Tina’s Trip To Hell

Published on October 12, 2012 by pmnews · No CommentsTina Okpara, the girl that was sexually abused by former footballer, Godwin Okpara, puts her experience in print via My Life Has A Price

Tina Okpara

Tina Okpara’s story is a genuinely horrific one. Her adoptive father serially raped her for two years, while her stepmother treated her as a domestic slave for five years. Those acts landed the couple, Godwin and Linda Okpara, in jail. Godwin, a former Nigerian international, is currently serving a 10-year jail term in France, while Linda is in for 15 years. Seven years after, Tina, whom they adopted at 13, gained freedom and has decided to tell her tale in a 188-page book, My Life Has A Price. The book, originally written in French and first published under the title Ma vie a un Prix, has just been translated into English.
My Life Has A Price, written in a very simple and clear language, is a catalogue of Tina’s grotesque experience in the home of the Okparas. The book tells how Tina, after losing her mother, Teni Omaku, is adopted by the Okparas in Lagos in 2001 and taken to France, where her adoptive father once played for Paris Saint Germain. Tina, whose biological father told about the good life that awaited her in France, is stunned by the grim reality there. Tina’s adoptive parents refuse to send her to school, yet she is expected to take the couple’s three children to school daily and return to sexually pleasure Godwin–without her consent. Even when Linda catches Godwin raping her, she accuses her of seducing him and beats her severely, leaving her with both physical and mental scars. Tina keeps a secret notebook, in which she records her ordeal. “In the morning, I walk Solphie, Steve and Sandy to their school…When I come back to the house, Linda finds work to keep me busy. It is always ‘Tina do this,’ or Tina, do that.’ She asks me to sweep, to mop, to clean the rooms, to do the dishes or to help with the cooking. The tone of her voice is not always kind…Godwin does nothing in the house. He spends a part of the morning with us, but he does not talk much. Then he goes to training and joins the other players of Paris Saint-Germain,” Tina says.
However, one of the major strengths of the book is the way the writer portrays the characters. In the book, Godwin is depicted as often subservient to his wife. Linda is a brusque woman and the person in charge of affairs in the house. Badejoko Campbell, better known as Mamie, is portrayed as Linda’s cunning spy. Mamie is ready to sacrifice Tina to remain in Linda’s good books. The writer describes her adoptive father thus: “Godwin Okpara is perhaps a great footballer, an international defender. He is perhaps cleverer than the opposing attackers, no centre-forward scares him, but he can’t stand up to his wife! She is seven years older than him and one head taller. She dominates him physically and psychologically.”
The book is similar to Arthur Golden’s international bestseller, Memoirs Of A Geisha. In each of the books, the female protagonists, Tina and Chiyo-chan, are tricked into undertaking a journey, which turns out to be a new life of slavery. While Tina becomes a maid, Chiyo-chan ends up as a geisha, and both characters do not only express shock at their new status but also go through harrowing experiences in the hands of their guardians. Both books end on a happy note for the protagonists and they live to start another life and tell their stories.
Despite the book’s grotesque motif, it tells the story of a survivor. It is also about the triumph of the human spirit over impossible odds. The book starts with the writer depicting one of her darkest moments where she tries to escape and ends with her freedom. The book succeeds not just because Tina has told her story so well, but because writing it was a means of catharsis for her. “Emotionally, I am rebuilding myself slowly, but not completely. Today, I am a person full of life, joy and love to share. I definitely want to have children in the near future but in good conditions to prevent them from an uncertain future and particularly prevent their having a childhood like mine,” she says.
By Nehru Odeh