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Navigating life as a woman in the world today is interesting. From Nigeria to Timbuktu, it’ll amaze you how similar all our experiences are. Every Wednesday, women the world over will share their experiences on everything from sex to politics right here.
The subject of today’s What She Said is a 26-year-old woman. She talks about not really having a childhood, not wanting children, living with PCOS, wanting a hysterectomy, and wanting more money.
Tell me something about your childhood.
Growing up was fun. I’m the last born and even though my parents didn’t have much, it never really bothered me. I was somehow still very spoiled and protected.
I didn’t have toys or watch cartoons because we didn’t have cable and I was growing up with people 5-11 years older than me.
That’s a huge age difference.
My siblings are all way older than me. I am 26 now and my parents still ask for their approval about things I want to do with my life. It’s like my siblings are my parents and my parents are higher authorities.
How does that make you feel?
It doesn’t bother me much. I just wish my parents would take me more seriously, but I don’t see that happening. I know my siblings always have my best interest at heart and it’s a lot easier to go through them till I no longer have to.
They’re also very close and that’s what I knew. I learned friendship from my siblings. We are friends with each other and always have each other’s backs. It’s nice and warm.
They have been very big influences on my life. From listening to rappers like DMX, Ja-Rule, Snoop Dogg and a lot of artists from the early 2000s because of my older brother, to getting a PCOS diagnosis with the help of my sister.
I’d never had regular periods. I started seeing my period in 2006 and even then they weren’t regular. I told my mum about it, but it wasn’t a big deal until I didn’t get my period for 5 months at a stretch in 2012. We went to the doctor and he said it was stress from writing WAEC. The period eventually came in October and came for a while. It was on and off.
I started having sex in 2016 and didn’t get my period for months. I took multiple pregnancy tests and they kept coming back negative, so I eventually told my mum about the delayed period and she insisted we go to a gynaecologist to get me checked.
Before that, I’d done some hormone tests, so I already knew I had a hormonal imbalance. I just didn’t know it was PCOS. My sister has PCOS and my mum is a retired nurse, so she put two and two together and she said I probably had PCOS too but wanted a proper diagnosis. I went to two different gynaecologists, and I got the diagnosis.
I went to a government hospital and then I went to a fertility hospital. I got a scan to check the size of the cysts and my female gynaecologist told me not to bother so much about it till I’m ready to have kids, but I don’t even want to have children. Not for any particular reason, I just don’t care much for them. I have two nephews and a niece I love very much but I’m not keen on having any of my own.
What happened after the diagnosis?
I got medication and I’m very nonchalant about it. I didn’t really start paying attention to my PCOS until this year when it felt like it was going to kill me. It was like every single symptom hit me at once. It was insane and drove me to read a lot about PCOS. The more I read, the more sense things made.
I got period pain so intense, I couldn’t sleep. I was taking medication, but it wasn’t working. I was even having hot flashes.
I’ve only had two periods this year and they’ve both come with different madnesses. I had to induce the first one by taking the medication my doctor prescribed and the period lasted for 16 days and left me depressed and ill for the whole month. The second period I had this year came on its own but it felt like all the blood in my body was going to drain out and it lasted five days. Honestly, I’m really looking forward to a hysterectomy.
That’s very intense. Why a hysterectomy?
I don’t want a uterus anymore, and I want to live a life free from PCOS even if it’s just for my mental health. I went from a size 12 to a size 18, and I’ve had bouts of severe anxiety. It’s also worse when I’m on any form of medication for PCOS. September was an awful month but I’m a lot happier in October. No more medication, plus I was a lot more intentional about my happiness.
I thought medication made things better?
Better ke!? All the medication did for me was make my period come. It left me miserable. Letrozol, the medication my doctor prescribed for when I hadn’t seen my period, showed me pepper. I would have joint pain and be unable to sleep. I was crying and had to throw it out even though I’d used it for just two days. I’d rather not get a period than be in so much pain.
I don’t know. Nothing happens when I don’t get my period for months. If anything, I’m always so happy. I just want the period because I like to feel like a woman, but it’s like being a woman comes with hardship because why should I be crying for days because I didn’t get pregnant?
There were some times I even tried getting pregnant just for fun, but that didn’t work. No periods mean no ovulation. I’m not so bothered because like I said, I don’t want children. I consider that symptom of PCOS a blessing in disguise.
Since you don’t want children and your uterus is stressing you, why haven’t you done the hysterectomy?
I don’t know how much it costs, but I really don’t think I’d be able to afford it. Also, it’s a really big step and I haven’t given it much thought. I fancy the idea of not having a uterus, but am I ready to give it up? I need to think it through a lot more.
What’ll make life easier for you?
Money. I don’t think about PCOS when I’m enjoying my life. I want to earn enough to survive on my own and that’s one of the reasons I really want to leave the country. I’m only earning enough to make it through a few days post salary day. Money gives you a lot of options, and I don’t have that yet.
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The subject of today’s What She Said is an 18-year-old firstborn who has already raised three children. She talks about spending her childhood raising her siblings, her dad’s obvious favouritism towards her brothers, and how she wishes her parents were more involved in raising their children.
Can you tell me the earliest memory of your childhood?
How bad we had it financially. We had so little that whenever I saw something new in the house, I’d ask them who gave us. Eventually, things started moving up slowly. My mum’s brother gave her a car that she gave to my dad. Her reason for giving it to my dad was that she didn’t know anything about cars and couldn’t drive. She also finally got a job in the civil service.
Before the job, she would drop me off at the neighbour’s, then carry my younger sister on her back to go sell crayfish.
Why did she not drop both of you?
My sister cried a lot. If she wasn’t with my mum, she’d cry for the entire day till my mum got back. Because of that, the neighbours didn’t want her around.
So you were the chosen one.
Yes, I was. At one point, my mum stopped selling crayfish and started selling doughnuts. She’d give my sister and I doughnuts to take to school. The doughnuts were big and fat and all my classmates were jealous of me. They didn’t know that the doughnuts were all my parents could afford at the time.
There was a time she sold iced fish and we went around telling people. It was fun sharing the flyers and helping her scout for customers.
What about your dad?
He was a junior civil servant and wasn’t earning a lot. Funny story on how he got the job. They didn’t want to give him at first because they knew he was Igbo.
Go on…
When they referred my dad for the job, the woman conducting the interview was shouting to her subordinate in Yoruba that why would they hire an Igbo man, but they didn’t know my dad speaks fluent Yoruba. In the midst of her shouting, he stood up to leave and thanked them in Yoruba. They called him back and offered him the job because they didn’t know if he was sent by the government or something.
Nepotism nepotisming. Now about your sister…
I was just about to clock two when my parents had my younger sister. My mum told me I didn’t like her and was always asking her to take my sister back to wherever they got her from.
I grew up with very little, but it was worse for my sister. When I was born, my parents tried to do the best they could because there was still ginger. My sister, however, came after me so got a lot of hand me downs. I ate cerelac; she had akamu and crayfish.
Even with the new job?
Yes. Things started moving up and small small money started entering the account with my parents’ jobs, but things didn’t really change until 2009. My first brother was born in 2007, and he felt some of the poverty. But my youngest brother, the fourth child, was born in 2009 after things had gotten way better for my family financially. My dad got a promotion and they made him a senior officer. So before my brother was born, we had changed the furniture and retiled the house and also fixed the car. That’s why he’s a soft baby boy. My neighbours once said that the reason they know we’re eating in the house is because our last born just keeps getting fatter and rounder. He doesn’t know suffering.
Must be nice for him o. How did things get better for you?
School. Uni changed everything. When I’m in school, it’s just me and myself. I don’t have to think about what person A will eat or if person C has done assignments or washed uniforms. I love it.
My dad and sister are the ones doing most of the work in the house. Some days, my dad calls to ask how to make some kinds of soup. He’d end the call with how he can’t wait for me to come back so he can stop doing all the work.
Wait, but you have three siblings…?
This is why I feel like a second mum. I never had a chance to be a child. Everything that concerned my siblings was done by me. If they made any mistakes, I got the blame. They tell me I’m supposed to know better because I’m older. I have no space to myself.
I started cooking for my siblings when I was eight. I couldn’t make soups, but I was making sauces, potatoes, yam, etc. They still expect that from me.
At 8? Omo I don’t even cook now at 20.
It was so stressful. I’d have to cook for my siblings and then pack what they’d take to school or daycare for lunch. I remember praying to God that I hoped my mum was done having children because I was tired.
As I grew older, the tasks increased. My younger sister is a bit more persuasive than I am. She also started asserting her independence earlier so they don’t stress her as much. My brothers? They’re spoiled. When my mum had them, my dad forgot my sister and I existed. It was like he’d been waiting for sons.
There was a time on my birthday, my dad gave me money to buy myself something. I went to buy cheese balls, and when I got home, my dad was holding my younger brother in his arms. My brother pointed at the cheese balls, and my dad just collected it from me with the change and gave it to him.
ON YOUR BIRTHDAY?
On my birthday o. It’s worse because my birthday is in January, and everyone is usually broke because of Christmas festivities. The cheese balls were my only source of joy and happiness. I was so sad.
What could I have done? Once, I sent my brother to buy milk. Not only did he buy the wrong milk, but he opened it and started licking it. He also lost my change. Would you believe my parents blamed me?
Ah. Wow.
My parents showed obvious favouritism. They didn’t try to hide it.
When I was 14, I went to pay my school fees. It took way longer at the bank than I thought it would, so I came home around 4 p.m. My parents had called at the time and when I didn’t pick up, they called my neighbours. My neighbours told them I wasn’t at home so when they came back, they started shouting at me so much. They asked me how I could leave my brothers all alone. I was shocked because the older one was 10. Ten! At that time, I was taking care of everyone else.
Now he’s 14 and still can’t do anything in the kitchen. When my sister isn’t around, my dad is the one that does the cooking because “do you want your brothers to burn down the house.” My sister is always complaining because she does everything alone and nobody helps her out.
Omo, so what’ll happen when you go back home?
It means I’d resume the cooking and cleaning all over again. Sometimes when my dad calls, he tells me he can’t wait for me to return home so I can continue the work. It’s one of the reasons I avoid the house during holidays.
My brother goes out to play games and football and nobody says anything. As I am, I can’t just go to my friend’s house unannounced, but my brother disappears for hours and my mum just lightly tells him not to do it again, but he does it again!
If you could change anything, what would it be?
I’d wish my parents were more involved in raising their children. It felt like they just dumped all the children on me to raise. I also wish they spaced the children more. Maybe it would have given me a chance to actually be a child.
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The subject of today’s What She Said is a 22-year-old woman who is really close to hating her dad. She talks about him making her mother’s life difficult, being uncaring, and being denied basic things because he’s petty.
What’s the earliest memory of your childhood?
It was this time when my dad yelled at my mum. They had a fight and I saw her crying so I went to meet him, told him I was upset and he should apologise to my mum. He did. I was really young then. Like 5.
My dad has multiple POS stalls run by people he employed. Before he started the POS business, he had a cow farm, ice block and concrete block industry, a small restaurant, and still had a corporate job. These are the things I could remember. They were way more. He gives money to outsiders, it’s just when it comes to me, my mum and four younger siblings that there is a problem. It would be a different thing if I wasn’t old enough to witness what it was like when my mum’s business was doing well and she fully had it covered. She wasn’t rich, but nobody could say we didn’t have what we needed amongst our peers, but that was so long ago. Her shops got robbed twice, so it was back to square one.
Why do you think he listened to you and apologised?
My dad likes his kids when they’re super young. It’s when you start to having a mind of your own and challenging him that the fighting begins. Like now, the last two kids are the ones currently enjoying his attention. I won’t say I started rebelling against my dad at a particular time. I had a sharp mouth, so from the beginning, I got reprimanded a lot.
But this was okay. People liked me, and I was a smart child, so he used to boast about me. My contact with him increased in SS3 because then I had to start asking for all my shit directly and from then it’s been hell.
Why did you have to start asking him for things?
I used to ask my mum, but the friction between me and my dad is nothing compared to the one between him and my mama. I’m sure she has high blood pressure because of him. So I honestly would rather ask him directly than have her begging him on my behalf for anything. It’s too stressful.
So how did asking him for things work out for you?
You prepare a speech sort of. Then, you prepare yourself to hear any and everything. Ranging from him telling me to ask my mother, to the fact that I have siblings and should be considerate. If he then gives you, it might be half of what you asked for after you’ve cried into your pillow for like three days and maybe once to his face.
It’s exhausting, this ass-kissing. So I try not to ask him for things. I tell him every time I have to that he should know I’m coming to him as a last resort because I don’t like how he’ll talk. It doesn’t mean anything to him that he’s always my last resort. I actually don’t get that bit. It’s weird that it doesn’t bother him. My mum says we should be used to it by now, but it’s a lot to get used to.
He’s also very petty, so he might not give you what you’re asking before because you might have done something to him in the past.
How do you cope?
I don’t. I have a job, so I don’t have to ask him for things often. I pay for small things at home too if I get frustrated. Like buy fuel, pay bills etc.
My siblings are not so lucky. So it’s somehow. I want to save, but I feel guilty for doing it because my siblings need assistance. Thank God for friends. They help me emotionally, mentally and financially to be honest.
No, it’s for me. I’m trying not to make it out to be like I’m working for them. I’m a child too. I don’t want to grow up and regret not doing right by myself or feel like it’s their fault I deprived myself of things because somebody had more kids than they could handle. It’s for me.
I just want to be able to buy what I want, buy meds when I need them and eat what I crave once in a while.
What’ll make life easier for you?
I don’t know. A miracle? My mum somehow getting to actually start a business without my dad making her spend her capital and consequently failing? Me figuring out what I can learn that’ll earn me significant money? Or the system in Nigeria suddenly working? I don’t know. Every day I want to have a shit load of money because I know it’ll solve half my problems, but almost every other day I simply don’t want to exist so I don’t have to think about any of these things at all. I want to either figure shit out or stop this life thing. There’s no part of this that isn’t exhausting: I’m doing a lot, but it’s not enough.
Your mum’s capital; why does she spend it?
It’s long. She used to work in a different city and when her transfer to the city we lived in was taking too long, my dad made her quit because he couldn’t take care of us alone. Then she heard two of my siblings were admitted to the hospital because they fell sick. She didn’t need much convincing after that. After her shops got robbed twice, she had to start from the bottom again.
He wants her to carry her own bit, pay for stuff and all that but business will not have started and he’s already shedding bills. Whenever she starts a business, my dad stops paying bills at home so she ends up spending her capital. One time, on the day she started a new business, he asked her which responsibility she wanted to handle.
What’s your relationship with him like now?
I haven’t spoken to him in two weeks, and I prefer it like this. It’ll cause problems when we eventually talk, but he’s not a person you should be around often if you want to be healthy. I can’t be around him for two days and not cry, and I’m not a crier. Not even when Yoruba men break my heart.
My mum used to hide to cry because she didn’t want to influence how we saw our dad or treated him, but I have eyes. There was a time my dad’s friend accused her of influencing how we acted with him, but I cleared him so I know we wouldn’t be hearing from him any time soon. My mum is far from perfect, but I won’t let anyone say rubbish about her.
I don’t even think my dad realises we don’t like him. He compares himself to fathers who don’t do anything for their kids and wants us to think we’re lucky because he paid our school fees after we’ve cried and cried.
I don’t think I hate my dad, but I’m slowly getting there.
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Navigating life as a woman in the world today is interesting. From Nigeria to Timbuktu, it’ll amaze you how similar all our experiences are. Every Wednesday, women the world over will share their experiences on everything from sex to politics right here.This is Zikoko’s What She Said.
The subject of this week’s What She Said is Marytonette ‘Biwom’ Okudare, a 26-year-old singer and songwriter. She talks about growing up as a tomboy, failing at convincing her parents to support her music career and struggling with being taken seriously because of her style.
What was your childhood like?
It was restrictive. My mum was strict — she didn’t let me go out, but I was quite stubborn. After school, I would go and play football with the guys. My mum would beat me when I did this, but I didn’t mind. I always stayed back after school to play football.
Despite being so active in sports, I didn’t have any friends. I was a tomboy who hung with the guys. I wasn’t interested in the girl stuff. After football, I would go home, and it would be just me and my brother. My younger brother and I were so close we were like twins.
Everything was cool until I was sent to boarding school.
What was boarding school like?
Hectic. I was nine years old and had never been on my own. I started falling sick and missing my brother. Leaving him was so hard for me. Soon after, I started running back home.
One time, my parents dropped me off at school and by the time they reached the house, I had gotten home. They were frustrated, but I was scared of everything at school — being flogged, senior students and my teachers. I was the youngest person in my class at the time, so my classmates bullied me. They would shout at me or send me to fetch water for them. There was this girl that made sure she sat next to me during tests and exams so she could copy my work. She would legit drag the paper from me if I tried to hide it. I am still looking for her on the internet so I can ask her what’s up.
Aside from the bullying, secondary school was good. I spent my free time playing football. I also sang and joined my school’s drama club. At school competitions, I rapped. I even did comedy. It was all fun. In SS 2, I became a prefect, so I had more power.
Sorry you had to go through all that.
Thanks. It wasn’t all bad. I was active in sports and social activities so I became popular. People liked my style. During sports, I would fold the sleeves of my T-shirt, pull my shorts over my buttocks, wear a bandana on my head and bounce around. I enjoyed that. There were also other girls like me, so I was comfortable being myself. I rarely wore the dresses my parents got me. I preferred to wear the tracksuits my elder brother sent us from the US. My parents eventually stopped buying me dresses.
What was university like?
I studied law at the University of Calabar. I didn’t want to study law, but I graduated secondary school at 14, so my parents filled my JAMB form for me. I wanted to study theatre arts but my parents said it wasn’t a real course — they wanted me to be a lawyer.
When it was time for JAMB, I went to the examination hall and intentionally ticked the wrong answers. I failed JAMB twice. By my third attempt, I was 16 and my mates were all in university. Some were even getting ready to graduate. That’s when I decided to settle for law. I passed.
At school, I lived with my aunt and hated it. I found it difficult to settle in. I had gotten used to sleeping late after two years at home so I missed a lot of my morning classes.
One day, in my second year, I went to fetch water at a neighbourhood borehole. I was singing a song as I waited for my turn and one guy came out to find who was singing. He lived in the compound beside the borehole. He said my voice sounded nice and asked if I sang professionally. I said I would like to someday, and he offered to record some songs for me in his studio. His studio was a small set up — a table, a laptop with FL Studio and a sound system. I was excited. The next day, I went back to record a song. It took about a week to complete the song because I only went to see him when I was sent on errands. When the song was complete, he burned it on a CD and gave it to me. I was overjoyed.
Later that week, while my aunt and uncle were eating lunch, I played the CD. They were quiet until my uncle recognised my voice. He asked when I recorded it. I told him. As I was talking, my aunt asked me to turn it off. My uncle tried to fight for me — he said, “At least she is singing gospel music. Allow her.” My aunt wasn’t having it. She turned it off. I wasn’t surprised because she, like my mother, didn’t like the fact that I was trying to do music.
I knew I couldn’t stay at my aunt’s place for much longer, so I saved up money. In my third year, I rented an apartment. My parents were so angry with me. They felt like I wanted the freedom to do bad things but for me, freedom meant something else. I just wanted space for myself. I still maintained the discipline that I was raised with — I gave myself a curfew and never had visitors. A lot of eyes were on me because I had moved out, and I didn’t want to let anyone down.
After I graduated, I went to law school. Law school was serious business, so I kept music aside.
In law school, I kept to myself as usual. There was this guy, Otunba, who noticed I barely participated in school activities and that I didn’t have any friends. One day, he asked me why. I told him I was only at law school because of my parents and wanted to be a musician. I played my song for him and he told me that when I passed the bar, he would help promote my music.
I passed and I was finally ready to give up the role my parents needed me to play. That’s when problems started between me and my parents.
How so?
I told my parents that I was giving up law for music. They said I would fail at it and they wouldn’t support me. I said that was fine as long as I got to do it. For a long time, they stopped sending me an allowance.
How did you survive?
One of my cousins had just bought a new car, so I collected his old car and used it for Uber. I knew it would embarrass my parents, but I had to. When my dad found out, he called me to ask why I was driving a taxi when I am a lawyer. I told him the car was earning me money I needed to live. My mum said I was a terrible child setting a bad example for my brother.
My dad tried to listen, but he couldn’t understand why I would give up law. He set up several meetings to discuss my future in December 2018. During the last one before the year ran out, I told him I had received a ₦500k cheque from my music. I had started to perform at weddings by this time and they paid well. I was insulted that he didn’t think I was moving forward, so I told him to give me one year to prove him wrong.
Wow, what was your plan?
To be honest, I didn’t one. I just knew I had to leave Calabar. I moved to Lagos in March 2019. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew it was better than waiting in Calabar for a blessing.
After three days in my friend’s apartment in Lagos, I called Otunba. He asked to meet up at a mall. At the mall, he told me that someone important had heard my songs and wanted to meet with me. I was more than ready.
At the meeting, the other guy said he was interested in music. He played my songs for other people in the industry and they all agreed that they could make my sound work. He hired a manager for me. Within two weeks, he moved me out of the apartment I stayed in with my friend to a flat of my own. I was placed on an artist development programme for three months, where my sound and my brand was refined. It was during that time I changed my stage name from MT to BIWOM — a short version of my middle name, Ahwhobiwom. I recorded my first official single and made a video for it. We were also able to promote them. I started feeling like I had achieved what I had set for myself.
Nice. What happened next?
I started to get shit for how I look. There was one time I went to a studio to record a song, and the producer said I looked and sounded good, but I had to stop dressing the way I did. Another time, someone overheard me singing in the studio and came to check me out. When he saw me, he asked why I was dressed the way I was He even said if he was my manager, he would have sent me home. I was too stunned to say anything. It was my manager that jumped in for me. I don’t understand it. He liked the music. Why was my appearance such a problem?
This is where my brand — Rebel kid came from. I want to break the rules. I want to stand out in this copy-and-paste industry. Teni made me believe I could make it in the industry being myself. Music is supposed to be a thing of the soul, but people want to dictate what artists should look like and I call bullshit. The worst part of it is that people feel the need to ask me if I am gay. Sometimes, they ask me if I am a boy or a girl. I tried to be more girly, but I was so uncomfortable so I stopped. At the end of the day, why does any of it matter more than the music? This is why I keep to myself. So I don’t have to explain myself to people over and over again.
What’s an ideal situation for you?
I would like for everyone to be accepted equally in the industry regardless of how they look. I also want female artists to be appreciated more by other female artists, That’s something the guys have that women don’t, and I would like to change that.
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The subject of today’s What She Said is a 19-year-old who blames her dad’s ill-treatment for her attraction to older men. She talks about finding out he was cheating, growing up very poor, and her dad’s financial abuse.
Tell me a memory from your childhood
When I was six, I found out my dad was cheating on my mum. I was going through his phone when I found out he was talking to a lot of women and sending them money. I ran to show my mum and she told me not to tell him I saw it. There were other times he cheated, but she never seemed bothered by it. He would send these women money but told us he had no money. I didn’t go to school in my JSS 1 third term and JSS 2 first term and my siblings also missed 2 years of school simply because we were doing badly financially — and it was all his fault.
How?
He had come into millions of naira and lied to us that he hadn’t been paid for his contract. When the thing he used the money to do backfired, he convinced my mum to sell her land and then went behind her back to collect the money. The buyers gave him the money because he was the head of the house. My mum, not wanting any fight, gave them the papers. We sold her car and went to the state he was in. That’s when we found out everything. We were piss poor for the two years that followed. So poor that we were using ₦500 to feed a family of six daily. We’re in a better place financially, but he’s still an occasional asshole.
He doesn’t do anything for the family except give us money that is not enough for us to survive. He gives my mum ₦10,000 every month to feed five people and it’s from that same money she manages to buy some stuff for my siblings. He only recently started giving me and my siblings 1 or 2k here and there because we got into a huge fight last year.
What caused the fight?
I had gone to Lagos to write post UTME and he didn’t give us enough money. He was supposed to send more on the way back, but he didn’t so my mum and I had to stop in Ibadan because that’s how far the money carried us. She called someone she used to talk to when we lived in Ibadan and begged the person to let us stay the night. The next day, my dad sent money. When we got home, he was unusually silent. Then he said I was covering for my mum who went to see her boyfriend in Ibadan.
Ah? What did your mum say?
Nothing. My mum is a stay-at-home wife and suffers from financial abuse. She doesn’t come from a well to do family and her parents are dead. Her siblings are too busy trying to survive to pay attention to one another. We’ve never lived in one place for too long, so she doesn’t have any friends. I’m basically her only friend, so all she does is endure. She can’t just leave with four children.
Sometimes if we do something my dad doesn’t like, he blocks us everywhere and doesn’t send us money. This year, my mum wanted to attend the burial of a family member and my dad didn’t let her go. He didn’t give her money the weeks leading up to event. Why? Because a family friend was going to be there, and he’s convinced the man is my mum’s ex. When she confronted him about it, he called her siblings and was insulting them for putting ideas in her head and said he’d return her to them. After that, he sent her a very insulting message and blocked all of us for about two weeks. The blocking is easy for him to do because we don’t live in the same house. We haven’t lived together for most of my life.
Watching all the things my dad did to my mum really affected my relationship with him. Plus, it’s not like he treats me any better. This year, he brought up schooling abroad. Given the fact that I had dropped out because of some issues with school, I wasn’t in a place to refuse but I genuinely didn’t believe him. He’s too selfish to make such a commitment. My mum, however, told me to go along with it. Everything was going fine and I actually started to believe it’d happen. I fixed my bank issues, got my NIN done, renewed my passport, wrote an exam, and even started the application process for the school. Then one day he came home and said he changed his mind. He didn’t give me any concrete reason, just that the country I planned on going to gave him bad vibes.
There are countries with worse vibes than Nigeria?
According to him, this one was. He said we should try another country and in the middle of that, he sent a message to my mum about how he couldn’t afford it and how I’m ungrateful. It was so strange because I was on my own when he mentioned travelling abroad. It was later when I went with him to meet the travel agent I found out the real reason.
He and his agent were talking in Yoruba and he doesn’t know I understand Yoruba. The two of them discussed the potential of me becoming wayward abroad and how it’d be better for me to go when I’m older so if anything happened, I’d be able to get married.
It’s okay. It’s strange how we used to be pretty close when I was younger. Now I hate him, but I also don’t. Maybe it is some sort of Stockholm syndrome. I only like older men now because I keep looking for home outside. I keep searching for what he didn’t give me. I am very relationship hungry, but I don’t know how they work because I haven’t really had a proper model to look at . I’ve been alone a lot of my life. I feel like a burden and it leads to me shutting down a lot. I am tired of him and having to deal with all of it all.
