The Boy Who Blossomed Wrong | by Nino17 | November 2025

In the dusty streets of Kano, where the call to prayer mixed with the laughter of children chasing deflated soccer balls, Adi lived in a world that seemed too small for his changing body. He was twelve when it started. Not with a loud noise, but with a whisper that his body refused to ignore.

His chest itched. Then it swells. Soft mounds pressing against his school uniform like unwelcome guests. His hips widened, his voice remaining loud and clear as his friends’ voices cracked and deepened. The boys in his public high school dormitory called him “Auntie Addie” and laughed until tears ran down their faces. He laughed too at first. Then stop.

At fourteen he was round. It’s not a solid gladiator round, but it’s soft, heavy, and impossible to hide. His mother took him to the teaching hospital. Blood tests. Scanning. Doctors scratch their heads. They said: “It’s okay.” “Just a fat kid. He’ll get rid of it.” His father nodded, paid the bills, and bought him a larger uniform.

Traditional healers were next. Bitter herbs that made him vomit for days. Talismans under the baobab tree. Babalu who burned cow shells and was declared cursed by his jealous aunt. Nothing changed except the hole in his parents’ pockets.

At the age of 15, the Abuja urologist delivered the blow no one expected. “Your testicles are atrophied,” he said, pointing to the grainy ultrasound images. “Low sperm count. Possibly infertility.” Ed stared at the screen, not understanding. Infertility was a word that referred to old men, not to boys who still collected stickers from cookie wrappers. He came home and cried on his pillow until the cloth was wet.

The boarding school became a battlefield. Mornings meant avoiding chest slaps during the shower line. The afternoon means hiding out in the library, pretending to study while classmates whisper. “See that girl? No, wait, that’s Ed.” Stop playing football. Stop changing in front of anyone. He began wearing three jackets under his uniform to flatten what could not be flattened.

The years are unclear. Sixteen. seventeen. eighteen. His body remained betrayed by stretch marks that traced his hips like lightning, and breasts that needed the kind of bras his sister used to wear. He learned to walk with books pressed to his chest. I learned which market women wouldn’t stare at. Learn to smile when he wants to scream.

Then Uncle Musa came from London. Tall, confident, he smelled of cold weather and possibility. He took one look at Ade, now twenty, still soft, still hiding, and called her. “There’s a specialist in Lagos. Endocrinology. Do these local doctors only read things in books?”

The hospital on Victoria Island was different. Cold air. Quiet voices. The doctor listened for forty minutes without interruption. More blood tests. Different. When the results came back, Dr. Okonkwo didn’t mince words.

“You have congenital adrenal hyperplasia. Late onset. Your body produces too much estrogen, and not enough testosterone. Testicular atrophy? Secondary. We caught the disease late, but not too late.”

He started treatment with pills. Then the injection. Weekly blood draws left his arms bruised but hopeful. Three months later, something changed. His voice dropped, an octave, then another. The softness in his hips began to take hold. His chest, miracle of miracles, began to flatten.

But the real change was inside.

Longer pause. He laughed without covering his mouth. When the old schoolmates were staring at the market, he was staring back. The boy who had been praying for invisibility now walked as if he owned the ground beneath him.

His mother cried when she saw his collarbones appear for the first time. His father bought him a tailored shirt that actually fit him. Uncle Musa sent pictures from London: “See what the right medicine does?”

Ade kept a journal. Not for anyone else, but for the boy he was. Page after page of questions:

Why did it take twenty years and an uncle trained abroad to find the answers found in textbooks?

How many other people are out there, hiding in oversized clothes, thinking they are cursed?

Would this have happened in London? In Boston? Could a pediatrician have caught it at the age of twelve instead of twenty?

Treatment continues. His testosterone levels rise. His estrogen decreases. fertility? Still uncertain. But possibility lives where despair once reigned.

Last week he joined university. Computer science. He walks across campus with his head held high and his chest flat under a well-fitting shirt. When the new students stare because some are still staring at them, he smiles and keeps walking.

Some boys slowly turn into men.

Ade blossomed wrong, then right, then into something entirely his own.

And somewhere in Kano, another child feels the first itch under his uniform. Another mom makes another appointment that says “nothing is wrong.”

Aid thinks about this child every day.

He thinks about writing them a letter that they will never receive.

Wait, he’ll say.

The world is bigger than this compound.

Your body is not broken.

He’s just waiting for the right doctor to listen.

What will happen next?

This is the part we are all still writing.