SEPUYA: A Sickler's Story

EPISODE 1
My name is Sepuya Ahmed, and I’m a 16 year old sickler.
My mother, Miss Tara, said that when I was born, I was a very beautiful and healthy baby.
She had even shown me pictures from the past; especially when she wanted to motivate me to eat better and become robust, in her own words.
And though a single mother, Miss Tara did everything in her power to ensure that I had a normal life. She worked as a journalist for the Nation’s foremost newspaper and had been denied promotion thrice on account of her inability to ‘leave the comfort of her home base to the field’.  Her retorting statement always revolved around me.
‘If I leave Sepuya alone, who would take care of him?’
My father was a colleague she met in the university, she’d said. She was very young and still naïve in the 1990s ‘when naivete was still a thing!’ She would state with so much indignation.
And then her eyes would shine brightly when she described my Father. He was so loving and tender to her. She had wanted to remain celibate till the night of her wedding, and he had agreed to it. Then her eyes would show some degree of sadness. But one night, after a party in which they had both gotten into a drunken frenzy and in the heat of the moment, they made love. I was the product of that conception.
Dad had given her over 50 reasons why an abortion was the ideal. That she was still in school. That they couldn’t get married yet, because he hadn’t found his feet. That the stigma of an unmarried pregnant woman would forever be upon her if she chose to bear this child.
Miss Tara took the last reason and converted it into a strong enough weapon. She chose to bear the stigma, the untold shame of a pregnant unmarried woman, in a period when it was indeed very shameful. When my grandmother-Mamia found out about the pregnancy, Miss Tara had gotten the beating of her life. Her father was dead, and Mamia was the only one taking care of Miss Tara and her other 4 siblings. Everyone had been literally banking upon Miss Tara to excel in school, get a good job and help Mamia in fending for her siblings. Instead, she had brought home another child!
A child that eventually, would bring joy mingled with drops of sorrow, and merged together so that each was indistinguishable; in years to come. That child, was me.
It was not until 8 months after I was born that Miss Tara really noticed anything unusual about me. Up till then, I was this healthy boy whom the world couldn’t hurt. I was safe in her arms, or so she thought.
After Mamia had gotten over the shock of Miss Tara’s pregnancy, she had taken responsibility for my care, urging Miss Tara to return to school. But it was hard for her to leave the one she’d grown to love, regardless of the fact that his father no longer kept in touch with her. Worse still, she had to return to the condescending looks from people who shushed while she was within earshot.
And so, 8 months after I was born, Miss Tara noticed that I was crying excessively. After checking my diapers and giving me some nutrititous breast milk yielded no satisfactory result, she proceeded to critically examine me.
As usual, Mamia had scolded her, telling her to do more productive things with her time than trying to visually levitate me from the cot. That day, Miss Tara discovered nothing unusual, but she kept on with her keen observation. Finally, she found something amiss.
‘Mamia! Come and see something’, she had screamed in fear.
‘Tara, if you are only calling for my presence so I can join in your madness, you must be very stupid. Come and join me in frying these palm nuts!’
Mamia needn’t talk twice to pass across her message. She was more than capable of still spanking Miss Tara, despite the fact that she had given birth to a child.
‘Mamia, I am serious!’ Miss Tara said nervously
Curious, Mamia had left the kitchen and came to my cot, obviously disturbed.
I looked on, wide-eyed
‘Tara, what is it?’ she asked, drying her hands on the brown kitchen towel she was holding
Miss Tara lifted up my two hands. My left hand was visibly swollen, the digits not as uniform as the one on the right. I also had a fever.
Mamia addressed with wisdom, the now teary eyed Miss Tara
‘Calm down. Let me finish up quickly, we’d take him to that nurse across the street. I’m sure it’s just a fever. He has started teething hasn’t he?’
Miss Tara remained silent.
Unnamed drugs were given to me by the said nurse, but my fever had gotten worse. My cry was becoming more shrill by the minute.
Eventually, Miss Tara and Mamia took me to a real hospital where I was properly examined. The doctor said the hand swelling was called dactylitis, and I was a likely sickle cell disease patient. He asked Miss Tara for her genotype- she was AS.
The father’s genotype? She stuttered. She didn’t know.
The next 10 months before my genotype could be confirmed was the longest wait of Miss Tara’s life. Vigils were conducted, planned and unplanned, prayers offered to imprint into my DNA, the AA hemoglobin genotype.
The results of Miss Tara’s final exams came out on the same day as that of my test results. She made a first class. My test results dampened the celebrations. I was a sickler. My genotype was SS.
Miss Tara hit the floor in tears. She was a 23 year old lady with no husband and a child with a possible death sentence.
For me, this was the beginning of life as I knew it.
In and out of the four walls of a hospital.