I’m sorry
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is in her mid-thirties. She shares with us her struggle with fertility and pregnancies, her IVF journey, miscarriages, and living with her happy family of three.
Well, my earliest memory of my period is quite vague. I remember getting my period at the age of 13 and not telling my mum because I was angry with her. By the time I had my third period, I didn’t have cash for sanitary towels, and I was stuck. So, I asked her. That’s how she found out I had started menstruating.
Actually, I even got diagnosed with PCOS in 2006. My period had always been irregular, but since I was underweight at the time, I didn’t take it seriously. My mum is a nurse, and she thought my terrible eating habits and the fact I was underweight was why my period was so irregular.
In my fourth year in school, I had a roommate whose mum was also a nurse. One day she told me about her own experience with her irregular periods. I told her about mine and she said I needed to get it checked just in case it was more than I thought. Her logic was that since some of us would soon finish school and would be thinking of getting married, I needed to be sure.
I called my mum and told her I was going to get my tests done. She got me an appointment at the hospital she worked, I was diagnosed with PCOS and put on oral contraceptive pills. As long as I took the pills, my period would come. I stopped the pills in November 2009 because I was getting married in March 2010 and wanted my body to adjust.
Why didn’t she take you seriously, didn’t the periods hurt?
Well, my periods were never painful. Plus, I didn’t have endometriosis. When my period came, it was usually for three days. The first day would be heavy and the other two days would be light. PCOS is such a spectrum and the symptoms can vary from woman to woman. If you put 10 of us in the same room and ask what symptoms we face, a lot of us might record so many different things.
My only concern was fertility and having children. Luckily, I had my first child in August of 2011. I was just about to start a round of fertility treatment when I got pregnant with my son in November 2010. In fact, I had been given a drug to induce my period so they could then start the process.
I was supposed to do a thing called follicular tracking to determine what methods and other things the doctors were to proceed with. They also wanted to know if, during the period that was induced, my body released any eggs. When the test results came back, they told me that my body didn’t release any eggs. I was angry, but I didn’t know I was already pregnant.
Since the eggs weren’t released yet, I decided that I would start the fertility treatment after my birthday in January 2011, so I could enjoy the holidays and my birthday. I was at my parent’s place in December when I started cramping. I told my mum and she told me to just get a pregnancy test. I was so excited when it tested positive.
After my son turned two, we started trying again for a second child. I had started my fertility treatment and had gotten pregnant by February of 2014. Unfortunately, I lost the pregnancy in the sixth month. I waited for a bit after that miscarriage to continue the fertility treatment, and that was when I had the ectopic pregnancy which they couldn’t for some reason find in the urine and blood tests until it ruptured.
A miscarriage AND a ruptured ectopic pregnancy?
The miscarriage happened in 2014, and my husband had travelled for work. I sent my help to call my mother-in-law because I could feel the head of the baby coming out. She came to pick me up and drive me to the hospital. My father-in-law met us in the hospital. They were there with me till my mum came from Ibadan. When they dispose of a fetus at that age, they usually give the family to make arrangements. My parents-in-law shielded me from having to deal with all of that. They buried the fetus and everything.
The ruptured ectopic pregnancy happened in January of 2017. I was sitting on the rug in my living room, loosening my hair and planning on picking my son up from school when I got the most violent pain I had ever felt in my abdomen. I thought if I pooped it would help, but the pain wouldn’t go away. I called my mother-in-law on the phone and told her that I didn’t know what was going on, but it felt like someone put a knife to my intestines and was slicing it to bits. My parents-in-law came and rushed me to the hospital. By the time we got there, my stomach had already doubled in size and was looking like I was five or six months pregnant. After the tests, it turned out I was accumulating blood in my abdomen. I had emergency surgery done and had to get four pints of blood transfused. One of my fallopian tubes was also removed because of the surgery.
I am so sorry that happened. Did you still keep trying for a child after that?
Yes, I did. After the ectopic pregnancy in 2017, I started IVF in 2019. The first IVF cycle I had was not successful, and in my second IVF cycle, I had Ovarian Hyper Stimulation syndrome (OHS). It’s a condition I was predisposed to because I had PCOS. The doctors kept monitoring my medication and adjusting it accordingly. With my first cycle, whatever eggs were harvested, we didn’t freeze them, but for my second cycle, I did not want to go through the egg collecting process, so I froze the eggs. During the second IVF cycle, I had decided to freeze the eggs because I did not want to go through the collection of the eggs process again. When it was time to transfer the embryos, they couldn’t because of the OHS. So, they waited for a few months before we continued with the cycle. This time, they didn’t have to harvest any eggs. They just gave me a lot of hormones to get me to a point where I would bleed and my body would be ready to receive the eggs.
That sounds emotionally and physically tasking.
It is. You keep asking yourself why your body does not function the way it is supposed to. I had a picture of a family of four, but it wasn’t happening because my body was failing me. My son wanted a companion and friend. He used to cry when people who come to visit go back home and was always so emotional when people talked about their siblings. I just wanted to give him that.
In addition to the hormones and steroids, I had to inject myself with and things I sometimes had to insert vaginally, I would sometimes ask myself why I couldn’t just have sex and get pregnant like every other person? Why did I have to have PCOS and emotional imbalance? There are so many things you have to deal with. The hormones also mess with your body and your mental health. There was a particular injection I used to take that would make me sad till mid-day. Months even after stopping my IVF I still felt a lot of pain in my thigh. I even had blotches of pink on my thigh that eventually became brownish.
I can’t imagine what it was like for you to live through all of that.
I have had a very strong support system around me. I come from a very close-knit family and knew there was no emotion I couldn’t express to them. My in-laws have been wonderful. They’ve been a gift and have walked me through a lot of my journey. My husband was also amazing, being there for me and supporting me. I also drew strength from my faith. I allowed myself to express my anger, anguish, and hurt to God. I also have really good friends who care about me. When I got pregnant again, I had family taking turns to come to be with me. I was constantly surrounded by people.
You got pregnant again?
My third IVF was the only successful one, but I had a miscarriage. While I was pregnant, I was put on five weeks of compulsory bed rest. A friend of mine who makes jewellery called during that time and asked me if I could be in a product shoot happening the day after my five weeks of bed rest would be complete. I agreed to it because it was an opportunity to glam up and take pretty pictures.
The night before the shoot, I was having intermittent throbbing pain in the area where my fallopian tube used to be. Since it was night and my IVF clinic was closed, I decided to go to my regular clinic to have it checked out. They didn’t find anything, and the moment I told them I was pregnant and it was from IVF, they didn’t want to bother me or touch anything. They gave me painkillers and asked me to go home. I sent a message to my IVF doctor, and he told me to take the painkillers, my medication, and just let him know if anything changes.
When I woke up the day of the shoot, there was no pain. I was quite comfortable. At the venue after the makeup artist was done with my makeup, I felt a strangeness wash over me. I couldn’t tell what it was, but because I promised my friend I was going to do the photo shoot, I was certain I was going to get through with it. During one of the sets of pictures, I felt a warmth in my nether regions I knew I should not be feeling. It spread some more and was followed by a little lump. By the time I felt the lump, I knew what had happened but I was determined to get through the shoot.
The second outfit I was to wear was a bubu, and I didn’t take off the leggings I was wearing because I knew that taking them off meant I had to deal with whatever was going on in my pants. After the shoot, I had checked and knew I was bleeding. I called my husband and we drove down to the IVF clinic. When I got there, they did some tests and told me they, unfortunately, could no longer see my gestational sack. The night before in my regular clinic, they saw the sac, but by the time I got to my IVF clinic, they didn’t see it. When they told me that, I knew what I experienced was a miscarriage. I went home and had a good cry and just waited for my body to do what it wanted to do.
A few days after, something was feeling wrong, so I called my doctor and he told me I had to have an evacuation because I still had some pregnancy materials in me. This was my second evacuation done. It was a same-day procedure so I got home by 9 in the night. It was a total emotional mess and my husband held me tight. I had a good cry.
I am so sorry. You went through so much. Did you continue IVF after that?
I wanted to, but my husband didn’t. I was not accepting the fact that my body had failed to do what a woman’s body should do. After that, my husband said we were not trying anymore. I couldn’t believe it was so final. I didn’t want to accept it. We had about fourteen embryos we had proven from the first cycle, and I wanted us to freeze it for a year hoping he’d change his mind. But he was adamant. He said, “Why would you want me to lose you in the process of having a child?” He had seen everything I had gone through and was being so strong for me, but I couldn’t accept him saying we would not do it again. I was angry with that, angry with God. I drew strength from my support system.
What’s life for you now?
Well, I am not doing any form of assisted fertility anymore. I am no longer actively pursuing conception anymore. I am happy and living my life with my husband and my son. I also no longer have to calculate when to have sex.
I have made my peace with the fact that I have just one child, and we are praying to God to help us raise him. We are in a space where we were each other’s friends and are just present for each other.
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 27-year-old queer woman who talks about being abused as a child, navigating her sexuality, and getting an abortion at the age of 20.
What is the earliest memory of your childhood?
The earliest thing I remember is being molested by my brother’s lesson teacher at age 3 or 4. I was always there during my brother’s lessons, so on this day, he asked my brother to go buy biscuits. After my brother left, he put me on the table and tried to finger me.
I am so sorry.
Oh, it’s fine. My parents found out because my brother saw and the teacher got arrested. I mean, I had a bunch of other not so good experiences. I was molested multiple times by neighbours and lesson teachers, trade people that came to work in the house and even a family friend.
Shit. Were there any good experiences?
Well, when I was 9, my 12-year-old female family friend started messing around with me. I felt comfortable and I liked it. In secondary school, I knew I was attracted to some of my schoolmates. I’d even say my first relationship was with my best friend then. Back then, I didn’t know I loved her but when I think about it now, I totally did.
At some point, I stopped sharing my bed with friends or hugging cause I felt many types of ways and I didn’t want to act on it. I went to an all-girls Catholic school, so they preached hellfire and brimstone for lesbians.
I’m sorry, that must have been tough. Did you ever figure it out?
In 2011 when I left for university, I started watching loads of YouTube videos about gays and lesbians and started taking those “how to know if you’re a lesbian” quizzes. I figured out I was queer in 2014 but I still identified as bisexual even though I knew deep down I wasn’t attracted to men.
I was religious around that time so I started dating and sleeping with men a lot cause I thought that would cure me. That’s when I got pregnant.
I was 20 and the guy was a family friend. He knew about my sexuality and was someone I was relatively comfortable with. He also had a massive crush on me, but I only saw him as a friend.
I moved back to Nigeria from the UK in 2014 for NYSC. He was in the house and lived with my parents. In 2015, I was still figuring out my sexuality and he knew this. He would come and beg me to have sex with him. I would sometimes oblige. I didn’t particularly enjoy it, but I didn’t hate it either.
This particular time, it was on a Saturday night. He came to my room and begged again. I remember being completely still while he did his thing and then he came. He didn’t use a condom and I didn’t realise until I felt liquid in and on me. I let him know I was upset, cleaned myself and went to bed.
The next morning, I got the morning after pill and took both pills as prescribed. A couple of weeks later, I felt ill.
Yes, even with the pill. I am one of those people whose periods come at the exact day the app says it would.
My period was late so I knew something was wrong. I got my aunt to get me two pregnancy tests. I took one in the night and that was negative. I still wasn’t relieved because I knew something was wrong. Immediately I woke up, I took the second one immediately and it came out positive.
I reached out to a friend who I assumed might have had a similar experience and she gave me the names of the drugs to buy for an abortion.
Why?
I’d always said I would never keep a child I didn’t want. I was also about to leave for my master’s the next year and I genuinely did not like the father as anything more than a friend. The fact that he was borderline obsessed with me meant if I kept it, he would do everything he could to be directly in my life. I knew I couldn’t let that happen.
Well within your right. So, how did you go about it?
This is where my privilege comes into play. I’d just gotten back from the UK, so I had a UK account with money in it. I googled and found an organization that delivered abortion pills around the world. They would ship the pills free but typically wanted some sort of donation so others who couldn’t afford to could get it. I paid €60 and then the wait started.
The pills were due here in about two weeks and I was so nervous. In the meantime, my best friend and her sister who was dating a doctor helped get a prescription for the exact pills from him. We went to almost every pharmacy in the Lekki/Ajah axis and we could only find one of the pills. I think the first pill was to stop the hormones that helped pregnancy grow in the body and the second was to eject/remove the fetus from the body. We could only find the ejecting pill and not the stopping pill. I became so depressed, I contemplated suicide for the first time in my life.
I really could not imagine having a child at that age and worse still, with that man. Thankfully, the drug came in less than two weeks so I took them as prescribed. The website also has a doctor who checks in on you.
How did you feel?
I had the worst cramps I’d ever had in my life. I couldn’t even show the pain because no one else in my house knew what was happening except the guy, and I wasn’t talking to him. Two days after, I went to pee and felt the clot of blood slip through and I knew it was done. A week after that, I went to the hospital where I had my test done and they said somehow I wasn’t pregnant anymore. My womb was empty and for the first time in such a long time, I could finally breathe.
Not everybody who has an abortion was raped or did not take the right precautions. Sometimes you just don’t want to be a parent so you do the right thing and let it go.
Did you tell anyone in your family about it eventually?
The only person who knew in my family was my aunt, the one who bought me the pregnancy tests. She was also the first family member I came out to. I recently told my older brother about it two years ago. He didn’t really care, was just happy I was fine.
I don’t plan on ever telling my parents, but if they found out, they’d be disappointed. Eventually, though, they’d be fine.
Would you ever want children though?
I mean, I probably want a child or two. I had the abortion because I simply did not want to be responsible for anyone. I also didn’t want to rely on anyone and having a child would mean I’d have to lean on either family or friends.
Well, it took a while because I didn’t want to be very conclusive while I wasn’t too sure. Most of my friends now say they wondered why I came out as bisexual cause they apparently all knew I was a lesbian. Now, I use queer because there is one guy I know I genuinely liked. I’m not attracted to him in any way but I just feel like saying I’m a lesbian is diminishing whatever we had then.
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The subject of today’s What She Said is a 22-year-old woman who became an orphan at the age of 11. She talks about being raised by her strict grandmother, leaving her first school because of cultists, going to film school instead of studying medicine, having rich friends and pursuing a life of luxury and fame.
What’s a childhood memory you can’t forget
When I was younger, my dad beat me till I almost fainted because I did not wear slippers downstairs. I actually think he did it because he was drunk.
He was usually drunk and whenever he got that way, he would beat me a lot. When he died, I didn’t like the fact that he was dead but because of the beatings, I wasn’t particularly sad either.
Apart from the beatings, he was a very cool dad. When he came home from work, he would buy gifts not just for me, but for the other children in the compound. So, all the children loved him, but I didn’t — because of the beatings.
What about your mum, where was she in all this?
Well, I never grew up with my mum. She dropped me with my father when I was just 4 months old. It’s not like I didn’t know who my mum was, she was just never an active part of my life. She later remarried and had other children, but my dad’s mum never allowed me to interact with any of them.
Technically, I don’t think I would have wanted to stay with her. The environment she lived in was not one I wanted to surround myself with. She was suffering. So, I stayed with my grandma who raised me. My mum passed away when I was 11.
I am so sorry. Being an orphan must be tough.
Well, technically none of them raised me. I didn’t really know them. The only parental figure I had was my grandma. She worked in NNPC at the time and lived in a large and nice compound. It was a comfortable upbringing. She was very strict.
What’s the biggest thing you got in trouble for?
It was when I stole ₦1,000 from her wallet. She’d counted the money before she kept it in her purse, and I didn’t know. Also, when I took the money, I didn’t arrange it properly and so parts of it were sticking out from the purse.
I stole it because I had a college mother when I was in JS1 who my grandma would give ₦5,000 to keep for me. My college mother was not giving me enough money, so I stole the ₦1,000 so I could flex for one week. There were a lot of rich students in my class. In fact, there was one girl that used to lie that she was dating Wizkid. So there were those people, and then me that was eating jam pie and pure water.
One day, because I was tired of their bragging, I told them I was a mermaid and if they poured water on me, I’d start shaking and grow a tail. They believed me.
Another time I got in serious trouble was when I got home really late. By the time I got home, she had pepper and water solution waiting for me. Luckily for me, she did not use it.
I was in SS2 and my friends and I went to some kind of bar. That was the first day I smoked shisha. We were making videos and unfortunately, one of the videos got to my pastor who then sent it to my grandma.
A lot of things are different now. She’s retired and is receiving a pension. A lot of times, I have had to fend for myself. The first time I had to fend for myself was when I was 19 and in a polytechnic in Delta state.
How was life at the polytechnic?
Well, I had to run away because I had issues with cult boys. The leader of a cult wanted to date me and the first time he approached me, I was very rude to him. That day he was catcalling me and I gave him an attitude. I had a boyfriend then who was taking care of me, so I was really not interested in talking to him.
His guys found my house and came to threaten me. It was after they showed up twice that I left the polytechnic.
How did your grandma take it?
I wish I hadn’t told her. Well technically, I’d told my boyfriend at the time and he and my grandma were close so he told her. When my grandma found out, she told my Bishop and he told me I had to leave the school. They all came to that conclusion on my behalf.
After I left the polytechnic, I used the time I stayed at home to learn how to sew. Then after a year, I went to a different university in a different state to write Joint Universities Preliminary Exam Board (JUPEB). Unfortunately, I failed. I don’t like book.
I like acting. I am currently in film school. I want to be an actress. I tried to get into a film school for two years, but my grandma wanted me to be a medical doctor. It was hard for me to tell her that medicine was not my dream. She was the one who raised me so it felt like the only thing I could do was just be a doctor, but I couldn’t.
Whenever the conversation came up with my grandma, there’d be a lot of yelling and she’d say “you will never go to that school.” After failing JUPEB, I iced my grandma out for a bit because we were still clashing over my decision not to study medicine.
The day I bought my form for film school, I called my grandma and explained what I wanted to do with my life. She was calmer, and she shared with me that she was just scared. She didn’t want me to fail.
Film school is currently the best part of my life. Although it’s still school and a lot of work, it feels right. Like this is what I am meant to be doing with my life.
You mentioned fending for yourself, how did you do it?
Well, at first my boyfriend used to take care of me while I was still in Delta state. He would pay my school fees and send me money for feeding. He also used to pay for my luxury lifestyle because I’m a luxury babe. Unfortunately, we broke up.
Why?
Well, he got married. I went for a reality TV show competition at the time because I was really pursuing entertainment. Before I left, he told me he would get married, but I just played it off as a joke. One Sunday morning, during the show, my grandma called me to say he had gotten married on Friday. I cried so much. That day was the party night, so I drank a lot of alcohol. I was in so much pain.
So, how did you continue living your luxury lifestyle?
I just have rich friends. I go out a lot to parties and clubs and I tend to meet rich people. I am a fine girl and very sensual, so people tend to be drawn to me.
My friends randomly send me money and honestly, I’m gathering all the money they send to me so I can open my own fashion line. I can’t have rich friends forever, and at some point, I too would like to be a rich friend.
Like how much do you think your rich friends send to you? Let me start looking for my own
Well, it depends. Sometimes, I can get as much as ₦600,000 a month. It’s not constant but I’d say that I make more than two to three million naira every year just from having rich friends.
Sometimes, my friends have tried to sleep with me, but if I am not interested, they can’t force me.
What do you spend the money on?
Flexing. I spend the money going out, buying Hennessy and champagne and just living my best life. Sometimes when I’m out, I meet new [rich] friends who pay for the drinks, so I also spend the money on clothes, shoes, bags, and hair. Anything that makes me happy.
What would you say is the most expensive thing you own?
Well, it used to be my iPhone 11. It cost over ₦300,000 but it was stolen, so I bought an iPhone XS Max which cost over ₦250,000. Apart from gadgets, you could say my ₦210,000 wig. It’s a beautiful ginger bone straight wig.
I have been meaning to buy a Macbook, but I really don’t feel like using my own money to pay for it. Talking about it now made me realise that there are a couple of friends I could call and tell I want the Macbook and they would buy it for me. Maybe I am just focused on the clothing brand I am trying to build now. That’s very important to me.
I thought you wanted to be an actress?
I still do, but then I want a Rihanna type situation. I want to act but still have my clothing factory. A situation where I can win my awards and still have money coming in from the side.
I want to be a star and live a luxurious life. For me, luxury is being able to afford whatever I want, whenever I want it.
I want to be able to travel on a whim and buy whatever designer bag catches my eyes. I deserve a luxurious life, and that is what I am aiming for. The freedom to just do whatever I want. Currently, I feel like I haven’t started enjoying life. When I start making the kind of money I need, I’ll travel a lot and finally start enjoying the life of luxury I deserve.
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The subject of today’s What She Said is a 61-year-old woman who moved to Lagos at 15 to become a caterer. She talks about being her father’s favourite out of his 18 children, surrounding herself with her family, choosing to not get married or have children, retiring at fifty and looking forward to the rest of her life.
What’s your earliest memory of your childhood?
It’s of my father using his bicycle to take me to school. Whenever my elder brother and I had a misunderstanding and he wanted to beat me, my father would put me on his bicycle and take me to school. That didn’t stop my brother from beating me after school closed because my dad was at the farm.
So, you grew up a daddy’s pet?
Yes, I did. Two weeks after I was born, I had an operation. They said it was because I had abnormal growth on my back. In fact, that operation caused another problem. It was carried out in my village in 1960. The technology wasn’t that great, so I don’t think it was completely their fault. One of the wires used to stitch the wound was forgotten. I was just two weeks old, but I was in so much pain. I wasn’t eating or sleeping well. I just cried for days. Apparently, when my mother was massaging my back, she felt something there and pulled the wire out. That was when I slept properly for the first time in days.
But that was not the only reason I was my father’s favourite. His grandmother, whom he was very close to, died before I was born. She also had the same abnormal growth in her body. Before she died, she made my father promise that they would operate on her dead body and find out what was causing the growth. Unfortunately, he wasn’t around when she died, so he couldn’t fulfil his promise. Then I was born.
The only thing I hated about being my dad’s pet was that he never let me leave the house. Luckily, one of my brother’s came to take me to Lagos when I was 15.
Was it the same brother that used to beat you?
No, it wasn’t him. I had 17 siblings, so I have a lot of brothers. This one lived in Lagos, and he came to pick me because I had just finished primary school. I had nothing else to do and was just at home taking care of my sick mother. He and my father wanted me to do something else with my life. I decided I wanted to learn catering, and that’s how I came to Lagos.
Wait, primary school at 15?
Yes. Back then, you could only enter primary school when you could put your left hand over your head and touch your right ear. Short children or children with short arms or big heads had to start school late.
That method is so funny. Wow. Anyways, how did you feel leaving the village?
I was excited. Coming to Lagos was the first time I entered a plane in my life. It was a Benin to Lagos flight, and it cost ₦30. I got on the plane with rubber slippers because my sister took the shoes I wanted to wear. She told me, “Shebi you dey go Lagos. Dem get everything for there.”
Lagos was full of life, and it had things I had never seen in the village. The first time I went to a supermarket, I went with one of my relatives. I saw people putting things in their baskets and thought it was because the things were free. So, I put things in my basket. When we got to the counter, they calculated the things and told me to pay.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time something like that happened. When I went to another village to see a family member, I ate in a bukka for the first time. When I was done, I told the woman thank you for the food and wanted to go wash the plate they gave me to eat with. She looked so confused.
I am dying. But it got better?
Yes, it did. Before I started catering school, I took time to get accustomed to a few things. I could only speak Esan and a bit of English, so I had to polish my English and learn Yoruba as well.
Why did you want to study catering?
I like making and experimenting with food. Catering school was great and I enjoyed every moment of it.
When I finished catering school, I went for industrial attachment. Which is when they send you to different companies to work there for about three months.
After my industrial attachment, I went to work for a woman making snacks, then worked for a hotel. I also worked at two other hotels and some companies as their senior caterer. I also did events.
So, all your jobs were food-related?
Well, not all. After my third job, I went to Kano for a while to assist my sister who lived there. She used to buy and sell clothes, and I helped her buy the goods. I would go from Kano to Lagos by road and then return to Kano by air to avoid customs.
Avoid customs, why?
Well, at that time, the government was trying to stop the importation of Hollandies and Ankara, so customs sometimes searched people on the road. To avoid that, I would go by air.
There was a time during my usual movement to Lagos, I had to stop at Benin to deliver a message to my other sister. There were no phones then, so the message had to be delivered in person. While in the cab, some of the men there were 419.
Because I was going to buy things I was always moving around with a lot of money. My sister tied the money and put it inside the sack with pepper and beans. I am sure when the men heard I was coming from Kano to Benin, they suspected I had some money. That’s when they started doing jazz. They spat into their palms and something came out and they did all sorts in the car. I became scared and made them stop the vehicle. I pointed to a random woman on the streets and said that was my sister waiting for me. They threw me and my property out of the vehicle and rained insults on me.
When I got home, I told my sister. We threw the sack on the floor and searched for the money. We had to be sure they didn’t use their jazz to magnet the money from the bag, Luckily, the money was still intact. It was a terrible experience.
No, it didn’t. I just decided to not go to Benin anymore. I still helped my sister with her buying and selling, until I decided to leave Kano.
Why did you leave?
I decided to relocate to Lagos because that’s where I had the bulk of my family members. I didn’t find it very easy to make friends in Kano.
So, what were you doing after Kano?
Well, I catered events and also started selling foodstuff. Now, I am retired.
That’s nice. When did you retire?
I retired when I was fifty. I realised with my arthritis, eye problems and age, I could not keep up with how stressful the catering industry is. I decided to open a provisions store instead. I needed to rest.
A provisions store doesn’t seem like you’re resting o
Well, rest but I also wanted to be surrounded by my family. Also, the idea of just sitting down and doing nothing seems very boring. I still have strength left, why not use it?
When you say family, your kids?
No. I never had children. I also never got married. Initially, I did want to get married but the men were never faithful to me. They were disappointments and I just decided not to get involved with them anymore. I am very happy with my decision. I have my family around me and they take care of me. They always make me feel welcome. Marriage and children are not tickets to heaven, so they aren’t necessary.
Retirement phase two. Maybe I will finally rest and get around to see all my siblings and their children — the people I want to see. In general, I am looking forward to the rest of my life.
