Money or the box: When sponsor becomes abusive

 

The money at the beginning blinds you. It’s like the man pockets your brains so that you no longer think for yourself A women speaks out on the beatings she suffered in the hands of a sponsor

Looking into her beautiful brown eyes, it’s hard to imagine the pain she has gone through. Her smile, so warm, so welcoming, so deceiving. That smile. It conceals secrets.

I pull a sit next to her. She knows why I am here. But still, it is not easy to open old wounds.

“I have had several abortions... he said that a baby was not part of the deal. The other one? The other one just beat me until I felt worthless.”

Michelle is talking about sponsors, those married, moneyed men young girls are looking for as meal tickets. Some call them ‘private developers.’ For Michelle, the quest to get one began when she was 18.

“I was young, fresh from high school and needed a job since my mum couldn’t afford college fees. That’s when I met him. It was a decent party and I thought there was no harm in engaging in small talk. I told him I was looking for a job. He smiled. ‘Come see me on Monday,’ he said.”

Michelle was excited. Kumbe she didn’t have to tarmac. Monday came and she began working as a sales representative.

“But then after a while, he started touching my hair while we were at work. I was naïve and didn’t make much of it. One day, when I went to his office to deliver some documents before leaving for home, he kissed me on the cheek. I was dumbfounded. He was probably older than my father.”

For a kiss, Michelle was handed a wrinkled Sh1,000. She thought it was wrong as she tossed in bed that night.  

Invitation for meetings with his clients followed and salary of Sh12,000 surged to a pretty Sh300,000 a month. “Like I even knew what to do with so much money at that age!” she confesses.

A one-bedroom furnished flat in Parklands followed. Life couldn’t have been better. Michelle says she “killed that ka-voice that said it was wrong. He showed up whenever he wanted. It was his house more than it was mine.”

Pregnancy came swiftly and she broke the news to him. “He turned his face toward me. The room turned black. I was on the floor. The left side of my face felt numb and then ached as if I was being pricked with a thousand needles. I was on the floor,” recalls Michelle.

She was instructed to “get rid of that thing! This was not part of the deal!” He threw some notes on the floor and walked out. Then he called after some hours. “Umeskia utoe hiyo kitu!” he roared.

That was the first abortion. Others followed.

“The money at the beginning blinds you. It’s like the man pockets your brains so that you no longer think for yourself. Getting in is easy. Getting out, however, is like going through the proverbial eye of a needle. He called me all manner of names and with time, the little self-esteem I had was crushed to almost nothing.”

Michelle’s sponsor shortly picked another office girl and “it affected me emotionally. I don’t know why, but it did. So I bought expensive clothes and booze to numb the pain. The expensive make-up did a good job of hiding the struggles that went on in my soul.

After you’ve had one sponsor, you want to move to another one. Probably one who has more money. It is like a drug. He was just my first, my entry point to this dark world that looks so glamorous when you are looking from the other side,” laments Michelle, now in her late 20s and dead worried.

“If I get married, I will always struggle with the thought of my husband having a mpango. I struggle with guilt. A lot. I feel like I am not good enough. I don’t know if I will ever get over a lot of things that haunt me now,” she confesses.

Michelle got rid of a sponsored life after attending the Daughters of Zion conference hosted by Reverend Kathy Kiuna at the Jubilee Christian Church in Nairobi.

“My journey to turning things around began there. I was broken. I still am. But I am learning to take things one day at a time. I have been going for counselling sessions. It has been tough, having to be financially broke and stuff, but then I wouldn’t trade my soul again for all the money in the world.” 

So, what happened to the money she got from the sponsor?

“That money never really helps anyone; whatever you invest in just fails. I spent it on maintaining a certain lifestyle - buying expensive clothes, partying, stuff like that. I have no single coin now that I can trace back to any sponsor. Maybe it’s because the wives of these men curse you with… or their tears, I don’t know…I warn young girls to steer clear of these possessive death-traps called sponsors. Tell them that this green grass called sponsorship money will cost you your soul – a price too high for anyone to afford.”

Michelle opens up about her father who had sexually abused her for three years before she turned 18. It affected, she says, her understanding of men. Her mother was none the wiser as “I didn’t think she would be able to handle such information. So I have kept it to myself.”