A Letter from My Homeless Daughter

Life has thrown stones at me, I am going to build a house with it

Last year, I received a letter from my family, I was told that Sali has been adopted by a female school principal who lives in the city.

“I hope she is in a safe hand?” I kept saying to myself every day.

Today, I received a letter again; not from my family as usual. Sali wrote to me. “Sali can write now!” I exclaimed as I glanced at the letter.

I read the letter in stages. Firstly, I took it out and admired the neatness and carefulness with which the letter was written and packaged.

Secondly, I fell in love with her salutation; “my first daddy”. I tried to read out the words in different intonations to see if I could get different meanings from the salutation. I felt a butterfly rumble in my stomach. I am 25 years and Sali should be 20. Yet, she addressed me as her father.

I paused and decided to read the whole letter before dissecting the content.

There is nothing that fascinated much in the letter other than the fact that she wrote the letter by herself. There were incorrect spellings and grammatical blunders in her writing but I didn’t see them. I understood all she said. I understood beyond her expression.

When she wrote “half shimmy”, she meant to write underwear. “Skets and trowza” mean Skirts and trousers. “Woman headmaster” means a female principal heading a secondary school.

Sali was 14 when I picked her in the traffic. She spoke only her local dialect and could not write her name. She had not been to school and couldn’t communicate in our lingua franca. We communicated with sign languages.

I read through the letter over and over again, highlighting on them as if it was my term paper. When I came to the last line where she said we will live forever, my heart beat faster. I noticed my fingers couldn’t hold the pen firmly due to the sudden wetness in my palms.

“Yes! We will live together, forever!” I heard myself exclaimed. I saw myself jumping around in my room as if I won a jackpot.

But she has just called me a father. She has just said she is my sister in her letter.

I paused as this thought flooded my head. A brother and sister do not live together; forever. A father and a daughter do not live together; forever. She will still be snatched someday by another.

I know what my heart is telling me. My heart has never misled me. I am not going to let her be snatched away by another. Sali is the stones thrown to me by this life and I am going to build my house with her.

My First Meeting with Sali

She doesn’t know a father or a mother. The brothers and the sisters she knows are the fellow children in the street, the homeless.

How did I meet Sali?

I met her on the road, in the traffic.

“Help us she is dying!” One of the street children who were begging in the traffic waved violently at me, almost blocking mummy’s car. My eyes followed the direction where she was pointing and I saw a girl lying helpless beside the road.

That was the first time I met Sali. She was chilled to the bone. Her teeth were jamming as if they were making music sound. She was shivering and quaking at the same time and tears dripped down from her both eyes.

With assistance from the girl who drew my attention, we carried her into mummy’s car. When I asked the girl to accompany us to the hospital, she refused. When I pressed further, she ran away. I left her and drove off. I had seen distrust and fear in her eyes when I asked her to enter the car with me. She was not to be blamed. These homeless children have seen a lot in the hands of strangers; especially girls. So, they trust no one.

After all, her friend Sali has just been gang-raped in the house of a woman where she went to do house chores for money.

She let me go with her friend because they were in a state of dilemma.

I took a wise decision that afternoon and drove straight to the family hospital before I rang my mother. My mother was reluctant at first but with much persuasion, she gave in. But not without a condition, which was going to the police and I did as she advised.

Two weeks later, Sali was discharged from the hospital. She had recovered from the trauma she went through in the hands of the beasts that raped her.

I was 19 years old when I picked Sali from the street. All I wanted was to make her a sister but my mother would not oblige. She has four girls already, plus me. She doesn’t want another child, not another girl. I would have kept her if I could but I couldn’t. I was only a teenage boy living, feeding, and sleeping under my parent’s roof.

I just left high school. I was to travel out of the country in the next few months for my first degree.

My mother didn’t want to have anything with the strange teenage girl. She didn’t want her to live with us. She kept recalling the nasty experiences she had had in the time past in the hands of strangers. The last one had stolen her gold and ran away.

When I couldn’t convince my mother for adoption, I suggested we took Sali to the Mission. At least, she would find a new and better life there. Perhaps, she might be lucky and get adopted by a family. We agreed she would be staying there while the family catered for her wellbeing.

That was six years ago.

I have completed my first degree but my parent insisted I run a Master’s Degree programs before joining the family. I am doing just that and I have secured a job too. A boy is becoming a man.

Soon, I shall be done. I shall return and I shall go for Sali.