Funmi Iyanda has revealed why she is not interested in marriage.Two days ago, the famous show host triggered a conversation after she announced her disinterest in marriage.
“I have never wanted to be married.
I like it for others who like it for themselves. But asfor me, Ms Funmi Iyanda, no thank you,” shesaid.And many Nigerians barraged her with mean opinions.
Now, Iyanda has written abrief memoir on Medium where she revealed childhood experiences, like growing with a father after their mother ‘disappeared’, her father’s penchant for drinking.
How religion exalts the rich and sneer atthe poor, the sexual molestation she endured andher stepmum’s botched attempt at matchmaking her to a lecherous man.
In the memoir written in the voice of a young Funmi Iyanda, she says:“I like books and music, nothing else.
I don’t thinkboys like me, the one time l had gone with Ronke to visit her boyfriend, his creepy friend had tried to touch my breasts, they were not even a good size.
I didn’t know Jehovah Witness girls could have boyfriends outside the church but Ronke was so beautiful, who could blame them, or her. I don’t believe the few boys who say I’m pretty, l think they just want to have sex, which is a sin,” she recalls.
She completed secondary secondary school with good grades but needed money to buy a JAMB form and also for her university education. Rather than hawk on the streets of Lagos, the young Funmi opted for taking young children through extramural classes.
However, that opened her up to sexual molestation from the fathers of the children she taught.
“I am bad at maths so I have to teach myself so l could teach the children.
The parents always treatme like l don’t exist except sometimes when the fathers squeeze my breasts, l hate them squeezing my breasts, they are not even big.
Since we can only afford one meal a day, it is tough teaching whilst these families cooked dinners so I’ve learnt to feel full on smell of cooking food.
They never offer you food,” she says.
Her aversion towards marriage started when her stepmum Mama Tosin tried to match make her with an oil company worker.
Funmi resisted his attempts to molest her in their home, she flung the gifts he came with out of their window and ruined everything. Afterwards, she felt belittled and trapped.
Here’s what she said of that experience:
“So it was that mama Tosin, concocted a plan to matchmake me with this man who worked in an oil company. She was blissfully unaware that the old and grossman -I hear he’s almost 30- had already been giving me bad vibes with lecherous moves.
Brother or no, l can always tell the ones who want to get into my pants but I’m determined to go to university and become a doctor.
Last week he came visiting bearing gifts,which he handed to me in a shopping bag.
There was that new Seiko watch, the one everyone wanted badly, a bottle of Samsara perfume and 50 naira.
Mama Tosin went to the kitchen for some reason.
In that time he stepped up to me and tried to hug me, his penis poking my long skirt like all those stupid men on the bus to school.
I really don’t know what came over me but a blinding rage travelled through my belly button and flung the gift bag out of our second floor window. It landed back on the formerly orange sofa because the window had mosquito netting and burglar bars. I was so mad; l tore the netting with my bare hands and tossed the bag out through the bars.
I hate feeling trapped.
”Now, it is 2017 and Ms Iyanda still feels same way about marriage.
“I still hate feeling trapped,” she says, driving the point home about why she never wants to get married.
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