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The subject of today’s What She Said is a 23-year-old Nigerian woman who is no stranger to the hospital. She talks about having breast lumps, dealing with heart attacks and an enlarged heart at 23, and enjoyment being her driving force.
Tell me something interesting.
I have had five heart attacks between 2020 and 2021.
Wait, how old are you again?
23. I’ll be 24 in December.
Let’s start from the beginning. Before the heart attacks.
Well, before the heart attacks was the inflamed appendix. When they found out, I was rushed into surgery. After the appendix was sorted, I was diagnosed with an ulcer three months later. I was 18 and in my second year of university. One thing I did notice was that after I graduated from university, the ulcer reduced to almost nothing. I guess stress had been a major factor.
That’s good, right?
Yeah, it is. Then towards the end of 2019, I started feeling pain in my right breast. When I went for a scan, it turned out I had breast lumps. I freaked out a bit because my mum is a breast/cervical cancer specialist nurse. I had grown up knowing how dangerous lumps are. On the 5th December 2019, I got surgery to remove the lumps.
The surgery went okay. It was done in the late morning and when I woke up by late evening, I was able to walk down the hospital stairs to my dad’s car.
The only abnormality was that during the scan they said I had two lumps, but during surgery, they removed four.
What was more stressful than the surgery, was post-surgery hospital visits. I spent most of my December going to the hospital to get my dressings cleaned. I even spent half of my birthday in the hospital. It was a very sobering day.
It means I have a disease that causes cells to grow excessively and abnormally. While it is not cancerous, it slightly increases my chances of having breast cancer. It also causes me pain from the cells that are lumped together. Currently, I have two lumps in my breasts.
Wait, you have to regularly remove the lumps?
Well, yes, but I have decided not to. I just have regular breast exams now. If I keep removing the lumps, I may have no breasts left. I’ve gotten used to the lumps. Well, as used to it as the pain will allow.
Also, the last time I went to remove the lumps, the doctor narrowly missed slicing off of my nipple. I don’t even know how he did that, but I have blanked that part out of my mind.
Do you know I just clocked you haven’t even started talking about your heart attacks?
I have too many health issues, that’s why. With the ulcer and breast lumps, there’s still potential PCOS to deal with and ovarian cysts.
Well, my main issue now is my heart. It seems to be after my life. I have had a total of five heart attacks between 2020 and 2021. Two major ones, and three minor ones.
The first major one happened in May 2020. Before that, I had been having severe chest pain since February 2020. I brushed it off as ulcer pains, stress, or my body healing from the surgery. This was because the pain was in the middle and right side of my chest. The chest pain kept increasing. It got to a point where I could barely exercise and was tired all the time.
Then May 1st, 2020, I was cooking when my dad called me to his room. As I entered, I felt a pain radiating from my chest down my right arm. I fell, but luckily my dad caught me and started massaging my heart. I laid on my parents’ bed till the doctor came.
After that heart attack, I went to see a doctor. He gave me medication for the ulcer, and I really wanted to shout at him that what was wrong with me was more than an ulcer, but I didn’t. I faithfully took my medication. Then on the 28th of May, heart attack number two happened.
This one happened in my room and if not for my brother entering just as I fell on the floor, I may have been telling a different story now. After that, my mother carried my health on her head.
Wait, why was that doctor treating you for just an ulcer?
A lot of doctors kept saying I was too young to have any heart problems. Throughout all my hospital visits, I had to be asking questions and pushing them to do tests. The doctor just looked at my age and cancelled any thought of anything heart-related. Also, it’s probably because the pain is on my right side, rather than the left as it usually is.
When a doctor finally diagnosed me with ischemic heart disease, my first thought was “so no more alcohol for me again? I’m finished.” The doctor gave me three different drugs and sent me home.
Then I had to deal with comments from outsiders about my size. It took all my willpower to not punch people that asked stupid questions. My life was in the balance and people were asking me why I was so small. To top it off, I was put on a restrictive diet.
This sounds like so much, I am so sorry. How did you cope?
I was barely coping. I threw myself into work (I’m a writer/editor), read, and my tribe of friends really helped to ground me but it was still hell.
I was in so much pain, and there was physical and mental exhaustion. I was managing well then on the 24th of June, heart attack number three happened.
This heart attack led to the diagnosis that truly tipped me over the edge. They told me that the right side of my heart is enlarged. The doctor tried to play it off as nothing too serious, but I knew it was bad. I was having shortness of breath, cold hands and feet and chest pain.
I got home after this diagnosis and cried. I was down for a whole week, and then I entered a self-destructive spiral. I was eating and drinking anyhow and was skipping my medication.
What grounds you now?
At first, nothing grounded me. From 2018 to the middle of 2020, I was just floating through life. It’s only from lockdown, I was forced to finally confront my mortality and my life and my baggage. I became more honest with myself and I realized I had to get back as much of my sanity as possible. I stopped self-destructing so much and started taking my medication again. I also found out I have an incredible tribe of friends. I started journaling and doing stretches.
I guess you can say I am currently grounded in the knowledge that everything is useless and when you break life down, the core of its meaning is nothing and that’s okay. I am here for a good time and not a long time. Just because my body seems to hate being alive, doesn’t mean I have to let it make me miserable all the time. I am seizing my joy by fire by force. Enjoyment is my driving force.
That’s me. It’s just that it gets lonely being chronically ill. I can’t get into a serious relationship because I don’t want to bother anyone with my health issues. I also won’t have sex because I’m afraid I might pass out. It has been two years without sex now. Being chronically ill is a very lonely place to be, but I’m currently at the most emotionally healthiest I’ve been all my life.
I’m lucky I have a supportive family. Both my parents have tried for me. My uncles and aunts too. Although they get on my nerves sometimes, like when they complain about what I eat when they see me snacking. I eat healthy 90% of the time. They should allow me to have my guilty pleasures. I have lost my mind too many times to be policed by people like this.
I know they mean well, but they should allow me. I am in pain every day of my life. The least I can do is enjoy what I can.
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Navigating life as a woman in the world today is interesting. From Nigeria to Timbuktu, it’ll amaze you how similar all our experiences are. Every Wednesday, women the world over will share their experiences on everything from sex to politics right here.This is Zikoko’s What She Said.
The subject of this week’s What She Said is a woman who was born with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD). She talks about the first time she had a crisis, losing her sister to the disease, not allowing it stop her from enjoying her life, and how breakdowns are a regular part of her life.
What’s your earliest memory of your childhood?
I was a talkative kid and quite troublesome. My earliest memory is hiding behind a sofa one evening to avoid my mum, who was trying to convince me to go to bed.
Another memory is of a crisis I had.
Crisis?
It was a cool night, around 1 a.m., and I woke up with a sharp pain in both my knees.
Often, my crises start around joints, but the pain was unexpected and excruciating. It was so excruciating that I was rushed to a hospital emergency unit. I was bedridden for about six days and heavily medicated. I’ve never had a crisis as bad as that one since.
Yes. I’ve had regular crises for as long as I can remember.
As I’ve grown, it’s become easier to manage and avoid crises, but I used to have one a day or four a week consistently for the majority of my earlier years.
How did your parents take it?
My family learnt about SCD the hard way and went through various hospital visits with my sister. So when I was born and later diagnosed, they were more prepared.
I grew up taking daily prescription medication, avoiding excessive sports and drinking a minimum of two litres of water a day.
Unfortunately, my sister died in 2013.
I’m so sorry.
It’s okay. My family understands only the basics. This made it hard for my siblings to understand crises earlier in life, but thankfully, my stepmother and legal guardian was a nurse; and she was always available during a crisis.
The first time I learnt about SCD in school, the biology teacher taught us that people with SCD can’t live past 20. It’s bullshit. I did the majority of my education on SCD by myself, with no help from my doctor or family members.
What about outside school? Where was the first place you heard about it?
I was young, maybe 7 or 8. I found out I had SCD by overhearing an early morning conversation between my stepmother and brother outside my room, the morning after I had had a crisis in the night.
They didn’t tell you before?
No.
Why?
I don’t know. I doubt I would have had any use for the information. I’m glad I didn’t find out any later than I did, but I don’t wish I knew earlier.
So, what’s life like for you with SCD?
I think of my body like a clunky old car. Since almost anything can trigger a crisis, I try my best to drink more than enough water, maintain a medium body temperature and avoid extreme stress.
It’s very touch and go, hence the comparison with an old car. I’m managing my body and despite how much I try, it breaks down often and I end up in the workshop.
What about the future? What does a future with SDC look like for you?
I used to despise thinking about this. I’ve been suicidal after crises, but this life na one.
I plan to travel, explore my many talents, taste many foods and work on my career goals.
In the short term, I intend to purchase equipment for a personal gym soon. I’m working towards a toned body ideal that I once believed was unattainable for me because I believed I couldn’t exercise.
I intend to live to the fullest, and see where that takes me.
What about a family. Any plans for that?
Maybe. If I choose not to marry and/or have kids, it will be for reasons outside SCD.
If I ever marry, I will not have biological children unless I do so in a country where medicine is advanced enough to avoid passing the sickle cell trait.
In this week’s What She Said, Aramide Kayode is a 21-year-old economist and teacher. She talks to us about switching to education after a 21-day prayer and fasting revelation, going to Harvard and getting married at the age of 21.
What’s your earliest memory of your childhood?
I’ve always been talkative. I remember when I was six, I’d run home after school to arrange my mum’s empty bottles of soda and teach them what my teachers taught me in class that day. That followed me to secondary school. I was pretty good at math, so I taught people.
My mum was a hardworking and ambitious banker. I loved that she always had a job or something going on, and I wanted something like that for myself. So, I decided I was going to study banking and finance at university.
Did you study banking and finance?
In SS3, I decided to study something much more central because I still wasn’t sure what I wanted. I wanted more than what banking and finance could give me, but I didn’t know what “more” was. I decided to go with economics.
So, when did you realise what more meant for you?
In my third year at Covenant University, people kept talking about their purpose and how they knew what they wanted to be. I was so lost because I didn’t know what my purpose was.
My school had a 21-day fasting and prayer period, and I prayed for direction. I needed to know what I was created to do. While praying, I kept hearing the word “teach”.
It’s been years, but I am still unravelling what it means to teach. I feel like my role is more defined. I know I am meant to educate people.
But you were studying economics. How did you plan to teach?
Well, I was hosting a tutorial thing, and I was so good that someone mentioned me to the registrar of the school. He then appointed me to teach struggling students. By the time I coached some of them, their grades improved.
Watching the improvement in some of the students’ grades made me realise that my teaching was a talent. In my final year, I took a course on human capital development and knowledge economics. I was so fascinated by it that I did my final year project on it.
All the research I did on the project made me realise how important it is to invest in human education. I found out that there’s a part in Economics that covers education, and there is a direct link between the economy and education. That’s how I diverted into education.
This seems so amazing. When did you enter university?
I entered university when I was 14. When I was in Primary 3, at the age of 7, my parents decided I was to write the common entrance exam. They believed I would pass. After I passed the common entrance, my parents did not see any reason why I should take primary 5 and 6. After I did primary 4, I went to secondary school. Now at 21, I am married, done with Harvard, and a graduate of Covenant University.
Wait, which happened first? Marriage or Harvard?
Well, I started dating the man I married before I got into Harvard.
I was teaching at a fellowship programme, interested only in learning and achieving my goals. I was very ambitious, and I felt I would not have time for my children. I didn’t want anything to get in the way of my career and also didn’t want anything to stop me from being present in my home. So, I decided that when I got my life right, I would start thinking of men.
However, I met this guy, and the love was so strong. He’s someone that pushes me to go for the things I want, and I deeply appreciate his sense of self-awareness. Even though I was 18 when I met him, I was very sure of what I wanted. The peace in my spirit when it came to him was just a sign. It was so good to see someone who had so much interest in supporting me every step of the way.
How did your parents react?
Well, we started dating when I was 18 and I didn’t mention it to my parents until six months in. Before then, I had never mentioned any of the previous guys I had been in relationships with to my parents before.
My parents liked everything about him, so when I told them he proposed to me when I was 20, they just told me not to let the engagement drag for too long. My parents are very forward-thinking people, and they consider me mature enough. They didn’t have a problem with it.
Well, at the fellowship I mentioned earlier, during our training, the head of HR came to me and told me she thinks I’d be able to get into Harvard. Harvard was never a plan of mine, and it was so interesting to see how much another person believed in me.
I decided to try it because I wanted to see how it went. So, I applied, got in and now I’m done.
I really don’t look or sound my age. A lot of people don’t believe me when I tell them I am currently 21, and that’s how it was when I was younger as well. So luckily, I never got bullied for my age.
Barriers exist, but I have always wanted people to see me for more than my age. I am Aramide Kayode; someone that does the work and adds value.
What’s next for you now?
Well, having children is not yet in my plan, but I do work with children in low-income communities. I have partnerships to make sure that children in low-income schools get quality education.
I am also working on a mentorship programme for teenagers. Growing up, I wish I had more mentors to look up to that weren’t my mum. I want to build my mentorship platform for teenagers in Africa and make sure that those low-income children get quality education.
I don’t want to be the only young person breaking barriers. I believe there are a lot of people out there even greater than I am, and all they need is a little push and guidance. I want to provide this opportunity for them so I’m no longer the only rising star in the room.
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The subject of today’s What She Said is a 24-year-old woman who has a very rocky relationship with her stepmum. She talks about how she misses her mum, the ill-treatment she got at the hands of her stepmum, and the medical condition that messes up her self confidence.
What’s your earliest childhood memory?
It’s driving down Allen road with my biological mum, strapped into the front seat. We were around the roundabout, and I could see a basket of tomatoes. I had to at least be three.
That’s a very random memory. Why is it so important?
It’s one of the three memories I have of my biological mum, and it’s the only one I see clear as day. I was young when she died, so I don’t have a lot of her to hold on to. This is one memory that’s mine and not influenced by anyone else’s stories — I can see her face, and hear her voice.
I’m sorry about your loss.
It’s okay. She died when I was three months away from turning four. She died from breast cancer. In a way, I’m glad it finally let her go. She had been struggling with lumps since her early twenties.
Once again, I’m sorry that happened. You kept saying biological mum. Do you have another?
Yeah, I do. My dad remarried the year after my biological mum died, before I even turned five.
How did that make you feel?
I resented him for it a lot. I liked my stepmum before they got married, but after, the relationship went left. I think my resentment grew when I was in secondary school, and I found their Valentine’s Day cards from the year after my mum died. I was consumed with anger, but in my house, we’re not allowed to be angry towards our parents, so I turned that anger inwards.
My mum died in August, and for him to have already been in a relationship with my stepmum by February of the next year felt disrespectful. Some family members say it’s because he didn’t want me to be without a mother. I call bullshit.
What do you mean by your relationship with your stepmum went left?
It became the classic stepmum and stepdaughter relationship.
It’s a relationship built on wickedness. I’m not saying I was a perfect child, but she treated me like there was no child worse than me on earth. I was beaten with belt buckles until the buckle broke off the leather or I bled. I was doing frog jumps almost every day, and sometimes I couldn’t climb the stairs. She made me drink my own vomit once because I had issues with eating. She also used to poke me with a safety pin until I bled.
That’s absolutely terrible. Where was your dad in all this?
My dad was a very busy man who was always travelling for work. He used to talk in the beginning, but I guess in his eyes, I became the person his new wife said I was, so he stopped complaining.
I also think he wanted to keep the peace because his wife gave him other children.
I’ve said I’m sorry a lot, but I’m really sorry that happened to you. Nobody else could stop her?
Well, I have an aunt who thinks my stepmum is insane. She’s my dad’s sibling but was very young when I was born so couldn’t do anything about it. Now, she’s very vocal about how I was treated. She’s like my big sister and best friend.
I’m glad you have someone on your side. How’s do they treat you now that you’re older?
I don’t get beatings anymore, but my movements are heavily restricted. I can’t leave the house without permission, and if I do, they’d know. There’s also the occasional verbal abuse that sends me on a downward spiral.
These days my stepmum focuses on my body. She hates how fat I am and makes sure I exercise every single day. She even got me an apple watch so she could monitor how many calories I’m burning.
They’re still strict, but nothing as intense as when I was a child. I recently got a work opportunity that would’ve helped me so much, but they didn’t allow me to go. Then and there, I decided I was done. It was either I commit suicide or leave their house.
I’m too scared to kill myself, but that doesn’t stop me from carrying a bottle of poison in my bag. If it ever gets too much, I’d drink it on the spot.
If you could leave the house, where’d you go to?
Ghana. That’s where I attended university and it was the most freedom I had in my life. For the first time, I was happy and free. Things genuinely started getting better when I was there, but since the universe hates me, everything went south.
I looked in the mirror one day in my room in Ghana, and I noticed intense discolouration, dry skin and scabs. I had to see a dermatologist, and they said it’s seborrheic dermatitis.
What’s that?
It’s like eczema on drugs, and it has no cure. You just have to manage it to avoid flare-ups. I’m still yet to figure out how to manage it.
It makes me completely tired because people comment on it like I didn’t look in the mirror before I left my house.
It’s like you can’t catch a break. What do flare-ups look like?
It’s when patches of my skin become lighter and scaly, like the skin is flaking off. If I scrub it off in the morning, the skin turns pink. In an hour or two, it’s back to flaking.
It looks like huge patches of dry, discoloured skin on my face, hairline, ears, eyebrows and even my scalp. On my head, it looks like dandruff, but it’s actually the seborrheic dermatitis.
How does this affect your life?
It stops me from meeting people. At home, I’m not allowed to wear makeup, so I can’t even cover it up. I don’t make too much of an effort to hide it anymore simply because of how much it exhausts me.
Also, people don’t try to move to me romantically. It might seem vain, but it’s true. It’s made me give up on my looks in general, and I haven’t looked or felt like myself since I left school. My low self-esteem is very high.
I’m so sorry. What’s life like now?
My general mental state is in the gutter. I plan to do better for myself, but it’s hard. I know I’m a beautiful, smart, caring and funny girl. It’s just difficult to remember these things because I’m in a place that doesn’t allow these parts of myself to shine forth.
Would you say you hate your stepmum?
No actually. Her life was difficult, so she doesn’t see anything wrong with what she did. She stands by everything, and in a way, I understand.
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The subject of today’s What She Said is a 23-year-old woman who had an ovarian drilling surgery. She talks about PCOS and how it affected her mental and physical health, how unhelpful the doctor who diagnosed her was, and needing an ovarian drilling.
Tell me something about your childhood.
Okay, let’s talk about my first period.
Sure.
I got my first period on the Sunday after my 13th birthday. We were in church, and after service, I went to the bathroom and there was blood. My mum had already given me a comprehensive rundown of periods, so I felt zero panic. I just whispered it to her. We left the church and she gave me a pack of pads when we got home. That was that!
Sounds very stressless.
It was, but unfortunately, that didn’t last for long.
What happened?
When I was 14, I started gaining a lot of weight. I also got really bad cramps whenever I got my period, but I just chalked it up to puberty. I noticed how terribly people treated me once I gained weight. And this went on till I went to the USA for university in 2015.
I don’t know if it was the stress of change or a new diet that triggered it, but my first semester in school, my period came and just didn’t stop.
I tried to ride through it because I’m very stubborn when it comes to pain, but after the 20th day, I went to the campus health centre and got put on the birth control pill. My period stopped then.
At the same time, I gained a lot of weight.
Did you go to the hospital again?
Yes, before I came back to Nigeria for the summer, I went to the health centre one more time. The nurse said that based on what had been going on, I might have something called PCOS and should go to the ob/gyn when I go home.
I googled it, and honestly, it read so fatalistic that I cried for days at the possibility of having it.
That must have been so traumatic for you. Did you still see the oby/gyn?
I did. When I came home, my dad took me to the ob/gyn. I described everything that had happened in the past year and told him about the suspicion of PCOS.
I laid down for an ultrasound, and he pointed at my ovaries on the screen and said, in the most condescending tone, “See that? You have what we in the field call polycystic ovaries.”
It was one of the worst doctor visits I’ve ever had, and considering all the things PCOS does to a body, it was completely unhelpful and almost harmful honestly, but that was my diagnosis.
It must have hurt for someone to have dismissed you like that. What did you do next? Lose weight?
It was such a jarring experience. Since all he said was that I’d be fine if I lost weight, I tried to focus on that. I went on all sorts of diets, did so much fasting and got plied with so many “fat-burning” vitamins and supplements.
None of it worked. I kept gaining weight. My periods were longer and more painful. I was exhausted all the time, my neck got darker and darker, and I constantly had acne. My mental health was in the bottom of the gutter. Overall, I was not doing great.
I’m so sorry you had to keep dealing with all of that.
It’s fine now but not so much then. Since I was fat, acne-ridden with dark patches of skin and constantly tired, people who didn’t know I had PCOS simply assumed I was a lazy slob who overeats. They would offer me all kinds of unsolicited advice. It’s honestly rough to feel like you live in a body that’s constantly hurting and betraying you, and then people add to it by playing doctor with you in a rude, overfamiliar way.
When I went back to school, I had to deal with my studies, my part-time job and extracurricular responsibilities. I didn’t have any energy to devote to taking care of myself. This went on for about three years.
In my final year of school, I decided to visit the campus dietitian a few times, but I found it so hard to take on her suggestions. I was already averaging one meal a day, barely sleeping and the gym was so far on the other end of campus that getting there felt like a full workout of its own. I simply couldn’t handle the effort it would take. It was truly a gift from God that I graduated with the grades I had.
Did graduation change anything? Give you more time to focus on your health?
After graduation, I went online and bought a book about PCOS that I had seen in the dietitian’s office. I started some proper research into PCOS by reading and trying to create a routine for myself. At the time, I had a visa for a year of post-college work (OPT), so I was living in the DC area in the US and working full time. It was fully up to me to make sure I was feeding myself well and getting some daily exercise.
For a while, I seemed to be getting a solid grasp of how to handle things, focusing more on feeling healthy rather than losing weight. But as life and work got busier, I started to slip on focusing on my health.
Despite all I tried to do, I was completely exhausted at the end of each day even though I was at my desk for most of it. My mental health had not improved at all. I didn’t have the physical or mental energy to juggle life, and I kept seeing the lack of progress as me being a complete failure, so my well being took a backseat to all the other stuff going on with my life like my job and visa issues.
COVID-19 hit, and the US was enforcing a lockdown, so I started working from home in March 2020. I tried to rest a lot, but even when I slept for hours, I never felt rested.
Also, at this point, my period hadn’t shown up since January. Still, I made the effort to start eating better and taking a walk every day, and for a while, I was actually feeling pretty good! Then the worst happened, LOL.
What happened?
My job decided not to sponsor a work visa, so my last day would be in July and I had to be back in Nigeria before the end of September. I was gearing up for that emotional rollercoaster when, on June 16th, 2020, my period finally showed up for the first time since January.
I was excited about it and took it as a sign that all the work I was doing was causing changes. Then a week passed and it was still there. Two weeks, three weeks, a month. My period was still going.
July passed and I was looking for COVID exit flights home, but my period was still there. August came and went, September came and was almost over, it was still there. What I and my body went through at that time was unbelievable to me. I was heavily iron deficient, and my iron supplements weren’t really helping considering how much I was bleeding. I spent most of my days in my bed because I had no energy to do a single thing but take a shower and then lie down.
My then roommate had to make my food sometimes because I couldn’t walk down the stairs to cook. I ended up ordering more food than usual so I wouldn’t have to go buy groceries and then cook.
Every other day, because even in my suffering, internalised fatphobia was still hooking me by the throat, I would get up and try to exercise. Every time, without fail, I would barely make it back to my room and sip some water before passing out. Unsurprisingly, I was in the worst depression of my life.
I once saw someone tweet “Is there anything that PCOS cannot do or cause?” And the answer is truly no. In those days, I gave up on trying to fix my PCOS. I told myself that if it killed me, it killed me.
You and your body went through so much. Please tell me it ended eventually.
I decided to just focus on getting home and thinking about further steps when I got there. Hearing what I was going through was very hard on my parents, and they were desperate to get me back in their care. I flew back to Abuja at the end of September.
When I got back, my parents had some good news. They told me that while visiting some family in Ilorin, they were referred to a hospital where the head ob/gyn had a lot of experience and kept up on new research about reproductive health issues, especially PCOS. So, we travelled to Ilorin and met with the doctor. It was the kindest I’d ever been treated by a healthcare professional.
He was very patient with me, listened to my experiences and explained in-depth what was actually going on with my body. I nearly cried at the amount of kindness and clarity I was getting.
I’m so glad. I hope this kindness came with help. Lots of it.
It really did. He ran some tests, did an ultrasound and actually explained what it was showing about my ovaries. When we discussed my weight gain, he was upset with me about how many uninformed decisions I had had to make trying to lose weight, because the doctor who diagnosed me should’ve told me differently.
Through him, I learned that intense cardio is actually bad for people with PCOS because the increased cortisol it causes can trigger weight gain for us, and that weight training, yoga and low impact workouts like walking or a casual bike ride was healthier. Diet-wise, I also learned that PCOS causes chronic inflammation, so more whole grains instead of refined carbs, and a more anti-inflammatory diet would help. Reducing stress is also key because stress worsens PCOS a lot.
What happened after the tests?
After all the tests, he candidly told me that the way my PCOS had progressed, he’d have to suggest a last resort: an ovarian drilling surgery.
How did the idea of surgery make you feel?
I was terrified at the idea, but he calmed me down and explained what it was. it would be done with a camera (laparoscopically), so it was minimally invasive.
They would make two small incisions, go in with a camera and drain a lot of the cysts on my ovaries. It would take at best three hours, and after maybe two weeks of recovery, I would be fully healed.
After talking with my parents, we agreed on it being the best course of action, and since it was way more affordable there than it would be in Abuja, we stayed in Ilorin. We scheduled a surgery for the next Sunday morning.
How did you feel before the surgery?
The day before surgery which was Saturday, October 17th, made it exactly 123 straight days of being on my period. At that point, anything that would bring me lasting relief was very welcome.
I felt a little jittery before the surgery, but overall, I was quite calm. I checked in the night before and had to beg my dad to go sleep in an empty hospital room, otherwise, he would’ve watched me all night. He knows I don’t like to break down in front of people, but he didn’t want to leave me alone. At the end of the day, I was okay.
Knowing I made it out of that honestly helps when people make rude comments about my body. It’s always in my mind that my body and I have survived more than some people will ever deal with.
I’m a lot better! My periods aren’t 100% regular yet because it’ll take a little time for my hormones to recalibrate, but they are shorter than they have been in at least six years.
