intervene in a family communication that would hold others up to public ridicule, especially when no evil was predicted. After the usual courtesy, their attention drawn to the way the child’s mother who sat across to them reacted to the behaviour of her hard-playing child and this created the opportunity for Tortinah to narrate her story to the Vicar.

Tortinah was born to charming parents, Peggak and Bayabur; and things were wonderful for her until one day she arrived home from school at the age of six to learn that her beloved mother was dead. She and her other siblings boarded into a pick-up van and squatting with the rest of the family, were driven along with the casket to their ancestral home, about fifty kilometres away to bury her mother. She could recollect that despite the attempts of the family to protect the children from the distress of the burial rites by locking them in an adjacent an apartment, she had slightly opened the window to watch the proceedings. At a point, one of the relatives noticed her and attempted to stop her but she had resisted and in defiance demanded to be allowed to witness her mother’s funeral. The family were surprised to hear such a statement from a kid, and they allowed her to partake of the funeral rites.

Her father had remarried soon after her mother’s death and she was the second child of four children from her deceased mother and since then had lived with Hal who was her father’s immediate junior brother, Hal’s wife whose name was Yerpa and their family. Tortinah performed chores to help her adoptive parents, to pay her way through school. Initially, they treated her kindly as part of the family until she began to come out top in class. She was in the same class as her cousin, who was the first child of Mr Hal. Petty jealousy began to develop from Hal and his family, and her brilliance and beauty were compared to that of their own children at home.

Her adoptive mother ran a Cafeteria, and she was seen as a helpful hand therefore she was made to run errands for the family business, trekking long distances to buy raw foodstuff, carrying heavy loads. She would prepare the food, ensuring that the cafeteria was ready for customers’ before the rest of the family were fully awake. She was not to contemplate going to school with her cousin if the cafeteria was not ready for customers. During the festivities such as Easter or New Year, she experienced discrimination and feeling of aloneness when relatives who give out presents in the house show levels of favouritism and nepotism. A lot depends on who you are or if one was seen only as a hireling or as an integral part of an adopted family. This could be quite depressing as many fostered children wish to live with their own parents. As a child this was mere fantasy for Tortinah who could not verbalise this as her mother was dead.

From a very tender age and till she was close to twenty years of age; she would normally trek the distance to and from school after preparing the house and setting up the cafeteria for the day and this included cooking and cleaning. Her primary School was a mere three miles away from home. As it was the practice, she must be punctual at school and return home immediately after school hours to perform her domestic obligations to her adoptive parents. They forbade her from taking part in any extra-curricular activities at school because there was work waiting for her little hands at the cafeteria, or at the market where she obtained supplies. Her adoptive parents cared less for her wellbeing because, as they told her, the food in the house and other things in the home cost money.

Many sub-Saharan Africans detest bedwetting more so if it happens during the rainy season. A dry mat is valuable for a goodnight sleep while the sunshine is a scarce commodity when the rain is falling. Bedwetting might recur often during the cooler evenings when the rain is at its peak and with no heat available to dry the mats and the clothes. Tortinah like other children of her age did bed-wet which really drove Yerpa, into anger. Of course, anyone and in any place can be angry as anger is part of our psychosocial make-up as human. It is when we cannot control our anger or when it takes over our sensibilities that anger becomes a bigger problem.

Following a continuous rainfall on a particular night; a rain similar to the Biblical time as floods swept across the roads and the fields, she woke up the next morning from a terrifying dream. That night Tortinah had dreamt she was urinating beside the house only to realise that despite her attempts to wake up during the night to ease herself, she had managed to wet her mat. And she had been forbidden from drinking any fluid after 6pm daily. Yerpa came around Tortinah and noticed the soppy and saggy wet dress which served as her pyjamas already soaked with her urine. The offensive fragrance of urine greeted Yerpa’s nostrils from the wet mat on the floor. How dare you bed-wet, she roared. She pulled her to the front of the house, gave her a spanking and in anger pushed her forward to the open sewage gutter.

Tortinah stumbled, fell, and knocked her forehead against the concrete slab of the drain, giving her a deep cut from which blood flowed freely over her dress. Yerpa shouted at the poor girl saying ‘now, you would show your badge of shame to your own children in the future telling them that the cut on your forehead was as a result of your bed wetting’. This dark side was attributed to uncontrolled anger; Yerpa had allowed anger to control her with tragic consequences. Anger of course was not a simple problem for Yerpa, but crucially the way she often expressed her anger with consequential collateral damage to her reputation and the lives of any of her fostered children who fall victim to her tempest. She later cleaned the wounds and a nurse stitched Tortinah’s forehead to close the deep cut. Tortinah learnt to live within her environment by tolerating whatever happened because, from quite early in life she realised the difficulty of not living with her biological parents.

Tortinah was raised in a hostile environment where her adoptive family reacted to her with flared tempers and tantrums at the least opportunity. They told her that they were only tolerating her existence within their family. As Tortinah grew older, she became courageous and confident, challenging actions that she felt was tainted with malice or prejudice. She often felt angry when confronted with bias at home or shouted at, for coming home from school with brilliant results or punished whenever anyone passed a compliment about her good behaviour or beauty. Other forms of prejudice such as those that limit her access to education or career prospects and other forms of modern-day slavery often challenged her to make a success of her life. She was determined to excel, hoping that this would make her dead parent happy and proud, no matter the intentions of her earthly guardians.

While in class two in the Secondary School at the age of fourteen, even before signs of puberty, she had witnessed the systematic abuse of her classmates who were unfortunate enough to wear bras at that time. Vuko, the biology teacher would assemble the visibly bigger girls asking them to do different physical education exercises in class. Vuko showed great interest in the actions or inactions of the more physically developed girls. When Tortinah was growing up it was common for some teachers to put girls into the family way.

Of course such teachers were normally disciplined by the Teaching Authority whenever reports were made against them, but that does not take away the burden on the shoulders of the girls whose educational pursuit might become aborted. Girls were abused even by boys and forced to perform unholy acts. The boys’ excuse could simply be because one of them had felt insulted by a girl. Unfortunately, girls were ashamed to name and shame the offenders because the society often castigated such a girl. The girl child often blamed for either being wayward or careless. This was a common experience, in both the rural villages and in the towns. The females, either as school children or grown-ups, might be scandalised unless this resulted in an unwanted pregnancy, when the unfortunate but ugly incident would then be discussed publicly.

From her third year onward, Vuko scored her zero in Geography and Biology because she refused to visit his house on a social visit, and she was explicitly told that this was her case. Hal and Yerpa decided not to visit the school on this issue to save Tortinah from further exposure to other teachers. Therefore for three years till leaving the secondary school, Vuko allocated zero mark after every examination for each of his subjects of Biology and Geography, for refusing