(STORYTIME) Love Letter from My “Semi-Adopted” Sister
We have introduced story series in our categories. Here is a true-life story of love you will like to read. (STORYTIME) Love Letter from My “Semi-Adopted” Sister.
Life has thrown stones at me, I am going to build a house with it. I don’t care anymore about what you will think or what people will say about us. My mind is made up. I am not ready to lose this opportunity.
It is about the story of Sali and me. Sali is a homeless street child who was rescued by me. My parents rejected her and turned her away.
With much persuasion, they allowed her to be a half-adopted daughter to me (then 19). Because I didn’t have a house of my own, she was not allowed to stay in the family house.
She was taken to a Ministry, to live with them. I wept when she was being taken away.
My parents told me my sisters are many in numbers already. So, Sali is not welcomed into the family. But for the love my mother had for me, she agreed to adopt Sali as my daughter.
When am done with school and get a house of my own, I shall go for her and pick her. I shall treat her as my own daughter.
This was the last wish I had for Sali before my family made me travel Overseas for my Degrees.
Letter from Sali
Days, weeks, months, and years passed without seeing and hearing from Sali. “I hope she is in a safe hand?” I kept saying to myself every day.
Finally, Last year, I received a letter from my family. I was told Sali has been adopted by a female school principal who lives in the city.
“I knew it! Mom scammed me. Damm it!” I heard myself screamed all through the day.
Inwardly, I prayed and hoped Sali is in a safe hand. I equally took my studies seriously so as to graduate with good grades.
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 18. 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 me 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.
(STORYTIME) Love Letter from My “Semi-Adopted” Sister
Analyzing the special Letter
Sali was 10 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 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 stone thrown to me by this life and I am going to build my house with her.
(STORYTIME) Love Letter from My “Semi-Adopted” Sister
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 17-years-old when I picked Sali from the street. All I wanted was to make her my 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 his 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 to adopt, I suggested she adopted her in my name as my own child. But my mother insisted she won’t live under the same roof as her.
The family agreed to take Sali to the Mission. At least, she would find a new and better life there. . We also agreed she would be staying there while the family catered for her well-being.
I had no option. I was ok with the last option as long as she was not being taken away. I didn’t know Mom was playing the fast one on me.
That was 8 years ago.
Today, I am 25 years old. I have completed my first degree. 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. And you, I mean you, cannot stop me. She is mine forever!