I feel healthier. I’m taking vitamins and supplements recommended for people with PCOS, and I try to walk with my dog or do some yoga to decompress from the day as soon as I get home from the office.
I have days where I mess up and eat something I know will make me feel like garbage, but keep pushing instead of beating myself up. I’ve lost a bit of weight as well, but I’m working on focusing on how I feel rather than how I look. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
My mental health is also improving. I make a lot of noise about being tired of living at home and wanting to move away, but I really need the care and love I’m getting. Life feels like it makes sense again.
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The subject of today’s What She Said is a 22-year-old who wanted to be a lawyer but studied nursing because of her mother. She talks about being involved in her parent’s interests as a child, choosing sciences for her mother and the challenges of nursing school.
What’s your earliest memory of childhood?
It’s memories of my sister, cousins and I playing games in the evening. Those evening games that included clapping and dancing. We’d go to our neighbour’s and ask him to give us money. We didn’t need it; it was just fun.
Free money, nice. Did you have just one sister?
Yes. I am the last of three children. When people talk about last born privileges, I can’t relate. I did the work. Everyone did house chores and everything equally.
The only privilege I had was being able to eat my parent’s leftover food and follow my parents everywhere. But it wasn’t special treatment. I was the one who always asked and showed interest. If my siblings showed interest, they would have taken them.
What other things were you interested in?
Books. I started writing as a teenager and used to read everything and anything. I also used to write poems. My father even gave me a collection of 17 books of Shakespeare he got from his dad. Everyone at home knows the book is mine. He was surprised when I decided to take science classes. Especially since he thought I was going to study the Arts.
Why did you end up in science then?
My mum. She decided I was good for science classes when I was younger, and that’s how it has been since then.
Because my mum was there when he asked and was giving that African mum look.
My dad wasn’t home and wasn’t working in town then. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I chose science class because of my mum. Then I found out I loved biology.
Was there a reason you did?
To be honest, the teachers. In secondary school, I had two biology teachers. They weren’t harsh like other teachers and were extremely lovely.
The second one was beautiful. She’s the first person to make me realise or become conscious of what it means to be beautiful. I also understood her lectures. She’d explain in detail.
So now that you were in science class, what did you want to do?
In secondary school? I was just moving along with everyone else. I was brilliant, so I knew I couldn’t fail. The only subject I didn’t do well in was further maths, and that’s because I didn’t like it enough to try. My parents didn’t bother me because I did well in other subjects.
When it was time for university, I picked pharmacy.
Why pharmacy?
There’s this daughter of my mum’s friend that studied pharmacy. I loved the girl, so I wanted to study pharmacy.
I’m somehow glad I didn’t. Thinking about it now, everything I did back then was because someone wanted it or did it. The only thing that was me was reading books and writing.
So, what did you end up studying at the university?
Well, since there was no pharmacy in the school I wanted to go to, my mum said I should study nursing.
Did you like it?
I didn’t at first because I thought nursing was just about nurses being by the patient’s bedside and administering injections. I found out it’s more than that.
Nursing school was challenging, fun and filled with tears. Days of stressful clinical postings, writing professional exams, travelling for postings. There are a lot of fields in nursing.
What’s your favourite thing about nursing?
The respect accorded to you by people in other departments and outside of school.
As a nurse, do you have any advice for female patients?
Do not think any difference you notice in your body would just disappear or that it’s a part of growing up. Really get to know your body so that if you detect any changes, you can quickly seek medical attention.
Also, for women who are sexually active, you should have a pap smear every three years.
If you couldn’t be a nurse, what’d you think you’d be?
A lawyer. I toy with the idea of actually going to study law. I’m still young.
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 24-year-old woman who is a middle child. She talks about seeking attention growing up, and her strained relationship with her father.
What’s your earliest memory of your childhood?
I crashed my older sister’s birthday. I was in Primary One, and it was December. I told my parents that I wanted to celebrate my birthday the same day my sister was celebrating hers. I threw a tantrum until they got me my own cake and gifts on that day.
In January, which is my birth month, I wanted them to celebrate my birthday again. They ignored me.
Why did you do that, and wasn’t your sister angry?
I was being dramatic for attention. I thought my sisters were more awesome than I was. I love them and they’re my best friends in the world, but I felt I needed to stand out in some way.
My big sister was trying to be good, so she just accommodated me.
Does this mean you were constantly getting your way as a child?
I won’t say I was getting my way all the time. My parents realised that if I wanted something, I would throw a tantrum, so my mum started ignoring me. It was harder for my dad to do so because, unfortunately, I am his favourite.
Why is it unfortunate?
My dad and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things like feminism, charity work, mental health issues. All of those things are a big part of who I am and who I am becoming. Being his favourite child is like mixing two separate things together.
He’s on the African dad side of things. Like on mental health, he believes that if there is nothing physically wrong with you, then you are absolutely fine. There was a time he took me out on a drive. I don’t know how to drive, and when you put me behind the wheel, I get panic attacks. I kept trying to communicate with him that I couldn’t do it because of my anxiety, but he told me to stop speaking “big big English”. When my breathing became laboured, he said to “stop that nonsense” and just drive.
The moment he said that, I couldn’t breathe anymore. That was how I was till I got home.
Doesn’t this affect your relationship?
It does. I don’t feel like I can come to him when I am not mentally sound. I have had a lot of panic attacks recently, and I wanted to ask him to please pay for therapy for me, but he wouldn’t do that.
I think he notices the strain in our relationship, but he doesn’t know how to address it. Instead, he goes out and buys me my favourite snacks. It has been like that since I was a child. When I was sad, he would buy me food I liked. It was also his olive branch.
However, as I’ve grown older, I’ve realised that things are different. Our relationship is getting to a point where it wouldn’t survive if I become financially independent. I don’t want it to be that way because since we lost our mum, he’s the only one my sisters and I have.
I understand. How did that affect your relationship with your dad?
While my mum was alive, she used to be the buffer between my dad and my sisters. She never allowed us to feel the full range of the emotions he carried and his behaviour.
When she died, we were exposed to all of those feelings, and it was hard. It still is.
Do you ever think your sisters were jealous of your relationship with your dad?
I won’t say they were jealous. They were just aware of the situation. I mean, I get away with a whole lot more than my older sister. Also, they were the ones that pointed out I was dad’s favourite before I even realised and accepted it.
My sisters and I are very close. They know everything about me, and I know everything about them. We back each other up. If I didn’t have other friends in the world, and it was just my sisters and I, I would be fine.
What do you think will make your relationship with your dad better?
I think moving away. If I move away and start to make a living, I can insulate myself enough to accept him the way he is without it affecting my life and well being. Therapy might also help as well.
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The subject of today’s What-She-Said is a 22-year-old woman who was ambitious out of spite for her primary school classmates. She talks about her brother wanting to kill her when they were both children, being bullied in primary school and finally finding community with herself this year.
What’s your earliest memory of your childhood?
It has to be of my brother hitting me on the head with a hammer. I had to get stitches, and I still have the scar.
According to my mum, he’s hated me since the day they brought my twin sister and I back from the hospital. That day, he put us in a mortar and wanted to pound us.
WHAT…
In his defence, he was just four and an only child. I love my siblings, and I think I most especially like that, unlike friends, your siblings are obligated to love you. Friends require a constant level of performance while siblings have seen you at your absolute worst and best, so you don’t feel the need to hide anything. You can experience your full range of emotions.
That doesn’t mean we don’t fight. We fought a lot in the house, and it was over stupid things like the TV remote.
Was there any part of your childhood not filled with physical violence?
LMAO. I want to say primary school, but that’s because the violence was emotional.
My parents sent us to a primary school filled with rich people though we were lower middle class. Now, I can say I’m grateful for the experience because I learnt to love reading and conceptualise things, but the experience was awful.
We didn’t have a lot of the things the other children had or drivers to pick us up from school. My brother handled this better because boys didn’t care about those things, but it was hard for my sister and I.
When I was leaving the school, I promised myself I was going to be very successful. That was the only way I could punish them for what they did.
Yes actually, but I wanted them to look back and feel bad for the way they treated me, and it’s quite ridiculous when I think about it now. I was fuelled by spite.
How did you plan on making them regret it?
Well, I knew I wasn’t really book smart. I had my moments, but you couldn’t really call me intelligent. Education-wise, all my siblings are smarter than me. Learning was never easy for me, so my ambition never extended to school.
My secondary school experience was vastly different. I went to a military secondary school. The funny thing was that they thought my siblings and I were snobs because of the kind of primary school we came from.
In my secondary school, they did this thing where they called out the top five in every class and gave them prizes, then called out the bottom five and caned them. That year, I read so much that I was fourth. After they gave me my prize, the headmistress called out my twin sister and bullied her because I was in the top five and she wasn’t. I was so sad and decided I didn’t want that on my conscience. I stopped trying. This led to me getting C’s and D’s, but I’m grateful I realised my status as an average student early.
Since school wasn’t it for you, what did you do?
When I finished WAEC, my result was seized. They never gave any serious reason why and my parents had to get a lawyer. When they eventually got the result, math was missing. That meant I had to do A-level exams in an Education advancement centre in Ibadan, where we lived. My twin sister luckily did not have the problem I did, so she got into Unilag. When she got to Lagos, she joined a book club.
I decided that she could not have all the fun. I wanted my own book club as well. So I reached out to some of my friends, and we decided to start our own book club. Most of our meetings were online, but eventually, we had to have some physical meetings. Hosting came with paying for snacks, venues, and other things. I never asked anyone for contributions because felt it would be a burden.
I had some money saved from a really well paying gig I got. Plus, my parents gave me money. Honestly, I am shocked I was able to pay for it all. The book club was important to me,. We had a branch in Sierra Leone and another in Ghana. It will always have a very special place in my heart.
Wow. That’s a big deal. Why did you stop?
Well, I had a lot of things going on. Unfortunately, I do the thing where I take on too many projects at once, to the point where I end up overexerting myself. I was volunteering in at least four organisations while still doing school work and also the book club.
I just didn’t know how to not keep busy. Whenever people mention projects around me, I jump on and help make plans for them. It is just how I am. Most of the projects I joined was as a result of a feminist group chat I was in. People kept creating things and asking for help, and I just volunteered.
A year ago, success to me was getting into fellowships and impacting people’s lives. It was a very self-serving thing for me. I wanted to rack up awards and be validated by people. I wanted people to think I was smart and brilliant and so many other things. Unfortunately, I didn’t get all the things I wanted.
I feel like everything has led me to this moment. If I had gotten the fellowship and everything else I wanted, I wouldn’t be this clearheaded. I am still going to apply for grants and fellowships, but now I have a clearer picture of what I want. It is not out of spite or about being successful. It will be more about doing things that make me happy.
I have decided to never take on more than three projects at once. When you do many things at once, it’s very easy for you to live on autopilot. You don’t really think about what you do, you just do. I want to be able to savour the moment.
Now that your idea of success has changed, what next?
Ambition meant I never had enough time to just sit with myself and figure out where I am and where I am going. That’s what I dedicated this year to do. To just find community with myself.
I am moving into my own apartment this week, and after I get the article I am working on published, I won’t write for a long time. I want to spend my 20s reading books and focusing on finishing school.
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is Olajumoke Adebayo, a 26-year-old midwife. She talks about her passion for midwifery, helping pregnant women access better health care and why midwifery is so critical to childbirth.
What did you want to be growing up?
I wanted to become a civil engineer. I had a friend who also wanted to be an engineer. Her dad had an engineering firm. I remember telling my mum that I would work with my friend’s dad after I graduated. She laughed and asked me who told me he would give me a job. I decided to study something else instead.
Oh?
In secondary school, I chose science class — I decided to study medicine. However, the first year I wrote JAMB, I didn’t get in. I considered starting a business, but I tried JAMB again the next year and passed, getting in for nursing instead of medicine. I started university in 2011, but I wasn’t okay with nursing. I went through the four years barely caring about the course.
In my fourth year, I heard about midwifery. I had a lecturer, Dr Flo Folami, who made it sound interesting. She told us she was a lactation consultant. I remember thinking, is this even a job? During lectures, she told us several women die during childbirth, and I was shocked. I always thought childbirth was easy. I told her I wanted to teach people about it so women could stop dying during childbirth, but I didn’t have a midwife license. She said it was okay to do it regardless. That’s how I started a WordPress blog where I wrote articles about pregnancy. This was early 2014. I hid my identity because I felt if people knew I had never been pregnant and didn’t have a license, they would not take my advice. I kept writing though.
How did this lead to midwifery?
From writing, I started doing community projects. I worked with the Nigerian Child Initiative to sensitise Lagos slum communities on tetanus, water, sanitation and hygiene and pneumonia. I became a Carrington youth fellow and implemented a maternal and child health project at Ebute Ilaje community with my team. I also organised a quarterly meetup for young people to talk about sexual health issues, which was one of my favourite projects.
At school, I was excited whenever we were assigned midwifery postings. I remember the first mum I catered to. It was in 2017 — I was trying to get my license at the time. One of the requirements was to take care of a woman from the beginning of pregnancy till the end. I doted on her. I would reassure her whenever she expressed her fears about losing the baby — she had lost her first pregnancy. When it was time for her birth, we went to the family health centre. She had a lot of complications, and eventually, she lost the baby. I was so sad that day. I remember a car almost hit me on my way home. I couldn’t believe she lost it. I started avoiding her because I couldn’t talk to her — I felt like I gave her too much hope.
After a while, I was able to talk to her again. I understood why she had lost both pregnancies, so I advised her to avoid a vaginal birth for her next pregnancy and instead opt for a caesarean section. Today, she has a baby boy. This inspired me to do more.
What happened next?
I graduated in 2018. After school, I worked with a maternal health care start-up as a programmes officer. We trained mothers to teach the women in their community about pregnancy health. It was an exciting programme but I left.
Why?
I was more interested in reproductive health, so I worked with other brands to help young people learn about sexual health. We would go to secondary schools to teach students, and it was fulfilling. By that time, I already had my license. In my NYSC year, I volunteered for an organisation that catered to pregnant women. There, I found out there was a shortage of midwives in Nigeria, so I decided to do something about it.
In October 2018, I started my organisation called Reprolife, which aims to improve the lives of young people by giving them access to sexual and reproductive health information. In 2019, I joined the International Confederation of Midwives. By this time, I had fully decided that my heart belonged to midwifery.
I started using my organisation to do outreaches to women in disadvantaged communities. I organised HIV tests, Hepatitis B tests and other necessary tests for these women. I learnt about preeclampsia in pregnancy, and how it could kill women. I became more intentional about creating lasting relationships with women so they always have access to me. Plus I am also a feminist, so I try to remind women that they have autonomy over their bodies.
I also realised that the midwifery we practice in Nigeria is more of obstetric care. At the end of the day, a lot of women go to traditional birth attendants who don’t know the requirements for a healthy birth. My theory is if we practised midwifery better in Nigeria, more women will come to us instead of traditional birth attendants. My goal is to get better at my job as a midwife.
Sounds like you really enjoy your job. What’s a day as a midwife like?
I go to work every day to see the pregnant women in my care. I teach them antenatal care. Sometimes, the job includes alleviating clients’ worries and telling them about their rights. I also talk to women about family planning. One time, a young girl walked into the hospital, she looked scared. We spoke and she said she wanted to do family planning, but I knew there was more. After we took a test, it turned out she was pregnant. I get cases like that often. Sometimes it’s married women who don’t want any more kids but their husbands don’t understand. Another thing I have noticed is that husbands and mothers-in-law are a huge barrier to pregnant women’s access to health care.
I particularly love community outreaches because the women do not miss the meetings. Whenever they do, they tell you what’s going on with them. It made me realise that they don’t go to hospitals in town because of the distance and cost it takes to get there. They use their traditional birth attendants because it is easier to access. For us, it’s even difficult to get there because the roads are bad and regular transportation doesn’t go there.
This is a lot. What keeps you going?
I think my purpose in life is to help women and make their lives easier. When women come to me and I can provide solutions to their problems, I am overjoyed. Like with the first woman I ever catered to — it meant so much to me that she listened to my recommendation and had a baby. That’s what keeps me going.
I’m curious. Do you want to have kids?
My job makes me more conscious of how I want my birthing process to look like. I know where I want it and what sound I want to listen to while I give birth. I feel more prepared than ever to handle it. Giving birth is not a walk in the park — whether cesarean section or vaginal birth. I’ve told myself that if I can’t handle the pain on my own, I’ll get an epidural. I’ll decide with my partner, and I expect them to support me, so I guess I am looking forward to it.
What’s your least favourite thing about being a midwife?
First of all, I don’t understand why there’s a pushback on midwifery in Nigeria. This is why I bring feminism to it. Studies show that midwives are crucial to successful births, but there’s no support — we aren’t even paid properly. Private hospitals don’t even let us practice midwifery, so the best options for us are primary healthcare centres and state hospitals.
What are your plans for the future?
I know I want to stick with midwifery. I would like to get a masters degree in midwifery or global health because I want to be able to influence policy making. I want to change how midwifery works in Nigeria, from the council to the government. Nigeria had a midwifery programme that was effective in reducing maternal and child deaths in rural areas. The program deployed midwives to rural areas, but it eventually died like everything else in this country. It was so good that it got into a list of the top 10 midwifery programmes in the world. I want to be able to influence how such decisions are made.
ICM, WHO and UNFPA recently launched the State of the World’s Midwifery 2021 report which highlights the life-saving, life-promoting impact of midwives in Nigeria and around the world. Learn more here
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 25-year-old Nigerian woman who has travelled to over fifteen countries alone. She talks about how this love for travelling started, the way she’s stigmatised at airports and in hotels, and her dream to attend aviation school.
What was growing up like?
Life was good until I turned seven. When my parents were together, I travelled abroad every holiday, including Easter and mid-term breaks. I was happy. Our house was always so lively because of the parties we had, and I had a lot of friends.
However, things changed when my dad started beating my mum. Eventually, he sent her away. It was just me and my dad for a while, until I ran away to be with my mum.
Ran away?
After my dad sent my mum out of the house, he instructed security to never let her in again. The day I ran, my mum had come to visit me, and when security informed my dad she was around, he ignored them.
I remember taking my shoes, sneaking out the back door and running through the compound to the gate. By the time security realised what was happening, I was outside the gate. I hopped into my mum’s car, and she drove off.
A few days later, we had to return to pick up my school uniform and some other clothes.
Wow. How did your dad feel about you running away?
He wanted me to come back. He even bribed me with gifts. I would collect them but still not go back to his house.
There was a time he sent me to live with his sister in the UK. I wasn’t going to school or anything, just staying with my aunt. Eventually, my mum came to the UK and took me back with her to Nigeria. I don’t know why, but he just wanted to take me away from my mum.
I’m not his only child. He has a son with another woman, but we did not grow up together and I barely spent any time with him partly because he is nineteen years older than me. Up until 2014/2015, I told everyone I was an only child.
How did your parents eventually settle fighting over you?
I made my decision and stopped accepting anything from him. The only thing he did for me was pay my school fees. At a point he even stopped funding my baby girl trips, but my mum did for a while until she couldn’t anymore.
What are these baby girl travels and why couldn’t she fund them anymore?
My baby girl travels are the trips I take out of Nigeria every year. My dad stopped funding them when I was 10 and my mum continued. My mum sold jewellery, clothes and even drinks.
Then in 2012, she stopped because the country got worse. Business wasn’t as good anymore, so she couldn’t afford the trips.
How did you cope with that?
Well, I had just gotten into university and knew I had to continue the lifestyle by myself. I started looking for loans, but nobody wanted to give a broke student money.
Growing up, I was usually given expensive things or taken to luxurious places. Once you taste luxury, you would do almost anything to keep it. There are places I can’t eat because I don’t feel comfortable. I never used to eat street food because my mum told me that I would get food poisoning. The first day I tried it in university, I actually did have food poisoning. I only recently started buying roasted corn outside. When I was younger, we used to plant corn and roast on the grill ourselves.
When the loans didn’t work out, I started looking for jobs. I reached out to one of my dad’s friends who helped me get a job as a personal assistant to one of his friends. I had to remind him about his meetings and schedule his flights for him. It was a remote job and he paid me ₦99k a month.
He said 100k was too much money for a young girl, so he removed the 1k. When he relocated to the US, he started paying me in dollars.
How long did it take before you could travel again?
It took two years before I could go on my next trip. In 2014, I travelled to three different countries in one summer because I asked my aunt for money. Luckily for me, she had enough money to spare, so she agreed.
When she asked for the cost of the trip, I increased the price. That’s how I was able to go to London for a week, Dubai for four days, and Paris for two days.
E for Enjoyment. Did your aunt keep funding your trips?
No, she didn’t. I picked up three other jobs as well. The same friend of my dad’s that helped me get the PA job called me up one day and after asking me a few questions, asked for my email address.
I lied a bit and claimed I could do some of the things he asked, so I had to do a lot of research on the job. When I checked my email, there was a job waiting for me. The email contained three documents. My job description, payment information and an NDA.
What was the job about?
If I tell you, I would have to kill you. The second job was because I was recommended by the first company. Both jobs paid in dollars and helped fund my baby girl lifestyle.
I go to Abuja steadily. My excuse is to buy kilishi and suya, but it’s actually because I just need to be on a plane. Dubai is my second home, Greece is my third and London is my fourth. I have also been to the US, UAE, France, Russia, Jamaica, Rwanda, Serbia, Italy, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, China, Mexico, Bahamas, South Africa, Kenya, and many more. I love to travel because I love being on planes.
Are there countries or cities you’ve wanted to travel to but couldn’t?
Nope. There are, however, places I want to go but would not want to pay for the trip myself. I want to go to the Maldives or Santorini, but I’m waiting for my next significant other to pay for the trip for me.
Another way I’ve been able to travel so much is because the men I have dated usually pay for some of them. The goal is to travel to all the countries in the world.
Wow. When did you discover you loved planes so much?
One day when I was about five or six, I was on a solo night flight. It was the period my dad sent me to live in the UK with my aunt. Since my mum was not coming with me, I travelled alone. There was a lot of turbulence and people crying, shouting and praying that the plane shouldn’t crash. I wasn’t scared. One of the flight attendants came to sit with me so I wouldn’t be scared, but I told her not to worry and she left.
The seat belt sign was on, but I took off my seatbelt and started walking around, holding on to chairs the way I saw the flight attendants do. I even went to people crying and tried to calm them down.
The flight attendant saw me and yelled at me to go back, so I did. When we landed, she asked me why I wasn’t scared despite all the turbulence. I told her that I felt safe, and I knew planes crashed, but that particular one wouldn’t. I listed all the possible reasons why other planes like it crashed and why the crash rate was so low.
She took me to the flight deck and I saw the captain, the first officer and all the buttons. The flight attendant told him what I did, and he made me sit in his chair and put his cap on my head. I cried because I was so happy. At that point, I knew planes were my obsession.
That sounds so cool. That means you’ve been travelling alone for a while now. What’s that like?
Well, people are constantly asking strange questions.
At the embassy, they ask how I pay for my trips. Before I divorced my now ex-husband, the process was easier because I’d just say he was the one paying for it.
A lot of my flights are paid for by the company I work for, and I usually fly first class or business class. Getting visas that way isn’t really difficult because it’s a work trip.
My personal trips are easier because I have a very long travel history that started when I was a child.
I never feel safe travelling alone because men have harassed me physically and verbally. They assume I’m a prostitute because I travel alone. At the airport, people call me ashewo.
When I check-in at the hotels, the hotel staff ask if I’m expecting anyone else even after I’ve told them I’m travelling alone.
The subject of this week’s What She Said, is a 25-year-old woman who has been through so much and would just like to be at peace for the rest of her life. She talks about how unlucky she’s been with friends, her tense relationship with her mother, beating cervical cancer, and how therapy helped her figure out life.
What’s your earliest memory of your childhood?
When I fell into a gutter and broke my leg because I was trying not to get caught playing with the neighbours’ children. I was five.
Why didn’t you want to get caught playing with them?
My parents are weird. They didn’t want us to have any friends. My mum, especially, thought the neighbours were witches, so she didn’t want us to play with them.
Damn. Does that mean you didn’t have friends?
I actually didn’t. I was shy, had social anxiety and was too terrified of my parents to try making any. Then I started university, and the friends I had were not that great.
I got into a private university in Benin City when I was just 15, which is quite early, so I tried to keep my head down and focus on my studies.
My friends, however, constantly made fun of me. They picked on my weight, which eventually made me anorexic. Looking back, I see that we were all insecure children trying to find our way, but I don’t think I’ll ever forgive them.
Wow. They must have been really awful.
Yes. They did so many bad things to me. They put weed in my food once, and I blacked out. When I woke up, I was naked in bed with one of my friends. She might have assaulted me; I’m not sure. I just remember my nipples being sore and wet, nothing more. I was only 15.
The second time they drugged me, I was in my second year. They were experimenting with a random pill and were too scared to try it themselves, so they put it in my drink and only told me after I drank it. All I remember was being very happy and floaty and then waking up in a hotel room.
I finally snapped when one of them raped my boyfriend.
I was 16 then. I had a boyfriend whom I was happy with, but one of my friends wasn’t happy about it. She told my boyfriend she would be better than me in bed because I’m frigid, unfeeling and like firewood. She eventually drugged him, raped him, made a video, and then showed the video to me.
When I confronted her, she said she was tired of seeing me get men’s attention though I hardly socialised or made an effort.
After the entire incident, I cut off the entire friendship group. I also broke up with him. I think it’s one of the saddest things in my past, one of the things I’m most embarrassed about.
So all of this coupled with the fact that I had an eating disorder, anxiety and severe depression that was making me skip exams, my parents decided to transfer me to a university in Uganda to finish medical school.
Wait, how did your parents go from “no friends” to “let’s send our daughter to a new country”?
My parents are complicated. My mother is a mix of feminism and misogyny. She’s all for getting your own education, but get it so your husband will be proud of you.
She was the one that pushed me to travel to Uganda when I wanted to drop out of med school. When I wanted to drop out of med school, she instead brought up schooling in Uganda. She had been bragging to her friends about me being in medical school and didn’t want to deal with the embarrassment.
Also, she was in Tanzania, so she wasn’t too far from me.
I thought your family lived in Nigeria?
My family moves around a lot. For most of my time in medical school, my mum was perambulating around East Africa: Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, a truly disastrous stint in Uganda, then to Burundi.
I’m pretty sure my dad is in Ghana right now, but a few weeks ago, he was in South Africa. My brother is in Cotonou; I’m in Uganda. My sister is the only one still in Nigeria.
Wow. What made your mum’s stint in Uganda disastrous?
