Vunderkind
Social Member
It took a while to rouse eight-year-old Sophia Shaidu, as she lay on her stomach on a bed in the children’s ward of the Aniyun Hospital, Gbagada, Lagos.
The nurse who had taken our correspondent in to see her was happy that the girl could at least fall asleep after days of excruciating pains that kept her awake.
“Some people are here to talk to you,” she was told.
Sophia spoke only Ebira language. She does not understand English; not even pidgin English because her guardian did not enrol her in school after she was brought to Lagos to work as a housemaid about three years ago.
So, our correspondent was only able to speak to her through an interpreter.
One thing was immediately clear when Sophia finally sat up with a considerable pain: dark marks dotted her body from her neck to her ankle.
She hung her left arm awkwardly, which made her flinch at the nurse’s touch.
“We are planning to do an X-ray on the arm. It’s likely she has a fracture there,” the nurse said.
“The marks on my body are from beatings,” the girl later explained.
Sophia said that after one of such beatings, she had not been able to use her left arm, which was now swollen, hard and discoloured at the elbow area.
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Source: Punch newspaper
The nurse who had taken our correspondent in to see her was happy that the girl could at least fall asleep after days of excruciating pains that kept her awake.
“Some people are here to talk to you,” she was told.
Sophia spoke only Ebira language. She does not understand English; not even pidgin English because her guardian did not enrol her in school after she was brought to Lagos to work as a housemaid about three years ago.
So, our correspondent was only able to speak to her through an interpreter.
One thing was immediately clear when Sophia finally sat up with a considerable pain: dark marks dotted her body from her neck to her ankle.
She hung her left arm awkwardly, which made her flinch at the nurse’s touch.
“We are planning to do an X-ray on the arm. It’s likely she has a fracture there,” the nurse said.
“The marks on my body are from beatings,” the girl later explained.
Sophia said that after one of such beatings, she had not been able to use her left arm, which was now swollen, hard and discoloured at the elbow area.
Click here to read more
Source: Punch newspaper
