Meet Valerie Lolomari, our Community Ambassador and the “preacher” of women’s rights
Trigger warning: Rape and FGM/C
“I was born a child of young parents in Lagos, Nigeria. My parents met in secondary school and at the time my mum got pregnant, she was only 17 and my father was 20. My mother wanted to be with my father and be a family with him, but my father had different plans. He was not happy with my mother’s pregnancy because of shame linked to pregnancy outside the marriage and when my mother gave birth to me, she didn’t have much support and had to go back to school, but she couldn’t continue her education while looking after me. She took me to my father’s family house and had to leave me behind and I never lived together with my mother. My mother visited me regularly and my father moved abroad to study and work. I have seen my parents as if they were like my relatives, visiting regularly but not raising me. I was raised by my grandmother who thought she did whatever was best for me, even though some of her actions turned out to be my biggest nightmares.
“At this point, I was enjoying going to school and trying to overcome the difficult thoughts in my head and my sadness, unaware of what the future held for me. ”
My grandmother was one of five [wives] and the first wife of my grandfather. The household I grew up in felt like a palace made for my grandfather. All the wives, relatives and children who lived in this household had to look up to him and our world was made for him. I stayed in my grandmother’s room and shared her bed & space. I started going to school when I was eight years old and started questioning the life I was living for the first time. I realised I could have had parents raising me and taking me to school and even though I was grateful my grandmother accepted to raise me, I was also heartbroken that my life looked so much more different than my friends’ lives. At this point, I was enjoying going to school and trying to overcome the difficult thoughts in my head and my sadness, unaware of what the future held for me.
When I was nine, I was forced to live like an adult, without anyone to look after me most days because my grandmother was old, and she had a shop to run. I spent so much time alone trying to look after myself and keep myself safe instead of being a child. I would always try to be with my other cousins and near other people because I knew when I would be left alone, I would be abused by someone as they could just get away with it. I was really scared of the dark throughout my childhood, especially on nights when my grandmother would go to my grandfather’s room on her “night-time wife” days, I felt terrified and covered myself with the blanket thinking it would somehow protect me. Even during the height of the Nigerian summertime heat, I would always cover myself with a blanket, falling asleep in terror.
On one of these lone sleeping nights in my grandmother’s room, when I was trying to fall asleep, I heard the floor wood cracking and the doorknob moving. Someone has walking into my room, and I knew it wasn’t my grandmother, it was my uncle. I called him uncle because that’s who I thought he was, one of my relatives who was supposed to be my “uncle”, someone who was supposed to look after me and not harm me. He climbed into my bed and told me to be quiet and that he wasn’t going to hurt me. I started screaming and he covered my mouth, his hand covering my entire small child face. I didn’t hear anyone leaving their room, so I knew they didn’t hear me and that help wasn’t on the way for me. I started crying and he bent me as if I wasn’t a human being, I was no one to him and my pain didn’t matter. After what felt like forever, he stood up, put his pants back on and left me on the floor bleeding. I was on the floor for nearly two hours, shivering not knowing what to do about what happened to me. After two hours, I finally gathered the energy and will to get up and started knocking on the doors of everyone. My grandfather’s youngest wife opened her door and took me in. She saw blood coming down my legs and, in her face, I saw what happened to me. I told her who did this to me and she took me to the shared bathroom to wash me and brought me back to the room and put me on the bed next to her two children. Her children were sleeping, we didn’t say much and spent the rest of the night laying next to each other, mute and silenced by abuse, without a single word.
The morning sunshine arrived, and I wasn’t even feeling anything at the moment, just existing in the room. She gave me clean clothes and dressed me and cared for me without hurting me further. She told me to tell my grandmother what happened, but I was too scared no one would believe me. I went back to my grandmother’s room and waited for her to arrive. As soon as I told my grandmother what happened, she burst into tears and started blaming herself thinking it was her fault to leave me alone, even though she didn’t have much choice. She told me not to repeat this to anyone else, so I kept quiet. Somehow the word got out and I think it was my perpetrator who wanted to blame me for what he did and told everyone that I seduced him. The next day, life was going on, my grandmother went back to her shop to provide for her family and what happened to me happened and nothing was going to happen to him. I was summoned by my uncles and an aunty to defend myself as I was being tried for my rape. I had no words to say to them, but they kept trying to blame me and one of them looked me in the eye and told me he knew what kind of person I was and that this was all my fault. Instead of trying my rapist, as a nine-year-old girl, I stood there trying to defend myself as best as I could. Later on, I realised what happened to me happened to so many of my other girl cousins, although we never spoke about these things, we carried on having to live with our abusers in the same household. We were told to not talk about it and move on.
