Written by

Sally Spencer

This past year has been a really strange year for me…especially the very personal and deeply buried side. I will start from the beginning.

It was December 25th 1974…I was 18 years old…yes Christmas Day and I was staying in Bindura with friends. The next-door neighbors had a party that night and we were invited. I knew it was going to be a good party. I decided that seeing as it was Christmas night I was going to do a bit of drinking, not too much because alcohol and me had a rather ‘’naughty’’ friendship. It went straight to the “ovaries” and made me horny. I was kind of careful where and with whom I did my drinking.

The party was going well. The music was great and the company was really good. One of my long time friends was there. He was engaged to some girl. I had not met her yet. The two of us stuck together because neither one of us was looking to hook up with anyone.

For some reason the Cain and Ginger ale that I was drinking really tasted terrific that night and after about the 3rd one I stopped counting. By the end of the evening I was in a very happy state and the “ovaries” were doing flick flacks. But I wasn’t worried as I was with my “good” friend. He offered to see me home but I had run out of cigarettes. He said, “no problem”. He had some cigarettes at his place and so off we went to his place to get some cigarettes.

The Next Morning

I woke up the next morning lying in a strange bed looking at a strange ceiling and cursing myself like hell. I was so afraid to turn my head and look at who was breathing heavily next to me because I couldn’t face the fact that my friend was the one doing the snoring. I had crossed the line of friendship and headed straight into disaster because I had been drunk. I was not proud of that fact.

I decided to sneak very quietly out of the bed, grab my clothes, get dressed in the bathroom and get the hell out of there as quickly as I could. Hopefully, I could do all this without waking my ‘use to be’ friend.

I managed to do it all and get away without a stir from the bedroom. I got back to the place I was staying at. For the next couple of days I stayed at home and didn’t venture out at all. Via the grape vine I heard that my ‘used to be’ friend was going to break his engagement off and come looking for me because suddenly, I had become the ‘love of his life’. That was the very last thing that I wanted.

As a sober human being, I didn’t find him attractive. That was why he was a friend. I climbed into my car and high tailed back to Masvingo to my parents.

Going back home was not a good idea as my Mom and I did not get on. She always wanted to make sure that my Dad didn’t do things for me that he could do for my sister. She was completely befuddled by me and didn’t know how to handle me so she shipped me off to Bulawayo to a college there and I had to stay in the Y.W.C.A.
I was supposed to be learning how to be a secretary. I hated every second of that damn college. Pounding away at a typewriter was not my idea of fun and the shorthand thing that I was learning just bored me to tears.

I’m Pregnant!

Anyway, it was during that time in secretarial school, that I suddenly realized that I had not been using my Tampax for nearly 6 months. A quick call to my doctor, a prick on the finger and one of those lie down and spread your legs examinations and he told me that I was very pregnant .

We didn’t even need to wait for the results of the blood test.

I was speechless and completely shocked “how could this happen to me? This sort of thing happened to other girls. Not me! I mean, the fact that I had sex without birth control/protection (in those days we did not have to worry about AIDS/HIV) meant nothing. It was only once so how on earth could I get pregnant???

It is amazing how when we are young we think that we are completely invincible and when these kind of things happen we at first don’t understand that our negligence has these kinds of results. In our minds it is only slappers…girls who open their legs for any man… that fall pregnant and are not married.

Now comes the part of:

What the hell am I going to do??

There was no way I was going to tell the father of my baby that I was pregnant. First, because he had a real biatch of a mother who took his weekly pay and only allowed him 20 dollars a week and he was 30 years old.

The silly cow would have gone mental and made him marry me or worse taken my baby away from me.

Second: It was very simple. I didn’t find him attractive. If I had not been drunk I would never have woken up in his bed.

No place to live

I decided there and then no more booze for me. Booze and my hormones had got me into this situation. I couldn’t get rid of my hormones so the booze had to go.

Oh and by the way don’t forget I was not working and had only a Form 4 education and was a Staff Nurse but that only applied in South Africa at that time.

