Secret Wey Only You Sabi Dey Pain -By Swandy Banta

A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know–Diane Arbus

Dr (Mrs.) Saline maneuvered the Monday traffic to get to school because her class had waited over thirty minutes for her test. She exchanged pleasantries on the hall way in her usual brisk manner as she approached the third year students’ lecture room where her class was to hold.

…she mused as she graded Kim’s test sheet. The fact that she was involved in a sizzling romance with him did not deter him from giving his academic work his best shot, not just in her course but all others. She was grateful she didn’t have to go begging other course lecturers to work out his scores.

She began to reminisce on the blissful loving moment spent with Kim over the weekend at her house while Prof was away for a seminar in Ghana. He returned on Sunday just before Kim left and took a few minutes to ask about his academics and his parents (whom his wife had said were her secondary school mates).

Secrets!!!

HMMMMNN…. Reading through this story, the natural instinct would be an immediate conviction of Mrs. Saline for dating a young man probably old enough to be her son right under her husband’s nose.

We can only speculate on possible reasons why Saline was dating Kim without necessarily arriving at the facts of the matter.

Maybe Prof Saline’s diabetes had affected his erectile function, he may have become too preoccupied with his physics experiments that he forgot his wife needed him or maybe she was just an insatiable pervert, maybe she fell in love with Kim.

But before you draw any conclusion you need to answer a couple of questions yourself.

What’s your secret? What is that dark truth about you that the world must never know?

I dare say that only few of us are without damaging secrets.

God is gracious and kind for blessing us with the privilege of being the only ones privy to the content of our minds asides him. Imagine if everyone could suddenly view or read the content of the heart of others.

The catastrophe that would follow God bestowed mind reading ability for all is best imagined.

I wonder what would happen if a wife knew that her husband was not in love with her but with her sister and resented her in his heart for crossing paths with him before her sister.

If the young man knew that his childhood friend was responsible for the last armed robbery attack at his house where the dollars he returned from the US with was carted away. If he knew that this same friend who moved in with him to nurse his wounds after the attack was the person responsible for the attack.

If that husband knew that his wife has been poisoning him gradually with a kind of poison which would take six months before his organs began to collapse and lead to eventual death. If he knew that the reason for the poisoning was because she has only daughters and had heard that his mistress had been delivered of a son for him.

She smiles at him, dutifully and respectfully warms his bed and prepares his meals which she consistently poisons him as she supervises to ensure that his next of kin records secure her daughters. She predetermines that her daughters must win while the son and mistress loose.

Trust me there are secrets that should remain secrets.

A Durex survey suggests that Nigerian women are the most unfaithful in the world. A DNA expert in Lagos University Teaching Hospital has tried to substantiate by claiming that 3 out of 10 Nigerian men are not the biological fathers of the children in their custody. I however believe that a balanced report would be one which included maternity tests to ascertain if the mothers were also biologically related to these children.

This paternity fraud has been attributed to sexual recklessness, poor family planning and mix ups in maternity clinics.

At the risk of being adjudged to be taking sides with the Nigerian women folk, I dare say that if indeed 3 out of 10 of these children are not biologically related to their fathers, then the maternity clinics should be closely monitored via closely monitored research. My guess would be that after a considerable period these statistics would drop.

The thing with secrets is that in most cases, the secret bearer would want to divulge, but the consequences of divulging are usually the motivation behind the close wrap of the secret. This may be the reason why some of these secrets are divulged on the death bed.

For instance, years ago I read a story about a couple from the east who had wedded in Kaduna. So a few months after the wedding they decided to go home to have a thanksgiving service. On their way travelling home, their vehicle was attacked by armed robbers. The robbers stripped them of all their valuables. They selected some women in the car including this young bride, took them into the bush nearby and raped them.

Embarrassed, ashamed and bitter, this young bride came back, told her husband all that transpired and cried all through the rest of the journey home.

As soon as they got to their locality, her husband redirected their journey to her own village instead of his, dropped her off with her parents and left. He later sent his kinsmen to inform her family that he was no longer interested in the marriage.

As I read that story, it registered in my sub consciousness at the time the reason why some women folk are of the opinion that men were not to be told everything.

Secrets are bad, but a good understanding of the reasons why these secrets are kept may just be the first steps out of the tangled woods of dirty dark secrets.

I think the problem most times is that we have a certain judgmental instinct which robs us of every sense of reason immediately we are given certain information that looks bad on the surface.

Most times we shoot before we ask questions.

The painful thing about this, is the fact that most of us judge, castigate and condemn whilst deep down in our hearts we recognize those well kept facts about us that if only people knew, we would receive more bullets that the person we had placed on a humiliating radar.

Some people even relish and celebrate exposed secrets about people, knowing well theirs is still hidden under the covers. Some people even become self appointed conduits for a free flow of knowledge transfer on the exposed secret.

If you are reading this and you don’t have a secret, you need to thank God because you have no idea the heavy burden secret bearers carry. Learn to mind your business, don’t judge. Judgment is for God and not you or me.

If you are bearing the burden of a secret, maybe it’s time to consider shedding off the weight of this painfully heavy load that you carry.

Trust me, things are not always the way they seem, so it’s always best to mind your business and stop assessing things on a face value. Secret no easy even if na to just surprise person talk more of the one wey dey scatter belly, May grace that eases pain teach us how to go!

Swandy Banta is blue-blooded, ask her what that means and she gladly tells you, she’s been through the tunnel of pain and she found illuminating light. She writes and coaches on the difficult subject of pain. Whether it’s national pain, community pain or the pain of loss and the hurts of life that makes us all ask why—she brings new perspectives. Swandy can be reached on swandy.banta@gmail.com