She got me in an arranged engagement with an already married man, and when I refused, she disowned me.
I have trouble confronting my mum. When she and the man set up the engagement, I just sat there. I didn’t want to cause a conflict, so I just let it go on. It went on for four months. I had seen him just twice and spoken to him for about an hour. I don’t know how my mum expected me to marry someone I had just spoken to for an hour.
One Saturday morning, his wife sent a text to inform me that she was married to the man. She also mentioned she had gotten three abortions for him because he said he never wanted kids. I found that strange because a few weeks before, he got the spare key to my house from my mother, showed up without my permission and demanded we start having children immediately.
My friend and I decided to search social media for pictures of him and his wife, and we found some. I compiled a whole folder and sent it to my mum. She told me his wife was just jealous, and I should carry on with the engagement.
How did you get out of it?
My mum set up a meeting with all three of us. Me, her and the man. She told me that she’d already told people I was getting married, so breaking it off would be a disgrace to her.
I yelled at her, she yelled at me, he yelled at me for yelling at her. He told me I disappointed him, and I told him he was possessed to think I cared about what he thought.
She disowned me then I moved houses and did not inform anyone where the house was. For like two months, I was living free in my own peace, until she randomly sent me money one day. She called me to find out if I had gotten the alert and said she missed me.
We never had a proper discussion about what happened during those months or what caused her to make that decision.
Wow. That was a lot. What was schooling in Uganda like?
For one, there’s nobody out to get you. If you read your books, you pass. My favourite part of it, however, is the freedom. In Uganda, I have learnt to see people first and religion and tribe last.
Second favourite thing is how I was able to finally discover my sexuality. Uganda was where I finally figured out women and went nuts. Uganda was my first time being really away from my family, and I loved it. It helped me come to terms with all that had happened in my past.
How did it do that?
My school gave us medical insurance, and it came with four free psych visits per month. I went a couple of times, and the therapist forced me to face a lot about myself.
Therapy is great for me. It’s given me helpful coping tools to deal with my harmful behaviours, and I love that I get to talk about things and get them out of my head.
The process, however, is very painful. I hate it. The past is painful and addressing it in therapy made me realise that a lot of the things I do are a result of being repeatedly traumatised by the people I trust.
I recently discovered that I was circumcised. Apparently, when I was younger, I stayed with an aunt while my parents travelled. One night while I slept, she cut off my clit. Because of that, I’m always tense in my sleep, as if I’m expecting to be attacked. Everything is a trauma response for me. From the way I walk, to the way I sleep. The first week of therapy left me really depressed.
I am so sorry. Do you ever think of returning to Nigeria?
I was supposed to move back in 2020, but because of Corona and the fact that I had cervical cancer again, I couldn’t come back.
Cervical cancer again?
In 2018, I went for a pap smear and noticed I had a precancerous cervical lesion. It got treated, and I moved on.
Then in late 2019, I had a couple of bad periods that lasted about two weeks and were very heavy. It was so bad, I fainted. So, I went in for a pap smear. Imagine my surprise when they told me my lesion was back and this time it was full-blown cancer.
In 2020, I got chemotherapy and a trachelectomy. I’m still in recovery but got the all-clear from my oncologist.
I’m so sorry. Do you ever regret not dropping out of medical school?
No, my job is fun as hell. I am an obstetrician and a gynaecologist, but I love obstetrics more.
Do you want any children?
I actually can’t stand children. I’ve seen far too many women die bringing kids into the world. These women have already gotten pregnant; the least I can do is actually help them get the children out alive.
What keeps you going?
I’m not a very hopeful person, and 2020 took a lot out of me, so I just want peace. One day, I want the inside of my head to be quiet. No arguments between my self-esteem and my brain. Just quiet.
That’s not to say I don’t have little sparks of joy in my life. They’re not even little. More like explosions of joy. My blood sisters and the sisters I made by choice give me joy.
Whenever babies take their first breath, every successful cesarean, successful vagina delivery, managed miscarriage. Every morning when I run up the same four flights of stairs I used to be wheeled up for chemo and blood transfusions without being out of breath. These things give me joy.
I’m in a relationship now, and they make me so fucking happy. These are the things I love and look forward to.
The subject of this week’s What She Said is an 18-year-old girl who says her mother hates her. She talks about the death of her father, and the abuse she’s had to endure at the hands of her mother and ex-boyfriend.
What’s your earliest memory of your childhood?
When I was two years old, I wasn’t able to eat regular food. I only ate pap, which had to be in a feeding bottle. My nursery school teacher at the time thought it was because my parents couldn’t feed me, so she fed me noodles. After eating, I vomited.
When my daddy came to pick me up, I told him and he stormed into the school and reported the teacher to the owner. I didn’t mean to put the teacher in trouble, but I told my dad everything.
You and your dad must be close.
Yeah, we were. He was my hero.
Was? What happened?
He passed away when he was 86. I was 16. One morning after he woke up and we bathed him, he went back to bed because he was weak. We sat by him and soon after, he passed.
I miss him so much. Before he died, when he was about 80 years old, he couldn’t eat by himself so he needed to be fed. I was the one who fed him. After he died, it became difficult for me to eat alone.
He protected me from my mum for as long as he could.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Why was he protecting you from your mum?
My parents had different ways of raising and disciplining children.
If I was disobedient, she would flog me with a cane or use a water hose. Around the time I turned 11, she switched to hot water and pepper.
She would put pepper in my eyes, vagina and hands. Sometimes she mixed the pepper with hot water. The older I grew, the worse it got.
I’m so sorry that happened.
When I was 16, there was this girl on our street who always changed her phone. One day, my mum asked her how she changed her phone so often because she lived with her aunt and not her parents. The girl said she has numerous boyfriends who bought her these phones.
After she left, my mom said, “is that not your mate that has men who give her money and buy phones for her. All you know how to do is sleep with boys for free.” And from that day on, the torment got worse. She started expecting me to foot bills in the house.
I couldn’t because I had just gotten into uni. I didn’t have a job or anything. It was around this time I met my 25-year-old ex-boyfriend. Our relationship was smooth for sometime until he met my family and problems started.
When you say family…
My mother and my younger sister. My step-siblings are older, so they don’t live with us. They’re the children from my father’s first marriage.
My younger sister outgrew my mother’s treatment and started siding with her to hurt me. They frustrated me so much.
My sister tried breaking my then boyfriend and I up. She messaged him on Facebook and told him she saw me sending nudes to my male best friend. It was all a lie, but he didn’t believe me. When I reported her to my mother, she told me to forget about it.
My ex stopped trusting me. He would monitor my chats, calls, outings, and my mother allowed it.
I wasn’t allowed to have either male or female friends, and I was only allowed to go to his house. Anything he didn’t allow me to do that I did in the presence of my mum and sister, they’d tell him.
When the lockdown happened, I wanted him to end the relationship. He used to say horrible stuff to me. I was so tired. I kept cheating, but he wouldn’t leave.
My mother’s friend told her that he’s the only one that can control me, so the relationship can’t end. My mother told me I wasn’t allowed to end it.
There was a time he even flogged me with a cane.
He did what?
One time at home, he insulted my mother because of an incident with a missing card. When he left, I called him and insulted him as well.
The next day, he came to my house with four canes, left them in the garage of our house and came to meet me in my room. He told me to repeat what I said on the phone.
I knew he was angry, and I felt trapped. When I tried to leave, he pushed me and my phone fell. When I tried to pick up my phone, he started dragging it with me, then he slapped me, so I slapped him back. He went to the garage to bring the canes.
He flogged my back where my mum had given me a spinal injury before, so I was in so much pain. I’m also asthmatic. I fell down and was crying, but he just kept flogging me.
Was there nobody at home? Did nobody help you?
Initially, when he came, he met my sister and she saw the canes in his hand. He told her to call my mum, and she went. She told my mum, who was at her friend’s house, that he came with canes, but my mum didn’t take her seriously.
After he finished flogging me, he felt bad and went to call my mum from her friend’s house. She saw the cane in his hand, but didn’t know he had already flogged me.
When she came to the house, heard me screaming and ran to meet me. She boiled hot water to help me massage my wounds.
That evening, he started begging me. He said he didn’t know why he did it, and he was sorry. My mum talked to him and told him to go home.
A couple of days later, my mum told me I had to continue the relationship. That I shouldn’t take life too seriously. When I threatened to report the boy to the police, she said she’d disown me.
That must have been so traumatising. How were you able to cope with the lockdown?
It was terrible. When the lockdown intensified, my mum made me stop eating at home because I wasn’t dropping money for food. So, I would wake up in the morning and go to my friend’s house next door. We would work out, cook and eat. She fed me for about three months. Then, my ex complained I spent too much time there, so I wasn’t allowed to go there anymore.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I started using my dad’s money.
Before he died, he linked my sim card to his bank account so I could withdraw money when I needed it. I’d just transfer from his account to mine. The money was about ₦200,000 .
I started using some of the money to invest, but I wasn’t really great at it, so I kept losing money. Eventually, all of the money finished.
My mother was a signatory to the account, and one day she went to the bank and noticed that the money was gone.
By this time, the lockdown had eased so I went back to school in Ibadan. She tried calling me, but I blocked her number. She told my ex to tell me to return the money. My school fees were also due, so I was looking for about ₦300,000.
Doesn’t she pay your school fees?
No, she doesn’t. I’m basically sponsoring myself through school. I reach out to people and if they can, they help me out. If they can’t, I figure it out.
She still expects me to send money home for them to take care of some of their bills. She thinks I’m a prostitute.
My sister sent me a message a while ago, that they need a new freezer and she wants to register for GCSE and WAEC so she needs money.
This must be so much for you to deal with.
It’s a lot. At a point, I wanted to kill myself because of all of the stress. I developed high blood pressure, and I have headaches that never go away no matter how many painkillers I take.
With my school schedule now, I can’t work. The days I ask around and nobody has money to spare for me to get food, I just drink water and sleep.
My dad’s pension comes every month, but it’s not enough because I’m in my final year in a Polytechnic. I need money for my project. If the money for this month gets paid, it’ll finish that day.
If I’m not fast enough and my mother takes the cheque book to the bank to withdraw the money, I’d have to wait till next month.
Have you tried asking your step-siblings for help?
I did in 2019, and they said they weren’t banks. I never asked them for money again.
Do you think there’s a reason your mum does all of this?
When my sister was born, we had a maid that used to live with us. My mother believes that the maid was a witch who initiated us.
How do you feel about your mum?
She gave birth to me, so I don’t think I can hate her, no matter what she’s done.
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is a woman in her early thirties who has been a reverend sister for twelve years. She talks about life before service, how she got called to join the convent and adapting to life at the convent.
What is your earliest memory of your childhood?
It was when my father married a second wife and abandoned us. I was about 12 at the time, and I remember feeling devastated. When the woman started living with us, my mother was so welcoming towards her, which shocked me and my three siblings. Everything was going well until the second wife decided to show her true colours.
The woman used to determine if we would eat or not. The day she did not bring out food, we did not eat. She was the desired wife, and so my father put her in charge of overseeing the house.
I remember how my dad used to beat up my mother and pull her hair. There was a day I tried to intervene, but he pushed me away and I fell. In fact, my father’s siblings used to join in the beatings.
Why? What was their problem?
Hatred. They hated my mother, and once my father started beating her, they saw a way to express that hatred and kick her out. The hate for my mother also extended to us the children. I remember travelling with my mum sometime in the past. When one of my aunts came home and was told when I ran to hug her, she pushed me away.
Initially, I thought the hate was because my mother was not an Igbo woman, but then the second wife was also not Igbo. They just hated my mother.
Yes, we ran for our dear lives. We ran to my mother’s side of the family.
I don’t remember how long we stayed there, but I know living there was tough. Eventually, my mother got a job as a cook in a restaurant. She worked in shifts, and it was from the job she was able to pay for rent and our feeding. Then, we could make soup with two hundred naira. The money also paid our school fees including the numerous JAMB fees I paid.
How many times did you write JAMB?
So many times I lost count. My dream was to be a medical doctor because I loved the ‘doctor’ title, and I wanted to save lives. I however was not lucky with the results so I had to change my course to law, I eventually ended up getting English and Literature. In all this, there was a guy who was trying to get my hand in marriage, and that was when the dreams and visions started.
What dreams and visions?
In one of the dreams, I saw myself following Christ as one of his disciples. In another, it was a vision of the cross. My passion became uncontrollable when I saw a car with the name of a religious institute on it. Then, afterwards, I met one of the sisters of that Institute in my church parish. With the help of a Reverend Father in my parish, I became a sister.
Well, my mother accepted it as fate, but my father told me to really think if this was the life I wanted for myself. Even after all my father did to my mother, he had to be aware of this decision because he was still my father.
What was living in the convent like?
It wasn’t easy at the onset, and adapting was the hardest part for me. It was a struggle. You know, leaving my usual world to a different way of life. Eventually, I adapted.
There was a deep silence I embraced when I first arrived at my place of initial formation, and it deafened me even down to my bones. Imagine coming from a noisy world to a place where both inner and outer silence was a rule I must abide by? There is a time for everything in the convent, and you must not be found where you are not supposed to be.
How long have you a reverend sister?
It’s been twelve years since I joined the mission and became a reverend sister, and I thank God because I am happy and fulfilled in my choice of vocation.
The subject of this week’s What She Said is a Nigerian woman in her early twenties who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She talks about her mental health journey in Nigeria, and why she thinks she was misdiagnosed.
What’s your earliest memory of your childhood?
The earliest memory I can recall is being molested by my uncle. I have no memory of anything before the age of eight, and I think that’s my brain trying to suppress the trauma from the assault and my parents neglecting me as a child. I lost my memories after the assault, and I only started recovering them again as an adult, but in fragments.
I’m so sorry that happened. Did your parents ever find out?
My parents eventually found out about it when I was nine or ten. I think they walked in while he was trying to molest me, but I don’t really remember. I just remember the aftermath and the questions they asked. He had to leave the house, but he was welcomed back so many times over the years. When they asked me what really happened, I was unable to tell the full story and had to lie that he only attempted to molest me.
I lied because my parents were hysterical, and I was scared. My mum wouldn’t stop crying and calling me ruined. This was the first time I ever saw people so hysterical, so I thought I had to protect them. I was a child, I didn’t even know what protecting my parents meant. I just knew I did not want my mother to be so hysterical.
Would you say your mother reacted strongly?
My mum was always an emotional person, so I witnessed a lot of her breakdowns and anger in a very extreme manner. When she got angry at me, she would call me names or hit me. Her moods were chaotic, so I never knew what to expect.
I think it affected my mood regulation, and showed me extreme expressions of anger, such as breaking things, saying horrible things and overall frantic efforts to avoid abandonment to be socially acceptable. Honestly, I believe she actually had some mental issues as well, but she never got any help. In fact, when she found out I tried to kill myself when I was 16, she opted to pray for me instead of actually helping me access help. My parents believe in faith therapy.
Did you tell your parents about the suicide attempt?
I did not tell anyone I tried to kill myself, so there was nobody to urge me to get help. My mother only found out because she read my diary, but she never confronted me about it. My parents do not talk about or confront things that make them uncomfortable.
Then I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder type II in 2016 when I was 18. A friend of mine who had been my support system at the time encouraged me to get one because of my behaviour. I always knew I was not like the average person so getting the diagnosis made me feel validated. Like I was not imagining it.
I am so glad you were able to get a diagnosis. Did they put you on any medication?
Yes. After I was diagnosed, I was put on medication, but I stopped after a year. The medication did more harm than good. It did help sometimes, but it also made me fatter and sicker. There were headaches, diarrhoea, nausea, and sexual problems like dryness and being unable to cum. Now, I’m relatively untreated. It’s difficult because I have episodes three to five times a day.
What’s an episode like for you?
A memory from years ago can resurface in my mind and trigger an episode. I can then spend the next two hours crying and having anxiety attacks about this memory. My mind tells me that I am a horrible and stupid person that is undeserving of love. I start to remember all the people who have left me and I feel unloveable. On more intense days, the voices in my head may tell me to cut myself.
On a more extreme day, I burned myself as punishment for being a horrible person to someone I loved when, in fact, I just couldn’t see that these were efforts to avoid abandonment by him.
And these are just normal for people with bipolar disorder?
Technically, I don’t think I have bipolar disorder. I think I have BPD — borderline personality disorder. It is a disorder in which the sufferer experiences and expresses extreme mood swings and socially unacceptable, uncontrollable anger, usually in frantic efforts to avoid abandonment or perceived abandonment. Unlike bipolar disorder, which episodes last at least 2 weeks, BPD episodes can happen multiple times a day.
I emotionally abused a guy once. We were friends with benefits and I really liked him and I placed him on a pedestal, but I always felt threatened that he would leave me for someone else — that’s called splitting. I constantly called him names, checked his phone, was controlling and bullied girls that were around him. My lack of control over my anger was punishing him. It took me three years to figure this out, and I apologised. He said he has forgiven me, but I still struggle to forgive myself.
After losing a lot of friends and relationships, I realised something was definitely wrong with me. The feelings I had did not match my thoughts or feelings. My fear of abandonment would come out as anger, and my hurt as contempt. After reading a lot and inquiring about my behaviour from people, I think BPD is a more accurate diagnosis.
If you think you got a wrong diagnosis, why not go back to the doctor?
My experience with the mental health resources like medication and therapy is not great. The resources are ineffective, and mental health professionals are not understanding. It’s also not as affordable for the average person. Even though I can afford it right now, mental health professionals are judgmental or like to include faith healing. As someone who has traumatic experiences related to religion, this turns me off.
I think that mental health resources here are like a band-aid on a gunshot wound. They don’t help holistically but will help you feel better in the moment.
So with no medication, a misdiagnosis and your dislike for mental health resources in Nigeria, how do you navigate life?
I have a DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) textbook. I read it when I have episodes to help me remember that I am seeing things in black and white. It helps but not much.
I’m very lucky that I am self-aware and more high-functioning than some other people. However, I don’t think I can work in a public space anymore. The last experience was traumatizing for me, and I enjoy working remotely now. It’s easier to deal with episodes at home.
What was your last job like?
I was a digital marketer and it stressed me out so much that I started to have episodes every time. I started having PTSD trauma nightmares about my sexual assault and when I finally got fired, I thought my life was over because I had hyper focused on my job and was so obsessed with trying to live up to expectations that I had neglected my health.
Is there anything that’d make life easier for you to navigate?
I think we need professionals to separate religion from their jobs, and go through empathy training. It’s not just about writing exams and passing. Medication should also be more accessible.
Nigerians also need more education on mental illness and how to relate with people with mental illnesses. People look at me as weak or foolish for being sick when I have episodes, they will either laugh or think I am dangerous and trying to harm them.
They should be more open-minded towards friends and family who have mental illness and learn how to navigate our behaviours that may be considered socially unacceptable. Also, the culture of bullying and microaggressions here needs to change.
The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 50-year-old woman who dated her ex-husband for 12 years and was married to him for 14 years. She talks about leaving him after years of being manipulated, the joy that comes from being a single woman again and life as a divorced Christian woman.
How did the relationship start?
I met my ex in 1988, in my first year in university. On one of our first few dates, he invited me over to listen to a Sade Adu record. I really like Sade Adu. So I went to a boy’s quarters he was staying at. When I got there, there was no proper bed. There was just a mattress on the floor. I had heard about the slaughterhouse where guys take girls to sleep with. As I sat on the bed, I saw condoms fall out from under the pillow. Shocked, I ran away. I told him never to come to see me again. That was the end of the beginning of our relationship. After a while, he came and said there would be no sleeping together. Then we started dating again around the end of my 200 level. We soon started living together.
What was the relationship like?
I was very grateful to be with him. I had a bad home situation. He provided the kind of environment that I wanted. He provided a lovely home and was very caring. Anytime I quarrelled with my folks, he stood up for me. I saw a champion in him. It’s only in retrospect that I see it was a perfect relationship for him to manipulate me because he knew the things that triggered me. It was easy for him to switch from being a defender to an aggressor.
Do you think he loved you?
Perhaps, he did. But I also think it was because when he got rusticated from school, I was the only friend that stayed with him.
So how did he manipulate you?
From the beginning of our relationship, he often got upset if I talked to someone else. I didn’t realise until later that this was manipulative. It got so bad that if we were stuck in traffic and someone in a vehicle looked at me, and I looked that way at the same time, he would start saying I knew the person but was only pretending.
He also made it mandatory that I check in with him all the time. One day, I went to work and I left my phone at home; my boss called me because he hadn’t checked my office to see if I was around. My ex then went on about how I lied about being at work because of my boss’ call. It became so bad that whenever he started to talk, I froze, anticipating his accusations.
Did your parents approve of the marriage?
My parents didn’t have a lot to say, because as I said earlier, it was a bad home situation. We went to the registry three or so years after we started dating. We didn’t tell anyone about it.
People always asked when we would get married, and at one point, my dad got upset and asked that we have a proper wedding since we were already living together.
When we got to church, we were told we couldn’t do a proper wedding because we had gotten married before. We had to get the first marriage annulled at the registry before the wedding could be held.
How long were you together before getting married in church?
Twelve years. We got married in the year 2000.
Before marriage, we were sexually active and were not using protection, but we didn’t get pregnant. I wanted children so badly. So, I was like, maybe if we got our parents’ blessings, we’d have kids. That was part of the reason I wanted to have the wedding.
What was it like in the beginning part of the marriage?
Because we had been together for such a long time, getting married was just a formality.
At this time, I had a full-time job, but he still didn’t do much. A lot of the expenses were on me.
Then he went to university in the UK.
At what point did you start having children?
We had our first daughter two years after getting married, and the second was born three years after the first.
But through this time, we were having all kinds of problems.
What kinds of problems?
When we first got married, he was not the problem. It was the fact that we were living in his mum’s house. She didn’t live in Nigeria, but she would come one month in a year, and I would be miserable throughout that month. She was mean and nasty in a very subtle way; she would be nice when people were around, but she was mean about everything when nobody was there. It wasn’t so much him as it was her, but him not being able to caution her was the problem.
It was after I had my first daughter that my ex relocated to the UK. He was living with his mother there. He wanted me to leave my job and join him there. I told him I was unhappy about living in his mother’s house in Nigeria, so I couldn’t move to the UK, where I didn’t have any job and live with her again.
I would visit him with my daughter once or twice a year. It was on one of those visits I got pregnant with our second child.
Did the experience ever get settled with his mother?
No. It was a big part of why the marriage ended. She was also manipulative and said I was proud. One night I woke him up in the middle of the night and complained about how his mother treated me. He begged me, but nothing changed.
When did you realise that things were going bad?
I had low expectations from him, so I didn’t know things were even bad in the first place. I was also the one doing a lot financially.
Then I got an American grant to go to the US. Before I left, I kept my ATM card with him for my kids — he was already back in Nigeria at this point. Every time I got paid, he would remove money from my account and lie that he wasn’t taking my money. This was my first introduction to the fact that he could lie. If anyone had told me anything about him before, I would have insulted them. Once when he was in London, someone called to tell me he was doing nonsense, and I told them to shut up.
While I was away in America, my mum passed, and he was very mean to me during the time. He even accused me of cheating on him because he called me once, and I was on a Skype call with a student.
He began his accusations again without leaving room for me to talk, so I switched off my phone. After that, he didn’t speak to me for a while. Anytime I called, he would give the phone to his daughters.
Wow.
On the morning of my mother’s burial, he called from a service being held for my mum in Nigeria and he excitedly told me about all my family members who were present and kept giving them the phone to speak to me.
It was my sister who picked up the phone when he called. My sister was confused because I had told her we were not on good terms. We put the phone on speaker, and I told him I was the one on the phone. He kept up the excitement. This was when I realised that he was playing me.
What did you do next?
I called a friend who had been his best man at our wedding and told him what was going on. I asked him to find me a place I could stay in when I returned to Nigeria. I was ready to move out, but he convinced me not to do that, and I said alright.
When I got back to Nigeria, my ex was nice for about a month. It didn’t take long for things to return to to status quo.
He regularly checked my phone. Once he saw a contact he didn’t know, he would call me ‘ashawo’. He would call my daughters and tell them that I was a whore.
One day, I checked his phone for the first time and saw that he was cheating on me. I then realised that was why he was constantly angry.
I told him I wasn’t angry, that all I wanted was just for him to stop being constantly mad at me. He was getting progressively worse and verbally abusive.
In 2014, I lost my junior brother and an aunt. I took my girls on holiday to get over everything, and he said, “When you come back, you have one month to move out.”
How did you take it when he said that?
It was pretty clear by then that the marriage was over. Before then, he had gone to my dad to tell him I drank, smoked and followed men all over the place.
My dad asked him this: “When you came to marry her, was she like that?” He defended me and said that he (my ex) might be the problem. My ex tried to insult him.
Afterwards, my dad sent for me and asked me about everything. I told him everything that had been happening. When he asked why I kept everything to myself, I told him it was because he said to keep our marriage private. Then he said he was not an outsider. He said I shouldn’t leave by myself, but anytime my ex asked me to leave, I shouldn’t hesitate to pack my things and move out.
Did you move out?
After he gave me the one-month ultimatum to leave, my ex began to threaten me with a countdown. He threatened to kill me, so my dad insisted I go to the police. The police said they would invite him in for questioning, but that was a bad idea because if they invited him and he was allowed to leave, I better not be at his house.
So, I didn’t make a statement at the police station, and my dad was angry. I eventually found a place and moved. Immediately after moving, his attitude towards me got better. It was so strange people thought we were back together.
Did he also send your daughters away?
Yes. But in the first filing he did for the divorce, he stated very clearly that he didn’t want our daughters. It was later he changed his mind.
There was an incident where his girlfriend, who moved in after I moved out, went to my younger daughter’s school, picked her up and did her hair. The school apologised for allowing it and asked that I provide legal documents to enforce a rule on who has access to my child.
He went back to court to file for custody with the divorce, so I was simultaneously dealing with divorce and custody. Luckily, I got custody at the end.
As a Christian who’s divorced, what has your experience been?
I think God helped me to be wise. No one in church knew I was getting divorced except one man whose truck I used to move my things.
Nobody knew where I moved to for about two years.
I realised I was attending a spirit-filled church when the junior pastor called me one day and told me he had dreams about my husband, and God kept saying I should pray for him. I was reluctant — the pastor didn’t know I had left him.
I told him he could pray for him, but I was not interested. He was shocked, so this led to me telling him about the divorce.
What’s life like post-divorce
When it comes to this, I think I’m the exception. If my ex knew what he was doing when he asked me to leave, he wouldn’t have let me go. I’m living the life now. I’m having a fantastic time. One of the things I was very clear about was that we would parent my children together, whether he wanted it or not.
