00:01If you're a twin in Calabar you would definitely be thankful for Mary Slessor and if you're
00:06wondering why, come let me tell you about it. In the 80s and early 90s the birth of twins in
00:11some
00:11communities around Calabar wasn't exactly something to celebrate. Twins were believed to
00:15bring bad luck so mothers and their babies were sometimes abandoned in the forest or killed.
00:21Then Mary Slessor showed up, a 27 year old cottage missionary who arrived in Calabar
00:27in 1876. She was described as stubborn, fierce and at times high-ended but she was also deeply
00:34committed to the children she rescued. After a broken engagement she famously wrote to a friend,
00:39my work is my marriage and she lived by it. Over the years she adopted nine set of twins she
00:45rescued.
00:45Her work helped change attitudes towards the prime and by 1906 the killing of twins was officially
00:51criminalized. Mary Slessor died in 1915 but Calabar kept her name alive.
00:56In 1991 as the city expanded, a major junction along Marion Road was built and named the Mary Slessor
01:02roundabout. But every time someone says I'm at Mary Slessor, they are keeping alive
01:07the memory of someone who stood between vulnerable children and death.
