Those guys beat me until I was barely able to gasp for air. Everything was silver blue red, but somehow I didn’t lose consciousness. I felt that if I did fall into the darkness that was calling me, I’d never return. I thought of you all. If I died, I’d be putting you in danger because Mummy and Daddy would come looking for me, asking questions. Who knows what the Red Sharks would do to them if they got too close to the truth? So I stayed awake. I watched them start walking away, one after the other. Capo was the first to leave. “Let the devil that led you here guide you,” he whispered into my ear. He firmly took Adebayo by the arm, dragging him away. Then the others left one by one. No one did a thing to help me.

I lay there, wheezing, painfully coughing, feeling the blood and sweat seep from me, mosquitoes coming in droves to bite me and drink my draining blood. I couldn’t believe what had happened to me. It’s one thing to take a few hits in a boxing match or a hard kick on the soccer field, it’s another to be beaten down by ten big men. No mercy. No care for vital or sensitive organs. No rescue. I didn’t know where I was and I was in the dark. In the bush. I was alone, Sunny. So alone.

I don’t know how long I lay there. Maybe about a half hour. Sometimes things were very dim; other times, I was wide awake with terrible throbbing pain. Then I heard rustling and footsteps. Someone was beside me. That someone put his hands beneath my body and helped me stand up. I groaned and whimpered. I must have sounded like a dying old man. But at that time, I didn’t care. I was barely conscious. The world was swimming, and I didn’t know up from down. My chest was a knot of pain. My legs were numb. I felt wet all over. I could smell myself . . . I may have . . . there was more than the reek of sweat and blood on me. Slowly, we started walking.

“Never let anyone know I helped you,” he said. I started weeping. He helped me get to my hostel. It was almost four A.M. “That was the first phase of initiation,” Adebayo said, looking at me gravely. “The next will be tomorrow night. It will go up to seven days.”

“Oh my God,” I whispered.

“Remember when I said I was robbed by those guys that first week we were here?”

When I realized, I gasped. “You were all bloody.”

He nodded.

“And cut up. Your arms were . . . That was them?”

“If I can survive it,” he said, “you can.”

“No,” I said. We stood outside my room whispering like devils in the night. Inside, my hostel mates were all asleep.

“There’s nothing you can do to stop it now,” he said. “You either make it through or you die. Now you know everyone’s face. You can betray us.” He gave me a first-aid kit and quickly left. That was the first initiation.