In the post-separation period, I spent a lot of time crying, praying and wondering what went wrong. I realised he had to be in their lives and take on his role as their father. I see in separations that the man enjoys his life while the mother continues to slave and ensures the children go to school. Then when it’s time to marry, the children find the father, and he becomes a knight in shining armour that gives their hand away in marriage.
This makes the mother resentful, thinking about all her sacrifices. I insisted he had to pay their fees and the girls visit him during holidays. I have the time of my life during their absence. It’s working even though we don’t talk.
What would you have done differently?
Growing up, I didn’t want to get married. I wanted to have two children for two different men because my parent’s marriage wasn’t fantastic, so I wasn’t looking forward to marriage like that. But when I met him, he seemed like someone who was focused and from a good home. So, when things started to go wrong, I told myself I shouldn’t have bothered.
However, I would not change a lot. A lot of the strength and character I have now is a result of this experience. And I wouldn’t change having these cool and well-behaved girls I have now.
Are you dating again?
Yes o. All I’ve gone through hasn’t changed me much; I’m a hopeless romantic.
I believe in love and marriage, but it’s not for me. I want to live life with a nice person. When Nigerian men say, “I’m going to marry you,” I cancel them because they believe that’s their selling point.
I’ve been dating the same guy since a year after I left my ex. I am mindful of being a role model for my daughters and also not exposing them unduly. I however love meeting new people and enjoy talking to lots of people I meet. It’s always amusing to me that people think getting to know someone means I want to date them but it doesn’t.
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The subject of today’s What She Said is a 34-year-old Nigerian woman who grew up getting everything she asked for. She talks about constantly pursuing enjoyment, and how that led to her leaving her cheating husband and raising her two children independently.
What was it like growing up?
I had a pretty happy childhood. I am the 12th child out of 21 and was the last girl till I was 12 years old, so I was kind of everyone’s favourite. I grew up with a lot of people in the house: cousins and aunts inclusive. I was never short of people to play with.
The earliest memory of my childhood is from when I was about four years old. My daddy’s important friends came, and they gave me two bundles of five naira notes. I made my mum take me to the shopping complex to buy a red spaghetti strap dress with a fancy bolero jacket.
Your mother did not “hold” the money for you? Must be nice.
Whenever I got money like that, I sometimes gave my parents to keep it for me, but I have always loved being responsible for my own money.
The downside to being responsible for your own money is that sometimes you’re deprived of things other people have. If I protested, my parents told me those people used their savings to buy it. There was a year I almost did not get Sallah clothes because I had used all my savings at the snack woman’s place. After crying for hours, they finally gave me the clothes.
The thing is, I was adorable, smart and liked. I was everyone’s little bride at their wedding, always the house princess for inter-house sports, and always represented the school at primary school events. I was spoilt, overindulged and was used to having my way with almost everything. I loved it, and it did a lot for my self-confidence and self-esteem.
What’s it like being a confident adult?
I look at people who don’t like me like they don’t have good taste.
When I was younger, I did not handle being rejected well. There was a time a guy said he liked me but didn’t want to date me. I was stunned. Like how dare he? Why would he allow common sense to derail him from enjoyment? I am a big believer in enjoyment, so this did not make any sense to me.
LOL. What do you consider enjoyment?
Food is my kind of enjoyment, but I despise cooking. I love food cooked by other people. That was why when I started making money, the first thing I did was hire a cook. After a few months, I sent him away because he was doing nonsense. Now, I have someone that does well and cooks for the house.
The house?
The house includes me, my children’s minder, the help, my two children, and my nieces.
Tell me about your kids.
They’re amazing children, and I love them very much, but I don’t recommend children to anybody. They take your body, your energy and your money. All for small hugs and kisses? The return on investment is poor.
But then you have not just one, but two. Why?
I was 23 and so very young and foolish. I felt that having children was expected of me after getting married, so I did just that. I got married and pushed out two children without putting much thought into it.
I had my first child for my ex-husband and the second for my first child because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life entertaining her. Now they can entertain themselves and be friends.
Did that work?
Yes. They do everything together and love one another so much it gets me upset sometimes. The boy who is two years older than his sister said to me the other day: “I get upset when I see my sister crying, and I feel like slapping someone, but since you are the one making her cry, I will just go and tell her sorry.”
She was crying because I scolded her for finishing some paper in the house and not letting me know to replace it.
The thought of them gaining power and throwing me out of the house has crossed my mind, but I know they love me too much. They also understand that sometimes I love one child more than the other, and they don’t mind.
One day, my children told me, “You can’t love two people the same way at the same time. There are times when you love my sister more, and times you love me more, but we don’t care. We know you love both of us and will always take care of us.”
Stuff like this makes me feel like I’m winning in the parent department.
Definitely. What about your ex-husband? Where is he in this picture?
Even when we were together, I was the children’s primary caregiver, so it’s not like he knows what to do with them.
Why did the marriage end though?
We wanted different things out of life, and it was leading to constant conflict. He was 32 years old when we got married, and until then, he had never been responsible for anyone, not even himself. So, he struggled.
He also seemed unable to wrap his head around the fact that I didn’t want a mediocre life. So, he did not understand my drive to work, to make money. I want a BeachFront mansion, and I don’t mind working for it. Meanwhile, he’s satisfied with a bungalow in the village. He also cheated on me with close friends and associates and took advantage of people living with us.
Wow.
I once got a call around 4 a.m. from him while I was on a work trip. He was demanding the kids’ nanny leave because she woke the children up too early. I told him that was not possible, and it was too early in the morning. Then I went back to bed.
When I woke up, I found out he had already sent her away. I asked her what happened, and she said ever since I left, he had been trying to sleep with her. She said she woke the children up because she wanted protection. It was at that moment I knew I could not do it anymore.
I got home, asked him what happened, and he said it’s his house, and he could do whatever he wanted. He told me anyone who had a problem with that could leave, so I carried my children and left.
Damn, that must suck.
Yeah. After that, different women started coming to me with various allegations from pregnancy to rape. It was a whole mess. In fact, in the first year of our marriage, he got my friend pregnant.
I should have left then, but I felt like I had something to prove. When I got married, people told me that the marriage would not last long. I was desperate to make it work.
Was there a reason they thought it would not work?
My motto is, if he is giving you a headache, let him go. God did not put me on earth to be dealing with headaches from men. I am a very beautiful woman, and there are always men and women who want to be with me, so why will I be with someone who is stressing me? My response to stress is flight, and I am very happy and content with being on my own.
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 56-year-old woman whose parents sent her to live with her half-sister at the age of seven. She talks about going to Benin city, moving schools, and suffering from abuse at the hands of her half-sister and her family.
What is your earliest memory of your childhood?
I do not remember much of my childhood, but I remember being seven.
Why just being seven?
Seven was when my parents told me I was going to live with my half-sister in Benin City. I come from a polygamous home in Edo State, my father married three wives. I had a lot of siblings and half-siblings. One day, one of my half-sisters who was probably in her early thirties came to complain to my father about not having help around the house. She needed help to nurse her child after her maid left. My mother was ill and had travelled for treatment when this happened.
Would your mother being around have changed anything?
No. My mother was uneducated. She would not have said anything because of the fear of being accused of discriminating against her half-daughter. Plus, my father was very autocratic. He told my mother that he wanted my half-sister to train me in school because he had trained her. No one asked about my opinion. My father just called me and told me that my sister would be taking me to the city. I was excited. I was still a child, and I wanted to explore the city.
What was it like at your half-sister’s?
Well, I learned to speak English. Before then, I spoke only Esan. A year after I came to the city, I started school. I never stayed with her child alone because I was too young to watch over her.
My half sister’s sister-in-law was living with my half-sister as well, and they both seemed to be around the same age. I am not really sure because they were a lot older than me, and it was not common for children to know the ages of their older siblings.
Her sister-in-law was very wicked and insensitive. She would beat me up, my half-sister would beat me up, and her husband would also beat me up.
That is absolutely terrible.
It was, and being beat up was on the lighter side of the things that happened to me. I was battered, ill-treated, starved and even molested.
My aunt had a kiosk where she sold things like cigarettes. One day, I broke a stick of cigarette by accident. I was told that it would be my food for three days. The first day I had drank only water, then a neighbour advised me to run to my aunt’s place.
My aunt came back with me and warned my sister never to starve me, but that did not stop her. With the amount of times they starved me or just didn’t feed me enough, I developed a stomach ulcer that I still have to deal with now.
I also used to take sweets and cigarettes to the cinema near the house to sell till late in the night. If I didn’t sell most of the things, or a sweet got missing, I would be seriously beaten.
What about school, did you like school?
I did. Back in 1973, schools in Benin had two sections. There was a morning and an afternoon session. My half-sister was a teacher, so I was automatically in the afternoon session when she was teaching during the morning session. This was the arrangement so I could take care of her baby while she worked.
Each day, I missed a period or more because she always took excuses from the teachers to let me leave class. For the morning sessions, all she had to do was tell my teacher she wanted me to leave class. For the afternoon sessions, I would be late because I had to wait for her to get home before I left.
When I completed primary school, my sister wanted me to learn sewing, but my brother wanted me to go to boarding school. They eventually decided I would go to a day school because my sister still needed someone to take care of her children. It was my brother that paid the tuition.
Did the missing periods not affect your education?
It did, but what affected it more was having to change schools all the time. Whenever she was transferred, I automatically changed school. It was hard having to cope with the new environment. I went to four primary schools and three colleges to complete my secondary school.
I was in all-girls schools in class two going to class three when my sister needed to go do a course in a foreign country. I had to leave that school so I could be closer to the house and be able to monitor the children. By that time I was in class 2, my half-sister’s children had become five.
That must have sucked. How did you leave?
Well, when I was 16 I had issues with my eye. I had to travel to Lagos to get it checked.
I used to get beaten up when I slept off in the shop because of how tired I was. One day, I was beaten up in my sleep and my eyes bled because the cane went across my eyes. By the following day, there was a blood clot in my eyes.
A few years later, I started using glasses then eventually my eyes continued having various issues and was one of the reasons my half-sister decided I needed to get my eyes checked.
I stayed with my brother and his wife in Lagos, and didn’t go back to Benin city after. I finished secondary school in Lagos.
I moved in with my brother and his wife — the one that paid my tuition for me to go to secondary school — and his wife. Living with them was so much better. My brother was very supportive because of what I went through in Benin.
My brother’s wife was also a teacher, but she was a lot kinder. She showed so much understanding and helped me a lot.
What was your favourite part about staying with your brother?
I loved how human they made me feel. I got to sit with everyone and eat at the dining table instead of the kitchen. I could also stay in the living room to watch television.
In my half-sister’s place, my clothes were kept in a carton in a corridor where rain could damage my clothes. Clothes that were given to me by my other cousins . I stayed in the backyard and slept in the living room, so until they left the living room, I could not lay my mat down to sleep.
My brother’s wife encouraged me to forget about the bitterness. She took me everywhere she went and made me believe I could make something out of my life. She treated me like her own sister and made me feel wanted. She even updated my wardrobe, and gave me some of her clothes. Since she was a teacher, she helped with my school work. She is a wonderful person.
Did your brother have any children?
Yes, he does. When I got to Lagos, he and his wife had just a child, but later they had two other children, and I helped raise them all. Two of them are my god children.
How did your half-sister feel about you not returning to Benin?
She was not happy. She wanted me back, but her uncle who knew how I was ill-treated advised my brother not to let me go back.
When my dad visited Lagos, my uncle and my other half brother told our father that they didn’t want me to go back. My father was taken aback and disappointed.
What about your mother?
She died the January I moved to Lagos. Her death was actually one of the reasons that led to my coming to Lagos. Her death dealt a great blow to me. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and cry. Then, it got to the point where my eyes would just water on their own. My mother’s death was a turning point in my life.
I’m sorry she did. How did you cope with that?
I couldn’t have done it all alone. Lagos away from my half-sister helped me heal, plus my brother’s wife was there, a constant pillar of support.
My mother’s death led me to live with my brother and his wife, and if I didn’t do that my life would probably have turned out differently.
I still have a stomach ulcer and destroyed eye lens that came with living with my half-sister, but I think I’m happy with my life now.
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This week’s What She Said is a 35-year-old Igbo woman. She talks about compartmentalising herself so people would treat her humanely as a traditionalist, and things she does to combat the stigma attached to traditional worshippers.
Tell me about growing up.
I grew up in Asaba and it was so much fun. We would climb trees at my grandmother’s house, play catcher and race with tyres.
I asked a lot of questions and was always indulged by my parents. You can say I grew up spoiled. I didn’t have a lot of restrictions. I could do anything I wanted as long as I had a good reason to. My dad was a lawyer with an extensive library that I was in charge of. I decided who to loan out books to and my judgment was never really questioned. So while I was spoilt, I was also responsible.
How did having a childhood like this affect you as an adult?
I became my own person on time. I knew it was okay to have an opinion and believe in the things I believed in solely. I grew up with a lot of powerful women, and I learnt by shadowing them. They taught me early that my voice mattered.
But as I got older, I started to compartmentalise myself.
Why?
We are traditionalists in my family, and I’ve realised this affects how people relate with me.
I’ve been making waist beads commercially for about six years. I’ve worn waist beads all my life. I started making them to help women pause and look at their bodies. I believed if they continued to do this, they would realise how beautiful their bodies were.
I also have a beads line for spirituality. I have bracelets that are tailored to the day you are born — like a Zodiac bracelet but using the Igbo days of the week. I only tell people this on a need-to-know basis.
As a traditionalist, I keep my business separate from my religion because I don’t want Nigerians to say I’m selling juju and collecting people’s destinies with beads.
When did you realise you had to make this distinction?
As early as I could talk. I went to a Catholic primary school, and when I was in Primary 1, I was used as an example of what an idol worshipper was and why people shouldn’t eat from me. My mum had a proper blow out and asked them why they thought it was okay to teach that to children.
Outside my house, I learnt people like me were demonic, bad people who hypnotised others to make them do what they want. With the rise of Pentecostalism in the 90s, the hate became worse. Catholicism tried to convert us with love, Pentecostalism taught people to demonise us — we wanted them dead because they worshipped differently.
So when I was outside, I learnt to censor myself.
That’s painful. Has anything changed in recent times?
A bit. People now want to know their roots, how their ancestors worshipped. When I’m not making beads, I’m writing programmes that teach people how to infuse spirituality in their lives, just the same way they do yoga and such.
People have this perception that if you’re a traditional worshipper, you have to look a certain way. So I am deliberate about the way I dress and everything. My life mission is to show people that they can “worship idols” and be baby girls and boys while doing it. I think this helps with how people see me — they may still want to bind and cast me, but it helps.
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is Thelma Egbe, a 28-year-old woman who loves cooking. She talks about growing up in a family where the men and women cooked, growing a food blogging and catering business, and how adulting almost made her stop.
What was your childhood like?
I spent a part of my childhood in Calabar before leaving for the UK. Calabar is known for good meals — if you know you know. My parents are both great cooks so it was easy to fall in love with cooking. I lived around a lot of family so I watched my uncles cook as well. It was when I joined Twitter that I found out that Nigerian fathers didn’t cook.
Around when I turned 12, I started assisting my aunt in the kitchen. I hated it at first, but I learnt how to prepare dishes during that time. I became fascinated with how you could put three or four ingredients together and come up with something really tasty. Sometimes when I was cooking, I would pretend that I was on the Maggi cooking show, which was one of my favourite shows.
Do you remember the first meal you made on your own?
It was palm oil rice and I got paid for it. I was 13.
How did that happen?
My godmother is a big caterer and she noticed how much I loved cooking. One day, she asked me to make her native rice. After she ate it, she gave me money as a well-done gift. I don’t remember how much it was, but it was big money at that age.
What happened next?
Cooking became more exciting when my family and I moved to England. My parents were happy to invest in ingredients for me to learn more. I looked up culinary schools, saw how expensive they were and I backed out.
When I turned 16, I was sure I wanted to do something food-related. During this time, we were doing a course at school that required us to use Blogger. I thought food blogging would be a good way to document my cooking journey but I was worried that no one would read my work.
I eventually started in 2015 because my friends and family thought I would be great at it. When I started, it was fun to me and for a while, it was the only thing that got me excited.
Did you make money from it?
For my mum’s 50th birthday, I cooked up a storm. I made jollof rice, fried rice, barbeque chicken, white rice with stew, and small chops for over 50 people. She was so happy she cried — it was a surprise. The guests at the party loved the food. Some of them even asked for take away packs. That felt like the sign I needed to go into catering.
After that, I started catering and selling to university students, but I had to stop because it was interfering with school and work as well. I decided to focus more on blogging. I also worked on my social media pages to look like a business page so I could work with other brands.
Did that work out?
2016 was a major year for me because I got a lot of recipes out but focusing on blogging wasn’t easy. I found it difficult and time-consuming. Cooking is easy but documenting the process is the enemy.
What are some of the challenges you experienced while documenting your process?
My family had to eat late because I had to write down everything I did or used along the way and photograph the process as I went. Before I put out a recipe, I had to make the meal at least three times to make sure the recipe I wrote was accurate. This cost a lot of money.
In between 2018 and 2019, I reduced the frequency with which I put out content. I barely wrote recipes during that time.
Why?
2018 was when I started adulting properly and it was overwhelming. I stopped living with my parents, so I didn’t always have extra money to spend. Also, I didn’t have as much access to kitchen gadgets that were a huge part of my process. My job was exhausting as well.
In 2019 I got pregnant and I was always tired from work, so my weekends were specifically for resting.
How did you feel about being away from food blogging?
I felt like I was letting myself down because I had invested in it. One of my new year resolutions last year was to work my way back to consistent content. I planned to write more recipes and create more video content on social media.
How is that going so far?
It’s been good. I think the pandemic helped because more people had time and wanted to learn how to cook more. My social media engagement numbers are climbing. People send messages thanking me for the recipes and requesting more.
What is being a mum while blogging about food like?
At first, I thought it would affect me because motherhood is a lot, but my partner made everything a breeze. He would carry my son away from me so I have enough time and space to do my work. When I am done, I join them.
That’s amazing. I’m curious about what it feels like being a woman that loves to cook and somewhat conforming to what society expects of women.
People love to eat and I love to feed them. But I hate it when men send me weird messages wishing their women could cook like me. Some men joke about marrying me because of food. Most of the comments annoy me because, in a bid to compliment me, they are insulting other women who don’t care about cooking.
What are your future plans?
I am currently in the process of going back to selling food. I am also collaborating with a brand. This time, I am taking my time to plan well so everything runs smoothly.
The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 32-year-old woman who is torn between her job and her family. She talks about how marriage and her first pregnancy affected her mind and body, and why she may have to leave work to have the number of kids she wants.
Talk to me.
Growing up was fun for me. I wasn’t told, “You can’t do this because you’re a girl.” I was the girl who was taught to wash cars and fix things in the house — sockets, DVD players, generator spark plug, you get the gist. I had an older brother, but my dad had me close by when he did these things and didn’t let me think it was for boys only.
I was a fun-loving, confident girl, and my parents also trusted me. I was also allowed to do things I liked. I could go out, visit close friends. I just knew I had to be back home by 7 p.m.
By the time I got to university, I was still enjoying myself. I loved my own company, I was comfortable going out by myself and spending my money. My mum would say, “Once a month, take out a small sum and take yourself out.” And so I would. This time, my curfew was 10 p.m., but I could always call my parents to let them know if I’d be out longer.
And then after school?
I got a job, didn’t like it and left. Did a bit of banking, realised the banking life is not for me. Started my own thing, a bit of interior design and culinary services. Then I decided I’d like to have a 9 to 5, and I ended up in tech.
And also marriage.
Getting married was different. I got a rude awakening when I realised I had to be accountable to someone. I grew up the only girl in my family and my brother was five years older than I was. We didn’t click — we were almost never at the house at the same time. If I was at school, he was on holiday, If I was home, he was in school; we mostly saw each other during major holidays. And so I didn’t have an overbearing big brother breathing down my neck.
With marriage, I realised I couldn’t just up and leave without telling my husband where I was going. I can’t just go and see a movie. I was accountable to someone, and If I was later than usual from work, that someone would be worried. I’d have to call and explain, “Oh I’ve been in traffic for two hours, so I’ll be late.” For someone that was used to running things my way, it was extra work mehn. It took a lot of getting used to.
What helped?
I got to a stage where I told my husband, “I love you, but you can’t tell me what to do,” and it was causing rubbish quarrels. After some time, I thought, “It’s not that bad.” I’m big on communication, so my husband and I decided to talk. “What’s the problem? Why is this a big deal? How can I help?” And it got better.
And then pregnancy.
Haha. Having a child was one of the most remarkable things to happen to me. No one prepares you for what it’s like — and it’s not just about the birthing process — it’s about becoming a mum, that big transition from being one person and suddenly you’re responsible for another human being. You have to figure out what this person is saying when it’s crying or rubbing its ears.
It was another rude awakening. Nothing prepares you for the changes that happen to your body afterwards or the postpartum issues that come up. After my baby’s birth, I had issues keeping my concentration. I was always forgetting things — they call it mummy brain — and it stayed for a while. Till now, I still have flashes of that where I go, “Okay, what was I thinking a moment ago?” There was that feeling of losing my mind and also my self.
I was a size 8 before I got pregnant. After pregnancy, my breast shape changed. They were not as perky as they used to be. My stomach wasn’t as firm as it used to be. My insecurities grew, and I thought I would never get myself back. I hated my body and my mind. I also dreaded going back to work — how would I fit into the workspace when I couldn’t even keep up with a conversation?
That’s heavy. I’m sorry. What happened when you did go back to work?
The tech space is very fast-paced. You’re building new things, programmes — it’s a lot of brainwork. When I was on maternity leave, my biggest fear was I wasn’t going to fit into my work anymore, especially because I was losing my mind and couldn’t remember stuff.
My office has a lot of young people. I’ll be 33 this year, and I work with people in their early 20s who just want to live life and do amazing things, and I’d say getting married isn’t in their top ten things to do. Being pregnant was already a sandbag on my leg; something that was going to slow me down, then I was away from work for three months for maternity leave. I had a serious case of FOMO. I knew many new projects would have been completed by the time I got back.
Before my leave, I had heard side comments that I was getting replaced, so I was already in a bad place. I wasn’t too excited about going back because I knew I was going to struggle. I wasn’t going to be able to stay for long hours, and I’d be treated like I had a disability.
Coming back to work as a new mum was difficult. I felt like I had to show I was still worth being retained as a staff. I was always waiting to be told, “Thank you for your services, we want to let you go.”
I threw myself into work and tried to do things. It was like no days off for me. I was working from home and so I didn’t even have structures to help jig my mind back to form. My husband helped during this period. He kept telling me to remember it was a physiological thing as much as it was psychological, and I didn’t have to force it or put my brain under more pressure.
Did things get better at work?
Yes. In retrospect, a lot of this was happening in my head. I don’t think anyone was feeling how I felt.
Do you think you’ll try for another child?
My husband is an only child, and I grew up as an only girl. While we were talking and planning out our lives, we understood we wanted to have three or four kids. After my first child, I just had cold feet. I wanted to take my time and get my body back to a state where I felt more comfortable with it. I didn’t want to lose my mind again. You know how they say no two pregnancies are the same? I asked myself what’s the guarantee it wouldn’t get worse?
My husband and I agreed we would wait until our baby clocked two, then we’d start trying for another. But at the back of my head, I’ve been thinking, “Do I want to do this now? How would the guys at work take it?”
The tech space can be unforgiving and treacherous. You have to come correct all the time and always prove yourself. I know for certain getting pregnant again would be seen as me not bringing my A-game. “This one has come again with pregnancy. She’s going to be away for another three months. Who is going to do her work?” I’d have those snide comments and side glances, and they wouldn’t understand.
I know I have to get pregnant because I want a family, but I am not looking forward to being pregnant while I still have this job. I’m at this point where it’s a constant battle. I don’t have all the time in the world. I can’t keep waiting forever, and while I used to bother about what people at work would feel about me, I could as well leave.
Honestly, I don’t know what to do. I want to have a family and keep my job. I just feel like something has to give.
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The subject of today’s What She Said is a Nigerian woman in her 50s. She talks about her difficult experience living with extended family, her relationship with her father and managing her mother’s mental health until she died.
What’s the earliest memory of your childhood?
It’s of my father. He had me on his lap in a gathering. I don’t know if it’s a real memory or it’s based on a photo I used to have. I’ve lost it now. I was maybe three or four, and I had the look of shock on my face. Someone joked that I was supposed to be a boy, the way I was glued to my dad. That’s all I remember.
What was it like growing up?
There were good days and bad days. I grew up in Lagos. Both my parents were tailors, so they made me lots of nice clothes. That was one thing I was very proud of as a child. I had a lot of fashionable clothes, and it went on to inform my fashion sense.
I was an only child for the longest time. My mother tried to have more children and that didn’t happen. Before she gave birth to me, she had a son, but he died after a few months when they made a trip to our village. The narrative I heard was that evil people on my father’s side of the family killed him.
My father, after being pressured, slept with two other people at different times and they had a boy and a girl, respectively.
He didn’t marry them?
No. He was very much in love with my mother. At least, that’s the reason I think he didn’t marry them. For him, it was just to have more children. My mother was very accommodating with them. In fact, my sister and I are close till today and it’s mostly because my mother made us see each other not as step sisters, but as sisters.
What about your brother?
We didn’t grow up together, and I haven’t heard anything about him till date. I just know I have a brother. Whether he’s alive or not, I don’t know. My sister and I have tried to find him on Facebook, but that didn’t work out.
It was my extended family’s fault — my father’s siblings. My father was a bit well-off. He had lands and buildings around Lagos. His siblings were not that well-off. They lived with us — with their families o. For some reason, we lived in the boy’s quarters, while they lived in the main building. They were wicked to my mother and made all kinds of demands from my father. My father was a kind man — too kind, maybe. So he often bent under their whims, although he did try his best to stand up for us. It was because of his siblings, my uncle and aunt, that he had two children out of wedlock.
They believed it wasn’t right to have just one child. They said that my mother’s womb had spoiled because she could only have one child for him. When when my step brother was born, they had issues with his mother and so didn’t accept him. That’s why I think we never grew up together.
Wow. I guess what they say about your father’s side is true.
Hmm. Well, in my case, it was. I do have family members on my father’s side who I’m very close with. Like my father’s cousin’s children. But his siblings and their children were terrible. They tried to sow discord between my sister and I, saying we weren’t really sisters because we didn’t share the same mother.