So my first thing to do was find a job and in those days jobs for women with no real education were really kak and being single and pregnant on top of it was a real no go area.

I did eventually find a job working at the till in one of the Raizons shops in Bulawayo. I earned 72 dollars. That was in 1975.

When the Y.W.C.A where I was staying found out I was pregnant. they kicked me out so I found a room to rent at Grafton House and that cost me 45 dollars a month and whoopie I got a sort of breakfast with that as well.

Report back home

I still had my parents to tell and as they were living near Beit Bridge I was not in that much of a hurry to tell them until the women at the Y.W.C.A told my mother that I had moved out and was working.

Silly cow, she did not say that they had kicked me out for being pregnant and unmarried.

Anyway when I called home which I did every Saturday afternoon after work my mother asked me what was going on and I told her that I did not want to be any one’s private secretary and that I was working. She told me in a very unfriendly manner that I had better come home for Whitsun long weekend and tell them what was happening.

Hahaha by that time I would have been nearly 8 months pregnant and showing.

I agreed to go home and made arrangements with my friend who had a car and enjoyed my folks a lot. In between that call and going home I went through so much.

My whole life as I knew it went up in smoke.

Friends that I had known for ages suddenly would not be seen in the street with me.

Trying to live on 30 dollars a month was really bad but I had a good boss who was an Egyptian guy and he helped me so much. His wife would send me meals. She even went shopping for baby stuff for me.

But I tell you it was a very lonely hurtful time. I was also petrified that the baby’s father would hear that I was pregnant and come looking for me so I had to cut ties with friends that knew him and hoped like hell that he would never find out.

I’m Home!

Ok now lets go forward and get to the evening I walked into my mother’s house at 7 and half months pregnant.

My mother never liked me before and man did she hate me that night. When she asked me whom the father was I refused to tell her and said that he didn’t even know.

Then the words came at me like mortars.

“You are just like your mother… a whore (I was adopted and my birth mom was and is not a whore).

How am I going to explain to friends and family about this?

You have degraded us and defiled our name.

You have to give that thing (meaning the baby) up for adoption. I am not raising any man’s bastard.”

Needless to say she went on and on. Eventually my Dad came to my rescue as he always did and told her to leave me alone and to go to their room. He was going to talk to me. He told me that there was no way I was going to give the baby up for adoption and he would make sure that I had support. He also asked me who the father was and I didn’t tell him either which he respected. Neither one of them ever knew. They went to their graves not knowing.

I somehow got through that long weekend and went back to Bulawayo with my friend. I went back to work and carried on as before until the Saturday afternoon I went into labor with my son.

If you have unprotected sex and fall pregnant you will go into labour…lol

We were doing stocktaking at the shop. I had to work over time and finished at 6 pm that Saturday. I got back to my room and was having a rest when I realized that my back was really painful. I put it down to the stocktaking. I took two codeine painkillers and had a bath and went to bed. I woke up at about four in the morning with a pain in my back that felt as if some one had hit me with a chopper. I went to the loo for a pee and when I wiped myself, I noticed that there was some blood. I thought that I had really strained myself when I climbed up the ladders to count the stock on the shelves. I went back to bed and tried to sleep again but the pain was so bad that I could only dose off. At about eight in the morning, a friend of mine came around and asked what was wrong I told her and she went mental. She called a taxi, packed me a little case, made me get dressed and dragged me off to the maternity hospital in Bulawayo called the Lady Rodwel.

They hated single mothers in hospital

I arrived there and very quickly learnt how they felt about single unmarried mothers. I tell you it wasn’t very nice. I was in labor but the early stages and they told me that they would not give me any injections to help with the pain as I must remember next time I opened my legs to a man what it was like to give birth to a fatherless bastard.

During the delivery I ended up kicking one of the nursing sisters as she just would not let up on what a whore I was. They were so bad that they would not even give me an Episiotomy so I tore internally and had to have 16 internal stitches and my son only weighed 4lbs 12ozs.

He was so tiny and so beautiful with the most beautiful unusual steel grey eyes with a black edging. His father has blue eyes and blonde hair. Shilo was born with strawberry blonde hair and those steel grey eyes.

