The Nigerian dance icon Kafayat ‘Kaffy‘ Shafau has recalled a traumatic childhood experience where her mother accused her of having an affair with a boyfriend at the tender age of 13.
Speaking on a recent episode of The Honest Bunch podcast, Kaffy detailed the painful event, which she said stemmed from her mother’s insecurities following a divorce.
The professional dancer said that after her parents split, her mother dated various men. She said she and her siblings, longing for a father figure, grew close to the boyfriends and affectionately called them daddies.
She said, however, the closeness bred suspicion and jealousy in her mother, who began to irrationally fear that her daughters were betraying her with her partners.
I was 13 when my mother started suspecting me with her men. Because of the divorce, she had a lot of people. She will have different men she is dating, and we will see those men as daddies because we were also missing that father figure, she said.
The closer you are to the men, the more she is insecure.
Kaffy said her mother once stripped her naked and flogged her after she walked in on her trying to clean blood from the face of one of her boyfriends after he cut himself while shaving.
And there was a day that I was stripped naked in front of that man in the living room and punished for just trying to help daddy clean blood from his face because he was shaving and cut himself, she said.
My mother walked into the room when I was saying, ‘Daddy, see.’ And she misinterpreted what was happening, and I was flogged naked in front of everyone.
That had its own traumatising effect on the mind on its own. But then you are thinking, But that’s my mother, would I do that to my mother? Why would my mother even think of that of me, the daughter?’ Are you seeing that transfer of insecurity from mother to child? It’s done subliminally, but it’s going to have its own effect.
The 45-year-old choreographer said she has experienced rejection from men because she is a divorcee with two children.
