Dear Rod!
Your columns are usually so helpful, but today’s one gives me an idea. You seem to think that ‘unplanned pregnancies’ should not be terminated and that it is OK for someone to ‘go it alone’. I won’t even say what I think of that but will seriously make my request.
Please will you take over the financing of the third pregnancy of my ‘host child from Child Welfare’? I paid for her schooling and she fell pregnant and had complications, including blood pressure and hypersalivation, that prevented her from attending school. We were just thinking of sending her back to school when she fell pregnant again. Now I have had her working at a crèche where she got free meals and schooling for her pigeon pair, and I have just supplemented her income as she and her children need many hospital visits etc. She has given up work because of this latest pregnancy. She has been told to accept that in her culture the men will run around and have many girlfriends and children. The new boyfriend says his granny will take over the baby once it is born if it can be proved to be his. So all you might have to do in six months time is get the DNA tests done, or else you might have to carry on paying for this child as well as the other two. In the meantime she is very expensive as she and the children do not eat porridge (it makes them sick) or drink soup as it gives them diarrhoea! The children are very upset about having to stop attending the creche.
The school to which she wants to send them is the one featured in our papers as having 150 children in one classroom, and she will need you to pay for them, as well as make up to her for the income she has lost by being too sick to go to work. And there are the dental extractions she needs that the hospital apparently refuses to do, so you will have to pay privately. Soon the daughter will be old enough to join the other girls sitting dozing at the desks and puking in the playground before producing more unplanned pregnancies. Just the thought of it makes me realise I can’t afford this pregnancy and hope that you can.
Regards,
NS
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