Anyway back to them nursing sisters. They would not give me tablets to dry my milk up as I did not want to breast-feed. I ended up with boobs that were as hard as a rock and so painful.

My mother tried to organize Shilo’s adoption.

My parents arrived on the second day. When my parents arrived my Dad had gone straight to the nursery to see his first grand son. He walked right into the nursery and asked for my son the nurses were so shocked that they just showed him. He went up to the crib and picked him up and that was the beginning of the most beautiful granddad and grandson relationship.

Meanwhile, my mother was trying to arrange with the ward sister to have Shilo adopted without my permission. One of the cleaning ladies over heard her and came and told me what was going on. I told my Dad and he went ballistic.

I eventually left the hosiptal and went back to my room with my tiny baby.
My Dad had made my Mom go shopping for all the things I would need and it was all there waiting for us.

The boss at Raizons had given me 2 weeks paid leave and that would give me time to find a creche to leave Shilo while I was at work.

Single motherhood began with a vengeance.

I hunted for days for a crèche I could afford, but all the prices were way out of reach. Eventually some one told me to go to St.Gabriel’s as they helped unmarried Moms with childcare. I went to them and thank God they agreed to help me and all I had to provide was his milk. They were so good that they even bathed him before I came to fetch him in the evenings and they were very very strict about who came to fetch Shilo which really put my mind to rest.

Disowned by the Extended Family.

While all this was going on my extended family did a really good job of “disowning me and my baby.” My paternal aunt even sent me a signed open check and told me that I could fill in the amount that I wanted as long as I gave my bastard up for adoption and she would send me money every month until I got married. I took the check, tore it up put it in an envelope and sent it back to her.

When Shilo was about a month old I met a man from Mozambique and started dating. He was really good and helped me with Shilo.

Oops……!!!!…Social Welfare….

We had another problem because now I was unmarried and living with a man who was not the child’s father and the worst part of it was that he wasn’t even my nationality.

That opened a whole different can of worms.

A friend of mine’s mother went to the Social Services and reported that I was an unmarried mom who was living with a foreigner and that my son’s life was in danger. Social Welfare presented themselves at my flat one Saturday morning. My boyfriend’s friend was there. The woman started asking some very rude questions about how many men were around my son and you name it. My boyfriend’s friend told her that Shilo had many fathers who really adored and loved him and he was so well protected that no one could get anywhere near him to harm him in any way and that he wanted for nothing. As the woman opened her mouth to say something he picked her up, told me to open the front door and dumped her on the front step outside and told her never ever to darken that doorstep again. That was the last I heard of or saw the Social Welfare again.

Finally, married!!

I ended up marrying my boyfriend and there begins a whole new story with a whole new set of problems.

But it is the end of this one.

My parting words to girls who have babies and are not married is be prepared to have the world turn against you and look down on you. There is nothing romantic and cute about being a single mom. It is heart breaking, lonely and damn hard. You slog to make ends meet but I would not have missed a single second of it because I have the most wonderful, kind and loving son who is now going to be 32 years old.

The one thing that I would have missed if I could is the pain and humiliation that he and I had to go through with my hubby, his step father and it only started once I had given him a son of his own…..

So girls if you are a single Mom, be very, very careful about who you allow into your life as it might just be the wrong person for your child. Until your child is old enough you should raise him without letting a man into that part of your life.

Blessings to all

A side note:

Well during my time in Zimbabwe as a single pregnant woman, I have to admit that some things had changed. I had great health care and everyone was compassionate and loving towards me. No one cared that I was unmarried. Perhaps it was because I was 30 years old at the time. I was independent and self-sufficient.

I will agree with the last bit of this story. “My parting words to girls who have babies and are not married is be prepared to have the world turn against you and look down on you. There is nothing romantic and cute about being a single mom. It is heart breaking, lonely and damn hard. You slog to make ends meet…. if you are a single Mom, be very, very careful about who you allow into your life as it might just be the wrong person for your child.”
Ditto sister, Ditto.

Tambu Kahari

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