When I turned eleven, that year my grandfather died, and his palace fell. All of his wives had to go their separate ways, my grandmother had to go and live with one of her children and I was passed on to one of my relatives. My grandmother was an independent woman who could support her life and mine, but society didn’t allow a woman to live on her own as they always created difficulties to make them dependent, even though they weren’t. I moved to a new city to my relative's house, started a new school and started to go to Church to get myself out of the house and find peace. I would miss my grandmother, my mother and my father but now they were all my visitors, seeing me every now and then and thinking I was okay. I didn’t feel as if anyone truly cared about me, there was never any quality time that anyone gave me. I was made to believe everything that happened to me was my fault and I continued living my life in fear, shame, sadness and feeling let down.
I turned sixteen and it was summertime when my grandmother came to visit me again and she told me that we were going on a holiday. I had never been on a holiday before so I was very excited and felt so happy that I would have this time with my grandmother. I went and packed my luggage thinking I was going back to the village I grew up in to visit the people I grew up with. In between the city and the village, my grandmother said we had to stop to go and see someone in this village I have never been to before. Not being able to ask many questions, I followed my grandmother to this strange house around 3 pm.
As I walked through the gates of the house, I felt sick to my stomach even though I didn’t know what was going to happen to me behind these doors. A tall woman who looked scary opened the door, let us in and locked the door behind us as soon as we got in. We entered a room and the woman who opened the door stood next to the door as I walked in with my grandmother. I knew she stood there to guard the abuse as soon as I saw the knives, razors and a bowl with oil laid out on the table with two other women sitting and staring at me. I asked my grandmother why we came here even though I knew at that moment exactly why we were there and my grandmother told me that we came here to do something that was necessary.
The door guardian locked the door and I decided to put up a fight even though I knew I couldn’t stop them. I knew what was going to happen to me and I wasn’t going to make it easy for them so I screamed and kicked with all my power and before I knew it, I was on the floor with one of the cutters sitting on my chest and the other two cutters holding my arms and legs down. As I was trying to breathe through the terror, I saw my grandmother standing in the corner and locked eyes with her. I was being cut with a piece of metal that wasn’t even too sharp making it even more painful and the cutter kept cutting and cutting away. The room turned into a bloodbath and I was screaming until I couldn’t. I stopped hearing myself because I cried and screamed so much and when the cutters were done, they left the room, and I looked up at my grandmother and saw her crying. She knew this was wrong, but this happened to her too and she was made to believe that she had no choice but to do this for me too.
“These forms of abuse were perpetrated on me because I was a girl...My two girls will never be cut.”
I was made to lay down on the floor for a couple of hours for my bleeding to stop and if I was left in that room alone only for a second, I would have taken my life because being alive was hurting me so much. I didn’t want to stand up from that floor, the blood bath, the woman’s bloody path, I was hurting physically and emotionally like I never did before and this reminded me of what happened to me when I was nine years old and how both these forms of abuse were perpetrated on me only because I was a girl child. I was thinking of how people could do these horrible things to me and get away with it, how no one was seeking justice for me, how no one cared for my wellbeing... After two days of being in that house, my grandmother took me to where she lived and I stayed there for some time, experiencing infections and multiple health concerns because of the cutting (FGM/C).
Valerie at a Vavengers hub!
At the end of the summer, I was pushed back into life “as usual” again as if all of this was okay and I went back to school and got into university. I moved out to live at the university dorm and while I was continuing my education and during my final year, I met my husband at campus when he came to visit his sister. My husband was from a different world and his tribe didn’t perform FGM so it was difficult to explain my world to him, but he made everything so easy for me. I told him everything that’s happened to me and without judgement, within a year, we got married. For a long time, I didn’t experience happiness but with my husband in my life, I felt happy and supported for the first time. As he moved to the UK at a young age and lived in London, after we got married, I moved with him to London where we have been living happily ever since. We had three amazing children together and my two girls will never be cut. I am now the Founder of Women of Grace, an organisation created to reach out to women who are going through what I have been through. I created Women of Grace with a vision of leaving no woman or girl behind. My organisation supports women by creating safe spaces and educating families on the importance of mental health support and the harms of FGM. I also support women by helping them rebuild resilience following a traumatic experience they endured.”
You can book Valerie for a workshop or speaking engagement at info@womenofgrace.org.uk
Visit and support Women of Grace at www.womenofgrace.org.uk
Buy Valerie’s book The Unwanted: From Rejection to Glory on Amazon.
Credit
Storyteller: Valerie Lolomari
Interview Author: Sema Gornall
Imagery: Megan Joy Barclay
Editor: Ellie Melvin
If you or someone you know is in danger of, or has already been subjected to FGM/C, domestic violence or rape, please call the police on 999 in an emergency, and 101 for non-emergency help.
If you would like to know what your rights are and learn more about which services are available to you, please email us at: info@thevavengers.co.uk
If you found this blogpost distressing or triggering, please visit our wellness page to learn about methods of meditation & wellness: www.thevavengers.co.uk/wellness