Menace In My Blood: - my affliction with sickle cell anaemia

By Ayoola Olajide

Ayoola Olajide, editor, African Sickle Cell News & World Report, relates growing up in a vibrant close-knit polygamous family in West Africa, and highlights the difficulties of life under the spell of an incurable blood disorder. Menace In My Blood spans his childhood, primary and secondary school in the 1960s and 70s.The only one among 30 children to suffer from sickle cell anaemia, the author explores the cultural interpretations of a genetic health condition still considered an enigma by medical science. With the failure of orthodox medicine to grant relief, a way out was sought in African traditional medicine and fervent prayer, with much the same result.How could a brilliant child be so predisposed to illness? Even a stargazer was called upon to explain.Or - or could he be a spirit child (abiku), seemingly suffering in this world but in another laughing away at his worried, heartbroken mother; and relishing the family's gradual but sure descent into penury?Raised in a large household, he was, at seven, molested by a relative, initiated into cigarette smoking by other relatives and often tagged along to visit a sex worker by yet another relative! As a teenager and in secondary school, he engaged in gambling.Despite the trauma of prolonged absence from school caused by frequent illness and hospitalization, Olajide finished secondary school at 14 years of age, and university at 20.A riveting story of triumph over one of life's inevitable challenges, Menace In My Blood will keep you up long past your bedtime.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1980236690
• ISBN13: 9781980236696
• Release Date: February 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.87 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.6" x 6.0"