How did your mother cope with all of these?
It was a lot for her and she eventually became mentally ill. Back then, we all believed that my father’s siblings had done something to twist her mind. This was the 80s. A lot of people recommended churches to go to for deliverance — pentecostal churches were becoming popular then. Now, I believe that it was psychological. The stigma associated with mental health issues didn’t allow us to seek the help she needed, although a few doctors suggested this. It wasn’t like she was parading the street naked. That was what a lot of us believed was mental illness.
I can’t really describe the kind of behavior she exhibited, but one thing I’m sure of is that she started believing everybody was against her, even me. She would talk endlessly to herself, often in a loud voice, about how bad everyone was. This affected my relationship with her.
Wow. What was your relationship with her before this?
We were not very close. She was always very reserved and quiet. I was closer to my father. He was the one who taught me to drive, taught me to fix my car, made all my clothes. In primary school, he was the one who picked me and dropped me off. When it was time to decide what next to do with my life after secondary school, he was there to help me out. When I started work, he drove me to work and advised me. We were that close. Then a few months after I started work, he fell sick. No one knows what illness it was. After a few weeks, he died. I was devastated.
I’m so sorry
Thank you. When he died, after the burial and everything, my first instinct was: leave home. But I couldn’t leave my mother with those people. I got an apartment on Lagos Island, but my mother wouldn’t come live with me. She insisted her husband’s house was her house and she had no reason to leave. My sister was still living there, so my mind was at peace, a bit. But that’s when properly wahala came up. My father’s siblings were claiming rights to his properties. I didn’t really care about any of it, but another faction of my family wanted me to fight for the building where my mother and my father’s siblings lived. That went on for years. Even when I went back to celebrate my 25th birthday, they were still fighting for it. When I got married, I just told myself I was done. Lucky for me, I started having children almost immediately after I got married, so my mother came to live with me.
That’s good.
It was good. But, my mother didn’t accept my husband. She thought he was evil. My husband was very understanding. He understood what my mother was going through and didn’t let anything she said affect him. She lived with me until she died. She died in my house. It was very challenging to take care of her, especially since I didn’t exactly know what was wrong. There were moments where she was great, but there were other times where it was bad. Luckily my mother had sisters who were great women. They loved each other and took care of each other. I remember once, her sisters came to my house to see her and they all slept on the same bed and gisted about everything. Even though I was close to my sister, I didn’t really have that with anyone until I got married and had children.
When my mother died, I was sad for many reasons. I felt she had gone to rest but was sad because it felt like I hadn’t taken care of her to the best of my capacity. I couldn’t take her on trips because she was suspicious of them. I couldn’t buy her things for the same reason. In fact, she continued to make her own clothes and cook her own food into her late 70s because she was so antsy about everything and everyone.
She loved my children and was there for them even when I couldn’t be.
Nice. Now that you have your own family, what’s that like?
It’s great, thank God. I should add that the relationship with members of my dad’s family affected me too because I’m very wary about family members. I protect my children, maybe a bit too much. I often say that they’re my siblings, my friends and it’s true. While I had friends that were helpful during the bad periods in my life, friends that have become family, I’m also very happy about my own children.
What are some things that helped you cope?
Food. When I eat, I’m happy, I temporarily forget everything. This started back when I was younger and lived in my father’s house. There was a bakery just by the house. They sold all kinds of bread. I went there nearly every day to get bread and peanut butter. Place a bowl of ikokore in front of me and I’m fine for like an hour.
God also helped. I grew Anglican. In my 20s when it felt like the world was collapsing on my head — the period when I was supposed to be enjoying life — I wasn’t a Christian in the born again sense. I was going to church seriously then and cramming the bible but had no real understanding of it. God was always good to me. Till today, he helps me cope. He’s my peace. After going through all that, I know there’s nothing life throws at me that I can’t handle with the help of God.
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This week’s What She Said is Koromone Koroye, a 30-year-old Nigerian woman. She talks about attending Pentecostal churches when growing up because of her radical, religious father; her experiences with Nigerian Christian communities and her relationship with God.
You have the floor.
In my first phase of spirituality, my relationship with church was connected to my parents. My mum was a Christian, but my dad wasn’t interested. Then later, he became a Christian, and we moved from Household of God to Mountain of Fire and Miracle Ministries (MFM) — both pentecostal churches. When you are a Nigerian child and your parents are Christians, you go to church until you’re at the age where they can’t control you anymore.
Why did your dad become a Christian?
He had a radical experience. I was still a baby, but my mum told me the story. He was sick, hospitalised and not getting better. At that time he worked at Citibank, and two of his colleagues who were pastors prayed for him. Then my dad had a vision where he saw someone dressed in white robes performing surgery on him. When he woke up from the vision, he got better.
Any idea why they moved to MFM?
I think, after his healing experience, my dad was like, “Oh my goodness. I need a church that can match my level of radicalness.” Whatever he saw at MFM spoke to this want.
He also told the pastors who prayed for him about his experience. And I think people who heard the testimony told him he had to take God seriously so he wouldn’t fall into the Devil’s trap again.
There wasn’t anything wrong with that, but it went a bit far. My siblings and I thought there was something off about the church. Once we grew older, we had questions about some practices. Like, why were there so many church programmes and fasting programmes?
Were there particular ways these practices affected you?
One time, we had to fast. We would start fasting at 6 a.m. and break at 6 p.m. — we were kids going to school. On the last day of the fast, which was Friday, we had to do a dry fast from the day before to break Friday afternoon at church.
Before they let us break our fast, we did this crazy prayer. They passed around black nylon bags and were like, “We’re going to pray now. You’re going to start coughing everything out.”
Coughing what?
I don’t know. All around me, kids were just coughing. My siblings and I held our nylon bags, confused. We were the only ones not coughing, and we didn’t want them to think we were possessed. So we joined them.
We also had a lot of routines. Every first Saturday of the month, we’d go to Prayer City of Ibadan expressway to pray for three, four hours while fasting. Imagine being a child growing up in this environment where every first Saturday, you had to do this awful trip to go pray prayers you don’t even connect with. And if you didn’t pray, they’d ask you what was wrong with you.
What changed?
Just before I went to college, at 15, my older brother rebelled. He decided he wasn’t going to our parents’ church anymore. He discovered “This Present House”, a church at the end of Freedom Way in Lekki, and took us there. A lot of us were young. We would sit in a circle and the young pastor would talk to us about real stuff and ask us questions. I loved it, but I still came home to super religious parents, so stuff he said about God was not connecting. I thought, “Where is the fire prayer?”
This disconnect continued until I got into college in the US. There, I stopped going to church. I believed in God, but not that Jesus was the Lord and Saviour. Sometimes I’d find myself talking to God about stupid things I did.
When I was done with school and started working, I moved to an area that was a black community, and I was introduced to the Baptist church. In Baptist churches, there’s a lot of clapping and dancing — it was so pentecostal but in a different way. There, I realised there is something called the Holy Spirit. These guys would know things about you and pray over you concerning those things and I’d be like, whoa, what’s this?
My experience there led me to do some research. As I read the Bible, my relationship with God grew. Nobody “led” me to Christ. I just found myself being like, “This makes sense and I think I learnt it wrong for a long time.”
Did this change when you moved back to Nigeria?
When I moved back to Nigeria, I decided to visit This Present House. This time, they now had a church for millennials and Gen Zs called The Waterbrook Church (TWB). My first Sunday there, I was like, “Oh my God, this is where I belong.” It was like a grown-up version of what we had before. I fell in love with the church, the people, and I threw myself in. I would attend services and prayer meetings. At some point, even my parents noticed.
TWB introduced me to Christian communities and how good they could be when done right. Unfortunately, they didn’t train us well enough. They made people pastors before they were ready, and as a result, things got corrupt — ego and competition to be better than other churches got in the way. It stopped being about fellowship and became about how many people can come. So I slowly began to detach.
I’d space out during meetings. I lost that love I had. A lot of things happened afterwards, inappropriate relationships, drama… It was crazy.
That sounds messy.
It was. And then my dad passed.
Then I realised that the whole “community” they talked about wasn’t real because out of about 20 to 30 people I used to pray with, only one person regularly checked up on me.
That’s awful.
I’d never forget: my dad passed on a Sunday morning at 1 a.m. I sent a text to three of my pastors. I went to church, people sent in condolences, and after that day, I didn’t see them again. So many hurtful things happened after my dad died and I was looking to my church community to hold me up and they did not. Between 2017 and 2019, I lost my love for life.
I’m sorry.
It was really crazy. Because my first contact with Jesus Christ was through people, I disconnected when they failed me.
And then what changed?
In 2020, I saw this sponsored post on Instagram about an 8-week intensive discipleship course on operating with the gift of the spirit. I was interested. When I saw eight weeks, I was like, “Yes, I love a challenge.”
When I signed up, I told God, “If this doesn’t work, I am not interested in church again.” I would be fine with just reading my Bible and praying. On the first day, the teacher said “I’m not here to pastor or baby you. Take this course as you would a school course.” He asked why we signed up, and I told them I was there because I was bored with the routine. I thought there was more to God and Nigerian Christians were not going about it the right way. I told them I was reading the Bible and not seeing the actions being replicated by Christians. And if the class didn’t work, I would tell them bye-bye. They laughed.
The first week, we read three books, answered questions and did a treasure hunt. A treasure hunt meant we prayed to receive clues of words of knowledge, which are pieces of information that you know about someone that you would not have known if they didn’t tell you. I was like, not bad.
By the third week, I was like, “Yo, things are happening.” I was seeing, hearing things. People were calling me saying, “Oh my goodness, you’re so prophetic. You said this thing and it was true.” The course was so intense. We were reading these referred books, practising what we read, having meetings during the week and praying a lot.
In this phase of my spirituality, I saw God as God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This was before the pandemic, so we would go out, pray and lay hands on people, do assignments, then meet on Saturdays for four, five hours, crazy. The best part was I was surrounded by people who were as radical as I was — but not MFM kind of radical — it was pure love for God; we did not like church. But this changed for me.
The course ended in March 2020, and a month after, the dean reached out to me about a fellowship he was part of. He asked if I wanted to join and I did. Slowly, I got invested. They had this prayer call at 3 a.m., and the day I joined, the call lasted four hours. Halfway through May, they introduced a prayer watch that included meeting four times a day. Because I’m a writer, I was assigned as a scribe. My job was pretty much taking down minutes as prayer points, prayer requests, etc.
Because I volunteered to do this, people started paying attention to me — they would even ask for my opinion of stuff. Before I knew it, I was part of the community. In the beginning, I was like, “I don’t trust you guys. I don’t know yall o.” But they were relentless.
Now, I’m in this place where I’m a part of a community. I still don’t go to church, but my relationship with God is special. I guard it jealously; I do not allow people taint my understanding of God.
Sweet. I’m curious about how your parents’ relationship with Christianity metamorphosed alongside yours.
Something interesting happened with my dad. Three years before he passed, we noticed he became lax with church services. Some Sundays, I’d be off to church and he just be in the living room. It was so weird, but we ignored it.
At some point, he stopped completely. No more prayers; not even at home. I found out later he had given a lot of money to the parish for some building to be done. Since he worked in banking, they also needed his financial advice and he supplied this. But when he needed help with some prayers, they turned him down rudely. He was very hurt by that because he had given his time and finance to the church.
My mum kept going, but after my dad died, she went back to Household of God. Her reason was that the following year when we wanted to do an anniversary service of his death at the church — which my father also helped build — they said no. They refused because we didn’t “remember them” after the funeral. That was the last straw for my mum; she was tired of religious protocol and probably wanted her freedom to worship God without rules and rigid doctrine.
The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 54-year-old woman who has three children she doesn’t like. She talks about how they felt like distractions and how her relationship with them has only gotten worse with age.
Let’s start from the beginning. How old were you when you got married?
I was 26. I wanted to get married, but I wasn’t really sure who I wanted to marry. I had a number of options. I was sleeping with one of these options — he was a colleague in a different department.
I got pregnant. Abortion wasn’t an option. I was Anglican then. Even though I’m religious now, I won’t judge anyone who aborts a baby. Back then, I couldn’t even think of it. Also, I was scared of dying.
My parents too would have killed me if they found out I had an abortion. So when I found out, I was worried about what to do. Then I came up with a plan to tell my parents I was engaged, so that once I started showing, the pregnancy would not shock them.
You didn’t tell the father?
That was the next step in the plan. After I told them I was engaged, I went and told him I was pregnant and that my parents said we had to get married.
Truthfully, that wasn’t a problem because he was ready to marry. I just wanted to rush the process. I had to do a lot of people-management to ensure that nobody spilled what I had told them.
How did your parents react?
They didn’t want me to court for long. You know how mothers are. My mother, God bless her, just wanted us to have a really big wedding as soon as we could. We got married three months after. I wasn’t showing, so my parents didn’t know. They began to suspect when I started showing within a few months of being pregnant.
Did anyone catch your lie?
Oh, not at all, but I eventually told my husband that my parents never forced us to get married. I’ve always been the kind of person to sneak around. As a young girl especially. Although I’ve changed now, I do think I enjoyed the thrill of doing that. My husband didn’t feel duped. He wanted to get married. He was much older, I should mention. He was in his 40s.
So what was that like? Getting married so fast? How much of him did you know?
Quite a lot from working together and going out together. But we were not necessarily in love. I was a romantic then. I wanted to marry someone I loved, but he wasn’t all about that. He was the opposite, a strong-head. People were not marrying for love as they are today, but I was optimistic that we would eventually fall in love. And we did, sooner than I expected.
How did that happen?
I had a stillbirth. That was the first real traumatic experience I had in my life. I had never experienced grief like I did. I was just crying and gnashing my teeth. I said God hated me.
That should have pushed us away from each other, but it drew us together. I say that it should have pushed us away from each other because first of all, he really loved that child. Second of all, it was the foundation of our marriage. When it happened, we became so close and started protecting each other. That was simply how we fell in love.
That’s sweet. I’m sorry you had to go through that.
Thanks. We went a few more years before trying again. I felt that our relationship had become monotonous and didn’t have any ideas on how to make it better. All we did was talk about work. Even though we no longer worked together, we still worked in the same industry. We were both very career-oriented people.
Unfortunately, getting pregnant this time was war. We simply couldn’t get pregnant, no matter what we did or how we tried. The doctor said we were both fine, that we just had to keep trying.
When I turned 32, I got pregnant. I decided I was going to resign and be extra careful because I was scared of miscarrying or having a stillbirth. The doctor said I was okay to work way into my third trimester. I said I didn’t want to. I had a very easy pregnancy, but I was in bed almost all through. I took up sewing and would make many things for my baby. I wasn’t excited because I was scared, yet, I was expectant.
When my baby girl came, I didn’t feel anything.
What do you mean?
I had assumed that I’d at least be excited that I got another chance to have a child. But I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t sad, and I’m not sure if I was depressed, but I wasn’t happy at all. I would spend hours staring at my child, expecting to become happy by just looking at her. Nothing happened. I faked happiness though. I faked the tears. Everyone around me was so excited; I just had to. And I couldn’t tell anyone.
That must have been hard for you.
Yes. Then child number two and three followed in quick succession. For number two, it was a difficult pregnancy. When I cried after giving birth, people thought it was tears of joy. It was, but it wasn’t because I was happy about my child. I was just happy I had gotten him out of my body. Once I had my third child, I told my husband we had done enough.
What happened next?
He wasn’t thrilled about this. He wanted four children. He first tried to cajole me into having one more. Then we fought about it when I told him that if he wanted any more children, he had to either carry them himself or go and find another wife. Eventually, I made him understand that I had wasted five years of my life on having kids and would be wasting a lot of more time out of work if I had a fourth child.
You didn’t work all through the period of time you were having kids?
I tried to get a job when my daughter was two. My mum was staying with us, so she was going to help. I applied to different places but my application was rejected. I finally got a job, but a few months later, I got pregnant again. This time I didn’t quit because I wanted to protect my child from dying or anything, I quit because the workplace was hostile to me. People made jokes about my body that I was uncomfortable with. If I had to miss work for a check-up at the hospital, they would remove it from my salary. It was very rubbish. I left and didn’t bother until after I had my third child.
What did you do then?
I went to do my masters. I was 39 and was the third oldest in my class, but I didn’t care. If I was going to go back to the workplace, I felt that I needed an edge, and pursuing my education would give me that. My mum had basically moved in with us at that point. I didn’t even bother with my kids. She cooked their food and took care of them. She gave them the love that I simply did not have the time or care enough to give. She was with us until she died. However, by this time, they were old enough to take care of each other.
Wait, during the time your mother took care of them, did you have any relationship at all with them?
Not as much. I showed up for all the school events; sometimes, my mum or husband went. I was never excited about these events, as other mothers seemed to be. I tried to take them out when I could. I bought them what I thought they’d like. At some point, I thought they didn’t like me too, because they didn’t tell me things. My first daughter had her period, and it was my sister who told her what to do. I didn’t find out till a month later. I felt like a horrible mother. I still feel like a horrible mother. I took it out on her. I lashed out and that pretty much framed our relationship for years.
What do you mean?
She went a few years without talking to me. Except it was necessary. She didn’t tell me things. She only told my husband or my mum.
Was going back to work the main factor?
Yes. It definitely did affect my relationship with my children. I was working seven days a week. My mind was on work because I really didn’t want anyone to make me feel left out because I have children. But I never really liked them from the beginning. I loved them, but did I like them? I didn’t. They felt like distractions. They demanded time and energy.
What about the other two children, what’s your relationship with them like?
Last born is my baby. I cherish her. That became a problem for my second child because he thought that I had favourites. They used to fight a lot when they were younger. And I didn’t help matters. I didn’t know how to mask my favouritism or limit the way I spoiled my last child. My mum actually warned me about it; I didn’t listen. Eventually I stopped spoiling her and that became a problem. She began to say that I hated her. She didn’t tell me this. She told my sister, who told me. My sister said I didn’t hate her, that I was just busy with work. She said she would pray to God to make me lose my job.
Child number two and three became wiser and formed an allyship that was against me. They realised I was the problem. I would scold the boy for being messy and the number three would tell me that I should leave him alone.
Wow. What was your husband like in all of these?
Just as absent as I was. He was busy with work, but he seemed to have the parenting thing on lock. He was definitely a better father than I was a mother.
Then he became sick and died. That was quite the painful experience. I hadn’t experienced anything as traumatic since the stillbirth. But again, grief played an important role in uniting us, making us come together. But that lasted only for a short while.
What’s your relationship with them today?
Nothing has changed. We just grew apart more and more. It feels like I am alone most of the time. My first daughter has moved out. She’s doing impressive work. We talk. I’m closer to her than the others. She says that maybe she had to leave home and get a well-paying job for me to start respecting her. I don’t fault that reasoning.
My son lives at home, but we don’t talk a lot. I think he’s trying my patience.
How?
Not going to church anymore. Dyeing his hair. Wearing earrings. He started it after I complained about someone in church who dressed like that. I haven’t said anything to him about it. Both us will continue looking at each other. But he is teaching me not to judge other people.
My last girl on the other hand is in university. She rarely calls, so I have to call her and shout at her to call. That path is still very rocky. I don’t like teenagers of any age.
Lmao. Is there anything you’d do better about motherhood?
Maybe I’d have sought help. I was educated enough to know there could have been a problem. Also, I think not all women need to have children. It’s okay to not want them. They’re not just fillers in a relationship. They’re real people. I wish someone had told me this.
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This week’s What She Said is Modupe Ehirim, a 62-year-old Nigerian woman. She talks about growing up in a close-knit family, choosing to marry rather than continue with her education in the UK and not knowing how to make friends until she was 50.
Let’s start from the beginning.
When I look back now, my parent’s relationship with the world and then with us formed a significant foundation for my life. My father lost his parents before he was 10, so he had to figure out life by himself. My mother’s parents left their hometown for Jos, so they were removed from their local culture. When my parents started a family in Lagos, they started a culture of their own.
What was the culture like?
In a nuclear family, you have to get on well because you only have your parents and siblings. I have four siblings, and if I reported any to my mum for offending me, she would hear me and my sibling out. She would show us how we both contributed to the problem.
I was encouraged to read. My mom would say books are good because if there’s anything you want to do, and you don’t know how to or can’t find somebody to show you how to, you’ll find it in a book. My parents also knew that they couldn’t give us what they didn’t have, so everytime we had an obstacle they didn’t have answers to, they told us to figure it out and come back with what we found to make further decisions.
Were there any downsides to this?
The only downside of being brought up so close-knit was that I didn’t know how to connect with people. So I didn’t have any close friends until I was about 50 years old.
What did you have?
Just people. In the 60s and 70s, I went to a primary school that was close to home in Surulere. Schools then were for the locality, so everybody in that school came from the area. It was so close-knit that, if you did something, the headmaster would call your name with the school loudspeaker and the community would scold you even before your parents did.
So what happened after primary school?
I was one of the first people to go to secondary school from Standard 4; it used to be up to Standard 6, which meant you spent 8 years in primary school. But the government wanted to see if six years of primary school education would hurt students, and I was one of the first set that tried it. I did the common entrance and passed, then I went to Queens School, Ibadan.
How did moving away from your home and community feel?
I’d never been with other people before in my life, but it helped that I came from the kind of home that I came from — though I missed home, I never forgot where I came from. I was overwhelmed by some of the things I saw.
Like what?
The first day I went into the dining hall, I was laughed at for not knowing how to use the cutlery. That made me feel bad. I looked at them and wondered what kind of people would treat someone that way. I was also much younger than my mates and very tall. Anytime we had an outing, we were always made to stand according to our height. By the time they counted, I almost always got left out.
Was any part of school good?
Oh yes. Everything else was good. School taught me to live with other people, and we learnt how to be responsible.
When it was time to go to university, as they dealt with most things in my life, my parents said, “Okay, you know what? We’re not knowledgeable in this area. Go find out how they’re doing it and then come tell us so we can look at it together and have a plan of action.” When I was filling my forms, I looked at the courses and looked at the subjects I liked. I didn’t like writing, I didn’t want history, bible knowledge, economics or any course that required you to write notes, but I loved maths and reading.
What did you eventually choose?
Food science and technology. I wrote my exam — you had to write an exam at every university you were interested in. I passed and got admitted to the University of Ife. So off I went. And here was how my trajectory changed. In my second year, I did two core courses in chemical engineering and scored 98 and 100. The lecturer looked for me and asked why I was studying food science and technology. He said food science and tech was a speciality within chemical engineering; why did I want to specialise in my first degree? His name was Dr McCauley.
He spoke to my department and told them they would be doing me a disservice if they held onto me. I would be their star student, but it wouldn’t help me. And so I went on to study chemical engineering.
I’m grateful I met him because he told me: “You’re intelligent. You’re not supposed to measure yourself against your classmates, not because they’re not good enough, but everybody ought to measure themselves against their potential.”
Tell me about your potential.
I got a first-class in chemical engineering.
What about relationships?
The person easiest to lie to is the person that has grown up in a community where everyone tells the truth. In school, when people said they liked me, I assumed they liked me and not for romantic reasons. During weekends on campus, people would bring movies, clubs would have parties and we’d socialise. When someone asked, “Do you want to see a movie with me?” I thought nothing of it. Or when someone said, “Come to my room”, I wouldn’t think anything would happen. I found myself in impossible situations sometimes.
My first romantic relationship — that I will tell you about — sort of ended during NYSC. We tried to plan our life together, but when you plan your life with someone and you don’t know what you’re supposed to be planning, it will lead to quarrels. We couldn’t harmonise our plans because, for our postgraduate dreams, my parents could support me and his couldn’t. Eventually, I got a scholarship and could leave, but he couldn’t.
Interestingly, my husband did his NYSC the same place I did mine — Nigerian Breweries.
Rewiiind.
Haha. We were about 15 serving together, and we’d have lunch and go to the company bar in the evening. We were at the bar one day when this man said, “Nigerian girls ehn, they can pose for Africa. If they like you, they’ll still be doing like they don’t like you.”
And I said to him, “Excuse me, which planet are you from? If somebody is posting you like that, it means they themselves don’t know what they want. If you ask them and they want to go, they would.” I told him to test me and ask me out.
Ghen Ghen.
He asked me out a few weeks later, and I said “No.” I had other plans. He asked me out another time to a movie theatre, then to visit him at his place in Festac. I was determined to prove to him that I knew my mind, and so I agreed.
Were you uncomfortable?
I was one of two girls in an engineering class for five years. I was comfortable around men.
On my way to Festac from Surulere, it rained heavily. The taxi who carried me told me to come down at some point. Festac was new and people were still unfamiliar with the area. We’d gone round but couldn’t find the place. Someone let me stay in their house until the rain went down. I was finding my way back home when I noticed the street names and traced the house. He was surprised.
And then.
We talked. He had so many LP records. He started playing Oliver Newton-John for me. Our friendship started there. He’d buy me chocolates, buy me cards, walk on the side closer to the road; all the kinds of stuff that you read in books.
By the time that we’d known each other for about three months, I said to myself, “If this man asks me to marry him, I will.”
How were you so sure?
He was so clear about what his life was, what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it. And I was trying to figure out my life. He was like, “This is what I want and you need to figure out what you want so that you can know whether I fit in.”
When it was time for me to go to the UK for my programme, he said, “I really like you, but you know that I want to get married in such and such a year. And you will be in the UK. And I don’t want to be on a different continent from my wife. So if you choose to do a PhD, I may not be able to wait for you.” I could understand where he was coming from because when you use Airmail to write your letter, it would take four weeks to get to Nigeria, and then four weeks for a response to get to you.
How did you decide?
When I went to the UK, I struggled. Did I really want to stay in the UK and do a PhD? Or did I want to go back and marry this person? We had a chaplain in the school we could talk about all these things with. He said, “It is important for you to know that whichever route you choose, once you start going on that route, you’ll see the challenges there and you’ll think the other path was better.”
I concluded that I wanted him.
There was also the part where I wanted to practice engineering design after school, but even with my first-class honours in engineering, I could only work in a refinery or as a lecturer.
What happened next?
I got a job in the Federal Ministry of Commerce and Industries. Then something happened.
The year we planned to get married, my husband’s younger brother died, and his parents said they needed to mourn for a year.
In that time, I renewed my relationship with God and told my husband I wasn’t interested in him anymore because he was an unbeliever. My parents found out when they dropped by his house and he asked them why they were there. When they got back, they asked me, “Dupe, did it not take you some time to become a Christian? What makes you think he won’t?”
And so we got married.
Were your parents Christians?
