Esther –the little girl you see with a bandage on is a step daughter to Kehinde, who neighbours think she is a bad stepmother that treats Esther unfairly compared to her own children. Neighbours say she constantly beats Esther& maltreats her so much so that they hear her crying every. It was no surprise when the neighbours pounced on her like angry mob, for dipping her little stepdaughter’s hands into hot boiling water as punishment.
But according to Kehinde “It happened a few weeks ago.That morning, I noticed that Esther was looking very dull. So, I asked her to come to me and I gave her a potty for her to urinate into. I discovered that the urine was black, which showed that she was sick. So, I didn’t allow her to go to school. That day, I was also bleeding because I just had a miscarriage. After a while, I kept a bowl of very hot water that I wanted to use on myself beside our bed and rushed out to the kitchen.
Suddenly, I heard Esther’s piercing cry and I rushed back into the room only to see her struggling with the bowl of hot water.
By the time I could rescue her, she already boiled her two hands. I thought she wanted to drink water because she was eating the rice that I cooked for her and my own children before I left the room. I quickly went to borrow N100 from a neighbour with which I bought some balm that I applied on the hands.
I also gave her some drugs for her fever and she soon slept off. “When her father returned from work in the night and noticed what happened to her, he beat the hell out of me, in spite of my condition. It took the intervention of our landlord before he left me.
Since then, Esther has been staying with me at home. She has not been going to school and I’ve been doing my best to treat her. “But a few days ago, I invited a nurse, who is also a neighbour to attend to me. As a result of the miscarriage, I have been feeling very weak and I have lost a lot of blood. The nurse came and I was lying on the bed. Esther was resting on a mattress close to the bed.
The nurse came to attend to me but when she saw Esther, she looked worried and asked what happened to her. When I explained, she asked why we didn’t take her to hospital yet and I said I didn’t have the money and that I was expecting that Esther’s father would do that. “The nurse promptly attended to me and hurriedly left after examining Esther’s boiled hands for two or three times.
culled from Sunnews Online
