Protect My Innocence

Dedicated to the many beautiful, strong and heroic women I know.

I am young, I am beautiful, I just started class two.

I just learned how to read and yet I know things that are not taught in primary school books.

My hair is black and braided and my school uniform is pressed and clean, but I feel dirty inside. My teacher tells me to listen to my family - that they are there to protect me, but I don’t want to do what he tells me to. I obey anyway.

Other girls always look happy and cheerful, I wonder if they are pretending too. I wonder if their body hurts like mine does, if they shake when school’s over because they have to go home; is life like this for every primary school girl?

I wish you would have listened to me when I said I didn’t feel well, I want to go home, but not to my home.

I feel so small, but I don’t feel young, and I don’t feel beautiful.

I will learn to stand up for myself one day, but it will be a little too late. I should be able to decide who touches my body, shouldn’t I? When I’m older I’ll learn that it’s not my fault, that I’m not bad, that I’m a good and beautiful girl who shouldn’t have had to feel the way I do now. I’ll learn that I have the right to protect myself, that I should have told someone what was happening. I should have explained what was done until someone listened and made it stop; that there’s no shame, no humiliation, no stigma. I will learn that it wasn’t right . . . but it will be a little too late. When I’m grown I will forever wish you had told me sooner, you had listened, you had made it stop. I wish you had protected my childlike beauty, my youth and my innocence, but it’s a little too late.