‘We need to talk about what happened to you in Africa.’
Said my mother, ten years ago in a busy restaurant in Chelsea.
She’d taken me out to lunch.
I remember feeling like ice had been injected into my spine and my chest closed in fright. Tears spilled down my cheeks as I hastily garbled that I wouldn’t, I couldn’t discuss it and begged her not to ask me again.
That was the last time it was mentioned.
And I tried very hard to forget.
I was raped in a foreign country when I was seventeen years old.
Please do not think less of my mother for not pushing for more information from her distressed daughter. I was living in a state of catatonia. Unable to function or fully acknowledge what had happened to me.
The shame I felt was so sharp, so palpable, so intense it hung around me like my own personal, poisonous albatross. I couldn’t acknowledge it. If I did it would suffocate me and destroy my entire family.
So I chose to ignore it.
I’m young for my year group so I left school at age seventeen. Having spent seven years in an all girls (very small) boarding school my travel agent father suggested that I spend a few months abroad before starting drama school. I can’t remember his exact reasoning but I imagine it was exceptionally valid. Shortly after finishing my A Levels I was packed off to Tanzania to work at a remote game lodge.
And please don’t misunderstand.
In the weeks before I was assaulted I was some of the happiest I have ever been. I felt free for the first time in my short life. Released from the constraints of an archaic, near finishing school education and boys who graded us girls out of ten in various categories that included face, boobs and blow job giving abilities.
But that’s a whole other story.
I spent a few weeks waking up at dawn, making beds, scouring the bush for lions, camping wild, climbing trees, taming hyraxes and all without a scrap of make up, a hair brush or a razor.
I was free. I was happy.
I cultivated relationships with the men and women I worked alongside with in the camp. I learnt to speak fairly good Swahili. I met people from all across the globe. I trusted. I loved. I opened myself.
My nickname was ‘the bush baby’ – first time feral, wild, unencumbered.
Freedom. Unadulterated freedom.
Part of my job was to wish the guests a goodnight – this would usually happen around 10.30pm.
Post dinner. Post drinks. Post torchlit return to cabin.
I would then retreat to my hut, armed with a torch and a walkie-talkie.
Torch for snakes. Walkie-talkie for elephants.
One night the boys at the bar asked me to stay for a drink.
I did not drink at the time.
I said I would have a ginger beer.
A fact I remember because never before or since had I or have I asked for a ginger beer.
There were two men.
One gave me the drink.
There are a few things I can remember after that.
I remember being ‘helped’ back to my room.
I remember being pushed down.
I remember saying no.
I remember begging him to stop.
I remember the pain.
I remember not being able to breathe.
And I remember praying. And I don’t usually pray.
But I remember trying to say The Lords Prayer, something I hadn’t done since school.
Something I never did.
But I could only slur the words and I cried.
I can’t remember anyone leaving.
But I remember waking up alone.
I remember walking to the bathroom.
I remember looking in the mirror and seeing that my neck was black with bruises.
I remember using a scarf to hide myself.
I remember walking towards the camps office.
I remember stumbling in.
I remember seeing the couple that ran the camp.
I remember that she looked at me and said, ‘you’re white as a sheet’.
I remember shaking and saying, ‘I think something happened.’
And he said -
‘What did you do?’
What did you do.
What did I do?
He said it.
I had blood running between my legs.
I had a swollen eye.
I could hardly breathe from a choked throat.
My chest was green with handprints.
But what did I do?
‘Did you give him too much attention?’
‘Did you smile too much?’
‘Did you stay when they asked you to?’
He said.
Did you?
Did I?
I did.
I must have.
I said. I told myself. Why I couldn’t speak to my mother. Why I couldn’t tell a soul for years. The shame and humiliation. The poisonous albatross.
I was too flirtatious. Too girlish. Too boyish. Too tempting. Too wild? I was too much of anything I was supposed to be to remain safe.
How can they be blamed?
‘How will they not want to pin you against a wall?’
I was asked.
I was sent away to work at another camp. Not for my safety. But for theirs.
The shame.
What did I do?
How could I have let this happen?
‘We need to talk about what happened to you in Africa’
I was raped.
For years I could not understand my disconnection. My shame. The fear I had surrounding men, intimacy and my own sexuality. The overcompensating, the codependency, the subversiveness and, if I admit it, the lies when it came to my own pleasure.
I cannot describe what happened to me in more or less detail than I have because I have only recently become to understand the facts myself.
The act itself doesn’t warrant flower or intricacy. I have ignored the facts. I have flowered it myself with gallons upon gallons of water. Excused it with strange and sordid fairy tales. I have made up a million stories. I have tried desperately to shake it out of my head. To forget. To forgive.
To forgive myself.
But this is what happened.
This was not my fault. I was attacked. It happened. It was real.
I am a victim of rape but I myself am not a victim.
I was raped but I am here.
And I can say it.
And I am free.
*Names of places have been changed for privacy reasons
