I AM NOT YVONNE NELSON

rney through this path requires perseverance and endurance if one is to see brightness beyond the dark and gloomy clouds of natural and man-made obstacles. I learned this the first day I went on s

the Yvonne Nelson Glaucoma Foundation. I recorded a single that featured some of the top stars in the entertainment and sports industries in Ghana. Musicians such as Sarkodie, Efya, Sherifa Gunu and Edem were featured. Michel Majid, boxer Joshua Clottey, Nana Aba Anamoah, Prince David Osei and John Dumelo also featured in the video. The solace I sought in my humanitarian venture and opportunities in Nigeria was interrupted by a turmoil that started mildly in my abdomen and climbed wildly to my head and gave me sleepless nights. In my head was not physical pain. It was mental torture. I had gone for a pregnancy test to confirm what becomes the most obvious conclusion for a sexually active young woman who misses her monthly flow. I was in the company of Karen. And when the test result was ready, I wasn’t strong enough to open it. She did and declared the verdict. “Charlie, it dey there!” she exclaimed. On an ordinary day, I would have laughed out loud and that would trigger a string of jolly conversations and jokes. But this was no laughing matter. It was a grim piece of information that was capable of turning my world upside down. I wasn’t the only one responsible for the situation, so I called the man whose potent seed had germinated in me. His name is Michael Owusu Addo, a renowned Ghanaian musician who is better known as Sarkodie. Sarkodie was a budding musician with the potential to become one of the biggest artists in Ghana and beyond. At the time, however, the future looked uncertain, and his way through the maze of life still appeared too foggy to predict. Success was not guaranteed. He was still living with his mother and was not ready to carry a burden while he was being carried by his mother. I wouldn’t call what had developed between us a serious relationship. I gravitated toward people in the music industry. For the longest time in my life, music was my getaway from all the unpleasant things life threw at me. So, I liked his talent. We started talking and got close. Closer. And extremely close. Then the unexpected happened. I was 25, and he was 22. I won’t say I was too young to know how to protect myself, but I think I was naïve. I was still that tomboy transitioning to womanhood and knew very little about the most important things about women. I knew nothing about safe periods and ovulation and the complexities of the monthly. I grew up with my mother but “vagina” and “penis” were like taboo words in our house. The closest she had come to giving me sex education was when she once forcibly opened my legs to inspect my hymen. After that, she warned me that if I broke my virginity, she would grind pepper and ginger and insert it down there. That was in my teen years. I was now much older and more independent, but I still knew next to nothing about my reproductive system and its cycle. I knew, at that age, that I could get pregnant. I tried to abstain as much as possible, and when it had to happen, I protected myself. But I lost my guard with Sarkodie and had to pay dearly. I called him on the phone and said we needed to talk. He still lived with his mother and this was not the kind of news to break in the house. I called him out of the house when I got to Tema, and we sat in my Toyota Rav4. (He drove a Toyota Matrix at the time if my memory serves me right). I sensed the intensity of his emotions when I broke the news to him. I could hear his heart pounding, and when he finally found his voice, he faltered. His message was, however, unambiguous. He didn’t want the pregnancy. That would damage him and his career. The only option was to get rid of it. Whether or not his career and the uncertainty of life were the real reasons he could not afford to let me keep the pregnancy, I cannot tell. I later discovered that he had a girlfriend who was attending a university outside the country. It was in her absence that he got involved with me and things got dangerously complicated. Whatever it was, his stance was clear. And I was left to evaluate my own options. The first thing that hit me when he said no to keeping the pregnancy was my own life. I had grown up without a father in my life. I had often been reminded of how I had been borne by mistake. I was still wondering if the man whose name I bore was my father. How was I going to bring another human being into this world to live like me, someone whose father would reject him or her as Mr. Nelson had rejected me? If there was a way to spare someone else the trauma I was contending with, why would I reject that option, especially when I was not psychologically and emotionally prepared to be a mother? In my circles, only two of my friends knew about my pregnancy. If someone else knew apart from the three of us, I don’t know who told that person. I later discovered that Sarkodie’s team also knew about it. As I wondered what to do next, a friend of mine said she knew of a certain pill that I could take and get rid of the foetus before it festered. She was in a hostel and had a room to herself. That made her hostel the ideal place to do it. If I tried it at home, my mother would know about it. And hell would come crashing down on an already troubled earth. So, one weekend, I visited her and took the pills. I swallowed one and inserted the other into my vagina. The few days that followed were some of the most excruciatingly painful moments of my life. It was only after I gave birth that I was able to get a condition to liken the pain I felt to. The pain came with severe bleeding that lasted so long that I became weak. I could see life slipping out of my frail body. When I sat on the WC, clots of blood fell into the toilet bowl like constipated poop. When the bleeding and pains finally stopped, I went to do another pregnancy test to ascertain the efficacy of the selfadministered procedure. The pregnancy was still there, intact. Keeping the pregnancy was not an option. Undertaking another selfmedication was also not an option. I agreed with Sarkodie that, this time, we had to do it in a hospital or health facility. Again, that friend of mine had a recommendation. It was a facility in Mamprobi, and, on the appointed day, Sarkodie drove me there with his manager and they left. Having endured the life-threatening but failed attempt, the question I asked myself while entering the facility was, Is this where my life will end? The dilapidation of the building that housed the doctor’s operation did not inspire any hope in me that it would be safe. I was given an injection that was supposed to numb the pain, but I could still feel it. I could feel the screwing inside me. I even thought my entire womb was being removed. Whatever it was, my only prayer was for a successful outcome. From the health facility, I went back to my friend’s hostel. As had happened with my Nov-Dec exams after school, I hoped and prayed that I would be lucky with this second attempt. The pain, again, was intense and I bled profusely. I felt worse because Sarkodie left me to my fate in the most difficult period. He did not call to check up on me or find out how the procedure had gone. Having an abortion is one of the most regrettable mistakes in my life. If the clock of life could be rewound to my younger self, I would keep it. But the benefit of hindsight is sometimes not useful because the lessons learned cannot be applied retrospectively. I don’t know how others who have been through it feel, but my abortion haunted me for years. For instance, whenever I visited the gynaecologist and had to fill out a form, there was a place on the form that asked whether I had had an abortion before. Knowing that it was important to be truthful in my disclosure to health professionals, I had to tick the abortion box. It was not just a tick, but the disclosure of my moment of shame in a judgmental society, sharing a dreaded piece of secret with people whose perception of me might never be the same. I have encountered many young women who have gone through this with varied stories of pain and degrees of regret. I have also heard stories about others whose situations and reasons for going the painful and dangerous route were not different from mine. Some have not been as lucky as I have. They either lost their lives or their ability to have children again. Like me, they are often pushed by the financial burden of mothering a child alone, the emotional and psychological unpreparedness or the unwillingness of our society to accept children born out of wedlock. Apart from everything else, my mother, a prominent member of the Methodist Church, would have ostracised me had she known about my pregnancy at the time. Looking back, however, I still believe I acted foolishly. I could have lost my life. My body could have been imperiled with an irreversible condition that would have left me damaged forever. The fear