Popular Nigerian female comedian, Helen Paul has recounted her painful childhood, frustration, deprivation and painful experience with family who rejected.
Helen revealed that she was conceived after her then underaged mother was raped by an unidentified man.
Her mother was constantly taunted for bearing a child out of wedlock. Helen was left with and raised by her great grandmother. She recalled her duties and grand aunties always warning her great grandmother never to spend her upkeep on the fatherless baby.
According to her, each time her aunties visited, they would leave generous sums of money with the aged woman with strict instructions not to cater for the “b*stard” but only spend it on herself and her medication.
Great grandma would call her attention, as little as she was, to the realities of life where even blood relations denigrate anyone who is a nobody. She promised the old lady that she would succeed.
The children in the neighborhood made life even more miserable by constantly taunting her and calling her a b*stard.
Her young, confused mother forgot to give her a name for a long time until she went to a Celestial Church soup kitchen where the General Oversea, whom Helen was later to remember as Baba Osoffa accidentally bumped into her and advised her to name her child after the first person that showed her mercy.
Next was time to enroll her in school and the great grandmother had no surname to give. She then called a family where the entire family vehemently refused to have Helen bear their name.
The distraught little child was saved from further heartache when a man suddenly stood up and offered his name. The toddler then became Helen Paul.
For Helen, everything is now history as she became a comedian in Nigeria and a Professor in the United States of America.