No. 7, This one is sensitive
From a young age, up country, about 11 or 12, I had to learn how to navigate grown-ass men giving me and my best friends, Solomie and Andrea, the salacious eye when we would head out to play after having our Sunday lunch.
My brothers and their friends would sometimes be ahead of us playing and joking and we would be chatting and walking idly behind.
But yeah, grown-ass men would sometimes come out and sit on their doorsteps, lean against shops or watch us go by and catcall us.
We had to learn very fast how to respond without offending, whilst not letting it bother us too much as we all knew they couldn’t touch us, otherwise the community would give out its own justice. We were therefore free to go on our way and walk about where we wanted – we were kids after all.
When we heard the news about my school friend Sarah (not her real name) being pregnant at 12, we were shocked as we didn’t know how that could have happened. Sarah and I met at Basic School (pre-school) when we were both five, six years old. She didn’t live near me, but we played together.
Her family were new people in our district and part of a religion where the church leader was “married” to most of the women. The group also lived together and wore white robes with different coloured sashes around their waist, to symbolise their positions in the church. Sarah’s mum was one of the church Sisters.
I think words were said because Sarah was swiftly taken by the group from the district. And the community showed the church leader how they felt about what happened to her, by never speaking to them or shopping at their grocery shop in their yard, ever again, putting them out of business.
Growing up neither our school nor our parents gave us much sex education.
We knew mums had babies, but other than that, nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Although we were quite young, so maybe when we were older they would have told us.
But I found out two were needed to make babies when we got Pluto, the smiliest dog. He would always hop and skip down the hill to greet us after school.
We loved playing with Pluto.
One year my brother brought back a female dog from one of our holidays in May Pen and we named her Browny.
While going on one of my woodland adventures, I came upon Browny and Pluto and I ran home crying to my mum and dad, “The dogs are stuck together. Come help quick to separate them.” Then they told me, but in metaphors. A few months later, Browny died, along with her puppies. I was so sad and to this day wished I could have done something to save her as I had found her trying to give birth at the side of the kitchen.
But we were lucky, as we still had Pluto who came with us to the woods and all over.
My mum kept telling us that Pluto was supposed to be our guard dog, so we really should keep him at home. But Pluto wouldn’t hurt a fly and always bounced and wagged his tail in happiness when a visitor came by.
We loved Browny and Pluto.
Best wishes,
Sherry Collins
