Mom labels our half-brother a ‘latrine pitney’

Dear Pastor,

I know that you have listened to many problems, but I have one to tell you about that I did not think I would have to go through as a young man.

I grew up in a very religious home. Everybody went to church; it was something we looked forward to. We had family worship early in the morning and then we prepared ourselves. My brothers looked after the livestock and the girls made sure that breakfast was made. We were a happy family.

But then something happened.

My father set his eyes on a girl who was our neighbour’s cousin. This girl came from rural Jamaica and she became our friend. She used to come to our house and we played games as children. She was very poor and my mother often gave her some of the items we received from relatives abroad. She was only 16 years old.

One evening, my parents had an argument, and my mother told my father that that girl must never put her foot back in the house. When they stopped arguing, we went to bed. The following day after school, we asked our mother why she did not want the girl to come back to the house and she said, “You see that girl, I caught your father and her having sex in the outside toilet.”

My mother went to use the toilet, and there was my father having sex with the girl. She said our father was only wearing his underpants, and the girl had her clothes right up to her breasts.

My father’s excuse was that he did not rape the girl and it had been three months since my mother gave him anything. He said this girl was “helping him out”.

My mother raised such a stink in the community that the girl had to leave and return home. But that was not the end of it. Nine months later, we were told that we have another brother. My father had impregnated the girl. My mother said that my father told her it was only one time they had sex. The girl said that was not true. She said my father had taken her to where he does his farming and had sex with her several times.

The child looks like us, but our mother hates the girl. While we were growing up, my mother did not want us to have anything to do with the child. But my father has admitted to us that he is the child’s father, and he continued to blame our mother. The young woman has since had the opportunity to return to school. She has got a good job, and her son is doing well.

But my mother is still very bitter.

One of my brothers told me that he suspected that my father and this girl were carrying on, because he always bought things for her and sent them to where she was staying. My father told our mother that he doesn’t understand how she is a Christian and can’t forgive. To this very day, after all these years, my mother calls the child “latrine pitney”.

The mother and her son are now living overseas, and they talk to our father on a regular basis. I asked my father if he still loves that girl and he said yes, she was a decent girl, and my mother did not have to tell the whole community that he got involved with her.

M.

Dear M.,

I hope that this child will forgive anybody in your family who did not accept him when he was born.

Your mother calls him a ‘latrine pitney’; that was not very nice, because the girl said she had had sex with your father where he did his farming. But let us face it, having sex in a latrine cannot be the most convenient place. But I suppose that when two people are determined to have sex, convenience is not important to them. This girl was only 16 and probably very naïve.

I am happy that the woman is now living happily elsewhere. The boy is family, regardless of how he got into the world. Your father said your mother withheld sex from him for a while and that is why he turned to the young girl. But your father did not exercise good self-control. I hope that he was able to give this child some support.

Pastor