Not in the sense of being born again.
How did you build this relationship with God then?
I started reading the Bible, and in the book of Romans, it seemed like Paul was sitting across me and speaking to me. I was a good girl in the eyes of everyone, but I knew a lot of things about myself that weren’t good. I admitted this to myself.
We had a revival in my church and there was a visiting preacher who spoke to us. I met with him to tell him about these things, and he explained that what was happening to me was I was coming to a realisation that I could not do good by myself. So I read the Bible and kept journals as my faith grew.
You mentioned earlier that you didn’t have friends until you were 50. What changed?
The funny thing was I had met a lot of people in my life, and if someone needed help, I knew who to call. While I didn’t do anything on my part to keep the relationships, my sister kept in touch with these people and she drew me to them. I started a relationship academy and realised I needed to connect with people. I used to think I was an introvert, but I just didn’t master the skill of connecting with people, so I worked on it.
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 31-year-old Nigerian Muslim woman who got married at 23. She talks about realising she should have waited, getting a job years later and finally settling into her marriage.
How did it start?
I’d just finished my master’s, and I’d met a guy.
We had been talking for two years, and we were friends. One thing that keeps me going is that no one told me I had to get married, not even my parents. I wasn’t ready for it and didn’t know what I was getting into.
I should have been independent for a while. Looking back, I needed at least two years to figure out myself after my master’s. Getting a nice job, fending for myself would probably have taught me lessons I struggled with along the way.
So why did you get married?
For people like me, a lot of us were not educated on marriage, so it was an “if not, why not?” decision. What I thought would happen was, once I got married, I wouldn’t answer to my mum and dad anymore, I’d get a job, and life would just happen. I thought marriage was IT.
I got pregnant a month after I got married, and that did not help matters. I didn’t know what to expect. There’s no perfect partner, relationship or marriage, but there are some things that, if I was told to expect, would have made marriage easier for me. I tell people now that marriage can be sweet. For me, It was the foundation. It was not strong.
What are some things you’d have preferred you knew beforehand?
That marriage is a different ball game. I had so many responsibilities. There was someone expecting me to care for them, and I wasn’t even done caring for myself.
Tell me about the foundation.
Let me start from earlier. I had dated guys but there was always a religion barrier for me. I sort of knew that I could not take a Christian partner to my parents. There was also this cultural thing about wanting to marry from your tribe. Parents are more comfortable with that. When I dated a Muslim from Ibadan, no one told me to not marry him, but I was sure no one took our relationship seriously.
In my service year, I had an aunt who was introducing me to different guys, and she introduced my husband to me. When she sent his picture, I wasn’t impressed. We started chatting anyway, and I found him interesting. He made me laugh. We would chat and chat and chat. He was 31.
One day, a few months later, he said he going to Kwara State and I went, “Oh, I’m from Ilorin.” Then he mentioned it’s my family compound he was going to.
Knowing about his background made me more interested in him, and now, our families were involved. After that, he told me he wasn’t looking for a relationship; he was looking for a girl he could marry. I was like, finally, a Muslim guy from my town.
And then, marriage.
Yes. It’s possible if I had a year before getting pregnant, I would have gotten a job and we would have been able to live together without having to deal with hormones and stress and thinking.
If I could go back in time, I probably would have married someone who was like two years older than me. There were some conversations we’d have that used to annoy me. If I wanted to express myself, he’d think I’m arguing. He’d say, “Why are you arguing? I can be your brother; I can be your uncle.” And I’m like, “No, you can’t be. You’re my husband.”
Thankfully, we were friends, so even if we were fighting, we’d still check on each other.
Has this changed?
Yes. My marriage is good now because I said to myself, I’m not going to endure what I can enjoy. If I can’t enjoy it, I’d rather move on. There was a time where it felt like we were complete strangers. We were like housemates. Then it got to a certain point that I was like, “What am I doing?”
How did you get to this point?
For five years, I routinely took my child to school and just stayed in the house. I didn’t work because I tried when I got married, but it wasn’t forthcoming, then pregnancy happened. I also didn’t have goals or plans set out. It was a conversation I didn’t even have with my husband before we got married. Till date, my husband can say, “I didn’t stop my wife from working”, but I sensed he didn’t want me to. He wanted an educated housewife. One time when I was looking for a job, I suggested going to NTA to get an internship — I studied mass communication — and he said he never knew I wanted to take my journalism seriously.
I got desperate after my second child. We were fighting more, and I wanted more for myself. I started a fresh juice business, but that wasn’t enough.
After my second daughter, I asked myself, “What next?” I had been home for five years, no job, just kids screaming for me. I searched and got a job.
What changed was I realised that my husband had been my only friend. If you checked my call log you’d see Mama or Brother. I wasn’t experiencing other people. And the job fixed this. I’d come back home, and we would have conversations that were not just about us anymore. He also started respecting me.
I think he sees me these days, and he’s proud. The other day I was speaking with the MD of a popular restaurant, and I could see his respect.
Salute.
The lockdown also gave us an opportunity to speak and thrash things out. We bonded, and that was when I told myself I would work at my marriage or leave.
I realised that he was also going through stuff, so I took a step back. I asked myself, “What are you doing that is not making him happy.”
He just wanted me to be there, but I was not happy with myself and I couldn’t be. And because he was going outside, it was easier for him to free himself off me with friends and work.
I would say, right now, I’ve grown to understand him better. Men never accept they’re wrong, and that’s a way to manage them. I’d give an example. When we got married, I always wanted to contest what he was saying. So if he says, you can’t take the kids here, I’d fight. Now, I don’t ask, I just do it. And we talk about it after.
If I had known these things earlier, I’d have had a blissful marriage.
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 23-year-old Nigerian woman who was in a toxic relationship with a man who did all he could to keep her with him, including stalking and blackmailing her.
Where did you meet?
It was December 2019, and I was 22 while he was 27. He’s my neighbour — we live in the same street. My aunt had a shop just in front of my house, and he used to come to the shop a lot. I personally didn’t notice him until, one day, I caught him staring at me.
I was going to buy suya, and he followed me. He picked up his pace and caught up with me. There was some small talk, he paid for my suya and bought me extra for my family. We exchanged numbers and that was pretty much it for that night.
Do you live with your aunt?
I don’t live with my aunt. My dad converted our security post into a shop to support her. So I see her everyday because of the shop.
What happened after he paid for your suya?
I think he called. I’m not sure. But we eventually started talking.
He was actually in a relationship at the time. I had heard tales about his babe, how she used to break things and stab him. I don’t believe all that anymore. I think they both got a thrill out of whatever their situation was, but from the outside, the girl was painted as a blood-sucking demon.
He made it seem like he was stuck in a helpless situation with his babe and didn’t know what to do. Like a foolish woman, I went to play messiah, telling him he deserved better. I should have just kept quiet and gone my way, but that’s basically what got us talking.
When did he break up with his babe?
A month or two later. I’m not the smartest with matters of my heart. So when he started preaching love to me, even though I was just out of a failed relationship and out of therapy, I went with the flow.
However, I told him I couldn’t date him if he was still with his girlfriend. He ended things with her in a very immature and impulsive way. This caused drama because the babe became FBI and found out he broke up with her for me. She threatened to fuck me up.
For context, the babe was also close to my aunt. She felt my aunt pimped me out to him, even though my aunt really didn’t have anything to do with the relationship. She just gave me a few pats on my back.
I don’t know what he went to promise her, but she eventually cooled off.
Do you think you were pressured into a relationship?
I wouldn’t say I was pressured, but at the time, I was winging everything in my life. I hated being alone. I would date just about anyone for companionship. I was always in one relationship or the other. People around me got tired because most of the relationships I entered were quite stupid.
I can’t say I’ve ever been in love — I may have gotten fond of the people I dated but never felt love. I didn’t know them well enough before jumping yakata into the relationship. My relationships were so wack ehn.
Why?
I never loved myself enough, I guess. I allowed people into my life, and it was too late before I realised that the quality of people you allow into your life tells on the quality of the life you live.
So wait, did you have any feelings for him?
I don’t think I had feelings for him. I think I enjoyed the times he was nice to me. I didn’t have boyfriends before that were that nice to me; he always wanted to keep me happy until he was angry.
What was the relationship like in the beginning?
He was thoughtful and nice. It didn’t take long for the insecurity to start though. He wanted to check what I wore, where I wore it to, who I was talking to. He would seize my phone abruptly from my hand while I was using it. He even became friends with anyone I knew, just so he could know my every move.
He was the absolute worst when we fought, but he’d become Prince Charming when we were good. I slowly realised that his ex may not have been the only demon. Just as fast as I got in, I wanted out.
How did you get out?
It wasn’t easy. We started fighting about dumb things. My friend, let’s call her Mary, realised the guy was probably obsessed with me. She mentioned it, but I brushed it off. I tried to end the relationship so many times, but he wasn’t having it. I mean, he was (and still is) my neighbor, so everywhere I turned he was there. I noticed at some point he was cheating. Guess who he was cheating with?
Tell me.
The toxic unbearable girlfriend he literally begged me to help him out of dating. LMAO. I confronted him the first time, and he lied about it. I kept calm and became more observant.
Then I found out he rented an apartment for the babe very close to my house, even though I begged him many times to move out of the house he was staying in because I felt too many people were in our business. He kept saying he didn’t have money to rent a new house, but he had enough money to rent for her.
He was going to her house every day and lying to cover it up, saying things like, “I want to go to bed early” or “I have to go for a meeting.” Everything was a lie.
One time I broke up with him because he had the nerve to compare me to her. He said she was more understanding. When I left him, he actually told someone to monitor me around my house. I knew I was doomed.
Wow. What did you do next?
He begged and did so many nice things that made me foolishly go back. I don’t know why I did. I didn’t love him; I never did.
The relationship wasn’t better after this. It was one day of being super nice and days of toxic rubbish. He started to act like he was tired. I thought this was time to leave, and he would let me. I sincerely thought he loved her and was just using me. I was wrong, I was so wrong.
How long had you been dating at this time?
Maybe six months.
What happened next?
I confronted him about the rent, sleeping at her place and everything else. He denied them and gave a speech about me allowing people to destroy the beautiful thing we had. Which beautiful thing? Mad people full this country.
Anyway, I stood my ground, and that’s when I found out that my aunt knew all along that he was cheating and even used to talk to the babe. I was basically a fool. Everyone around me knew he was still with her but never told me.
My aunt still encouraged me to “Fight for what we have”. Whenever we had a fight, he’d call through her phone, and she’d make me talk to him. Meanwhile, she knew all along.
Did you confront her about it?
I did. She told me to come, let’s sit and talk like women, rada rada oshi. I didn’t go to sit down to talk anything.
I blocked his numbers and blocked hers too and anyone that wanted to beg for him.
After this, I travelled for a bit. He found out where I travelled to and actually followed me to the state, but he didn’t know exactly where I was. He tried to reach out to me through his useless friends that were also cheating on their girlfriends and wives. I blocked all of them.
It was during this trip that I got a message from a random number on WhatsApp. It was a video. I played it, and there I was, naked. I had never sent him nudes before, so I was confused. It was only later that I figured out that we’d had a virtual sex call a while back — I was naked, and we were actually rubbing one off — and he’d probably recorded me as we were doing it. In the video, his face was dark and conveniently not recognisable. His next message was, “Let’s talk.”
I told him to go ahead and do whatever he wanted, I still wasn’t going to talk to him or hear him out. His reply was, “Calm down, I have 3 more.”
I didn’t realise how much of a lunatic he was until that moment. I was slipping out of his reach and he was desperate.
When I returned home, I got lawyers involved. I reached out to anyone I could for help. I was scared. He wouldn’t stop. Every time I blocked him, he’d just text me on another number. He tried his best to get the name of my hotel from my cousins, but they also didn’t know. He even tried to decipher the location through my pictures.
What did you do next?
I had to tell my mum. My mum got mad and confronted my aunt.
Wait did your mom know of the relationship before?
No, she didn’t. She suspected and warned me, but I always told her I turned him down.
My aunt found out I got a lawyer and ran to tell him that they’re coming for him. I found this out through my cousin, who was the only person looking out for me. She was close to him too and always told me things she heard. When he found out that she was actually helping me, he confronted her and told her he’d get boys to stab her all over her body and drop her corpse at my gate.
Wow. That’s sick.
Things became even more heated that I had to run away from home. I travelled out of town without telling anyone. The next few weeks were the worst. My parents were worried. My mom was crying herself to sleep. I couldn’t sleep. I felt I was being watched. I was losing weight. I had several suicide attempts. My friends were the best then. But my family? They were the worst. My dad almost disowned me.
When my dad found out my aunt’s role in the entire thing, he locked up her shop. Then my ex went into hiding. The police got involved, and the whole street was talking about me. Some family friends called me and told me to just go home.
When I returned home, the guy decided to sue me, my mom, my dad and the police for infringing on his fundamental human rights.
On the other hand, my uncles got involved and basically said they didn’t give a damn about the rubbish I got myself into but that my dad should open my aunt’s shop and deal with his badly-behaved daughter.
Did it actually go to court?
Yes. But it’s finalised now — we settled out of court. We both signed undertakings not to reveal any videos or pictures (he claimed we exchanged videos).
One thing this entire thing has taught me is that family is a social construct, made up to deceive you into thinking that because you come from the same bloodlines with someone, the person will love you or owe you some form of loyalty. It’s all a lie. My friends are my only family.
Does he still live in the neighbourhood?
Yup. My aunt is back in her shop now, and she’s very much still friends with him. I know his pride will not let him leave.
I want to leave, but to where? I don’t have money for that. My parents won’t answer me, so NYSC is my only way out.
Do you feel like you learned anything from this experience?
I can’t believe how much I’ve grown from what happened. Focusing on my spirituality helped the most. I’m learning to love myself every day. I’m also learning not to accept rubbish from people because of my need to love and be loved.
I don’t know if I’ll ever want to date or marry or any of that rubbish society shoved down our throats. I’ll be 24 in a couple of months, and I’m just starting to know myself. I’m excited about the future and what it holds; I know it only gets better. I’m almost glad I went through this. it was a wake-up call for me to watch the things I feed my soul
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is Karo Omu, a 29-year-old Nigerian woman and mother. She talks about almost having a miscarriage when she was five weeks pregnant, liking her daughter and the importance of giving women enough information about reproductive health.
Did you always know you wanted to have a child?
Yeah, but I don’t think I did consciously. I think when you’re a young girl, it’s normal to think that you would go on to start a family. I always thought I wanted many children, but I didn’t think about how I’d end up having them. I am from a big and close-knit family, so I wanted a big family too.
What was growing up like?
I have four sisters and a brother. My brother is the last child, so maybe my mum favoured him a little, but my dad was really big on his daughters. In our house, being a girl or a boy wasn’t that different. My mum had nine siblings; eight girls and one boy. Her mum really wanted a boy, and I think my mum was conscious of this — having a boy. My dad on the other hand came from a family with many girls and boys and was more progressive, so he didn’t seem to care.
So what was your pregnancy experience like?
I think before our generation, pregnancy seemed like a normal thing: you’d get pregnant and have a child. Nobody spent time speaking about the journey; instead, they talked about the labour. I found out really early about my pregnancy — in about the 2nd or 3rd week. I had two near miscarriages. I took a trip when I was five weeks pregnant, and on the flight, I noticed I was bleeding. I didn’t know flying wasn’t good for someone who was newly pregnant. As soon as I landed, I was taken to the airport clinic. I remember someone saying, “She’s in her first trimester, this happens all the time. It’s just tissue. If it’ll stay, it’ll stay.”
Wow.
I was like, what the hell is happening? I went back home in Nigeria and had a similar experience. I went to the hospital and the doctor did a test and told me that my body didn’t recognise I was pregnant, so it wasn’t producing hormones to take care of the baby growing inside me. I had to start taking hormone injections; I had never heard anybody speak about this. I couldn’t fly till I was past my first trimester.
The rest of my pregnancy was uneventful. But because of the anxiety I developed in my first trimester, I was always worried; I would wake up every day to see if my baby was moving. It got so crazy, I bought a heart monitor to listen to her heartbeat. That was something I wasn’t prepared for. When we talk about how people don’t talk about pregnancy, it’s mostly because everybody’s experience is so different that there’s almost nothing to go by.
Fair enough.
Yeah. I didn’t have a physically tough pregnancy, but it was mentally tough for me as I was in a different city by myself, with only my husband. It was really lonely not having my extended family around. My baby was overdue for over two weeks, and my mum was like, this has never happened in our family, it’s crazy. My pregnancy journey was long, enjoyable, beautiful, but I was mostly tired of being pregnant.
I can imagine. What has motherhood been like for you?
Haha. Very crazy. I like my daughter, so the more I like her, the more I like being her mother. But, it’s so tough. It took me a while to remember that I am separate from my child. Motherhood gets so overwhelming, it becomes all of your identity. But now, I really like being a mum. I like being my daughter’s mother; that’s part of my identity. It took me a while to accept it, by removing myself out of it, then choosing it. Knowing that this is part of my identity doesn’t make me feel less of who I am.
My daughter is three now. I went to work when she was seven weeks old because I felt like I really needed that. Then it got to a point where I felt I really needed to be at home with her; I did that. When the lockdown began, I realised that I have to be best friends with her because she’s an only child. She’s the reason I get out of bed on some days and that gives me a sense of purpose.
Compared to being born and raised in Nigeria, how has raising your child outside Nigeria been?
Growing up, I had a lot of extended family and friends around, which meant everybody had an opinion about how you were being raised, and it was so easy for that to be projected on your parents.There was a lot of “what will people say?” even in the littlest choices. While my child may not have that communal feeling, I get to raise her with less thought to what people will think. But, I think children like mine miss out on that familiarity and safety I had growing up.
What are some things you’re already worried about with raising your child?
I don’t know if it’s a Nigerian thing, but I hope my kid doesn’t have to hear a thing like, “What will you be doing in your husband’s house?” or “Let the boys go first.” I have always worked around social change, and my motivation is that I want my daughter to grow up in a better world.
When I was a child, I would wait till 4 p.m. before watching TV because that was when it came on. But for my kid’s generation, there is so much information they have access to, and I am conscious of the fact that it’s my responsibility to filter what my child is exposed to.
Also, she didn’t ask to be here so it is my responsibility to make her life work while also respecting her autonomy as a person. It’s very interesting and often challenging to navigate.
My parenting journey has made me even more passionate about women having adequate reproductive health information and resources. Children shouldn’t have to be born as a consequence to parents who don’t want to have them.
This makes me wonder about the work you do with Sanitary Aid. Is there a personal story there?
Just before I turned 10, my parents asked how I wanted to celebrate my birthday. That year, I had just found out what an orphanage was. I told my parents I wanted to take my cake to an orphanage, and they were so excited that they ended up letting me throw three parties: one at home, another in church and the third at an orphanage. It was almost like I was rewarded for that thought.
I became a volunteer teacher when the IDP camps started and gradually started getting involved in social work. My bishop then had adopted kids, and they became my friends. I would teach them, and whatever project I had begun with them.
I liked how it made me feel when people I worked with were happy, so it was almost like a selfish thing for me.
How did all of these lead to creating Sanitary Aid?
Sanitary Aid was a Twitter conversation about donating pads versus condoms. I remembered when I was in secondary school and my pocket money was 200 or 300 naira. There was no way I’d have been able to afford pads if they were sold for their current prices.
I had always thought about the issues affecting women and how we could make our lives better. Sanitary Aid was an avenue to help. Women having dignity and information was an agenda for us. It opened my eyes to how different experiences shape the things we do. I’m a feminist; to me feminism means equality because women lose so much to gender inequality. We lose so much time, respect, dignity and money to not being equal. This is one of the reasons I joined the Feminist Coalition, and the focus has been on how we can create more opportunities for women. I am very committed to conversations and work that promote women’s rights and give them visibility and help underserved communities.
This was how Sanitary Aid started, and a few weeks after that, I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t know what I was getting into when it just began.
How were you able to manage Sanitary Aid while pregnant?
It’s just kudos to my team and family because they have always supported the project. We have grown into a full blown organisation and have public support. So, people who want to help do it on behalf of the organisation. That gap existed and all that was needed was a conversation to be had, which we did.
It would have succeeded with or without me because there are always people willing to do something about the problems we have in the society.
What challenges do you and the organisation face?
Some of the challenges are that some things, such as getting approval, take so much time. Then there is financial constraint. It’s important for me to create spaces where women can talk and be heard and question why we find things more appealing when we hear it from men than from women who are the ones experiencing this thing.
One thing that always happens in this kind of work is that there is always going to be somebody else, and I’m totally not against so many people doing the same thing. If I wake up tomorrow and realise that there is no more period poverty, I’d be so happy regardless of who made that happen. As long as people are making change, that’s great. But, it’s also important that we question ourselves on why we are not listening when women are saying the same thing.
What does success look like for Sanitary Aid?
It’s a lot of things: it’s getting to the point where we have our social enterprise that will fund Sanitary Aid. Currently, we rely on partnerships and donations, which aren’t sustainable. I am very big on sustainability because so many people depend on us, and we can’t afford to crash and fall out of what we are doing. Success will also be having policies that tackle period poverty, even if it’s the government giving out free pads to girls. Also, we want to get to a place where we have funding for research in Nigeria on women’s reproductive health and reaching more girls and women. Success for us is a lot of things, but it’s mostly us being able to fund ourselves, more girls and women having access to sanitary pads and hygiene education. Period poverty is a by-product of poverty, so without tackling poverty and the issues that stop women and girls from having access to sanitary pads and makes them choose less hygienic means, we are never going to get to where we need to get to as a country.
We need to tackle poverty head-on. Not having access to information on Sexual and Reproductive health has a long term effect on women’s lives. I hope we get to where even the government is talking about the importance of menstrual hygiene and having access to quality and affordable products.
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This week’s What She Said is a 26-year-old woman. She talks about losing her mum, feeling alienated by her sisters because they just didn’t understand her, and how being the last child made her dad’s drinking problem her responsibility.
Let’s start from the beginning.
I have strong memories from when I was two till when I was seven (my mum died when I was seven). Seven was my perfect number. With her alive, we were seven — my four siblings, my parents and I — and when she died, we became six.
I had three older sisters and one brother, who was the second child. In primary school, I was close to Bisola, who was the fourth child, because we went to the same school. She was one year older than me, while the others were far older. My sister after Bisola was in secondary school — let’s call her Amina — and the eldest was in university.
People used to think Bisola and I were twins, but we fought the most. She always tried to be domineering and would ask me to do this and that. I would be like, “Why?” We fought so much that my dad started using cane to separate us.
Area!
LOL. When Bisola was in Primary 4, she got a double promotion to Primary 6. And once she graduated to JSS 1, my dad yanked me out of primary school to join her.
Why do you think he did that?
It was money. After my mum died, he was depressed. We didn’t know this until five years later. He’d come home with drinks. He was also not getting as many contracts — he was a water engineer. My mum’s death made him lose a lot of opportunities because it was difficult for him to process it.
All through secondary school, Bisola and I did everything together, but we still fought.
Why?
Because she and my other sisters teased me a lot, especially about my ears. I had a small head and really wide ears. They called me satellite dish, elephant ears, MKO Abiola and all sorts of names. They would laugh about it, but it was painful and always made me cry. Then they’d give me food to make me shut up — I liked food, so you know how that went.
They also called me Yoyo, which was someone that was sluggish. I didn’t process things fast, couldn’t tell the time, or my left from right. And because I was so close in age with Bisola, I was constantly compared to her. Bisola was the popular fashionista — she wanted to even be a model but decided to become a fashion designer instead. It was so bad, people outside would not remember my name but call me Bisola. It was fucking annoying.
I feel you.
When I was done with secondary school in 2009, my now pregnant elder sister asked me to come live with her in Port Harcourt. I told her I’d rather join Amina in her university because she was doing ushering jobs and I wanted to do something to make money. At this point, Bisola and I were taking care of my dad, and it wasn’t so bad until she left for Port Harcourt.
What happened?
He started drinking, then started taking antidepressants. He said he needed it to sleep.
Were the drugs prescribed?
No. My brother mentioned he had always taken them, but it got worse. For two years, I took care of my dad because I didn’t get into uni or start ushering. My eldest sister’s husband had told her, “Oh she’s too young. She shouldn’t do ushering.” And that was it.
My dad did not get any better during this period. He started using all his money to buy alcohol. If my sis sent us money to take care of things in the house, he’d spend it on alcohol. I have some spots on my legs from using bad water because he spent the money he was to use to get a water tank on drinks.
Each time this happened, they’d call me to ask what was going on in the house. I became the check and balance. They’d call me to figure out what was going on in the house. But this was telling on me. My dad was aggressive. His insults are not shere shere. They would hit you like missiles.
After some time, my brother made matters worse. He’d come home sluggish and eat a lot of food, and I’d have to clean up after them. Everyone thought it was weed, but we never found out the cause. Before then he was a teacher, then suddenly, nothing.
I had to find ways to start keeping the money from them.
What’s the most ridiculous place you had to hide money?
In my panties, and my brother still took it.
Sorry, what?
LMAO. I was sleeping. I knew my brother had collected it, so I went to get it back.
One particular time, I joined an ajo group to save for end of the year clothes. I was the accountant keeping everyone’s money, and soon after, I noticed the money my dad was giving me to buy drugs really looked like some of the notes I had, but I ignored it. When it was time to distribute the money, turns out about ₦5k was missing.
It got so bad that I became underweight. The ton of mental stress was crazy.
That sounds painful.
I thought of a way out and found the church. I’d stay in church from mornings till evenings.
Another way out for me was Facebook. I became popular on Facebook and even got a boyfriend. We started dating when I was 17 and met in person when I got into uni at 18.
When I finally entered school, I thought that would be the relief I’d been looking for, but it wasn’t. I was living with Amina, who was a post-graduate then, and my sisters would call me to go home every fucking time. I was expected to be home every weekend.
On weekends, I’d leave for home, buy foodstuff, cook, clean, come back two weeks later, the house is a mess, maggots in the pots, I’d clean, cook, repeat.
My sisters all helped somehow. Amina would go home once in a while. My eldest sister handled the health bills of my dad and brother — which got to millions — and always sent us money. But I was the one expected to always be physically present.
Did you ever push back?
I did in my first year in uni, and it wasn’t even for this. I got to Amina’s hostel at 9 p.m. and she said I was joining bad gang. I asked what that was supposed to mean. I had to call my eldest sister who said she’d talk to her.
I hated Amina when we were kids, but we bonded when we started living together. We had Karaoke nights, went out… Still, she and everyone else would always ask me to go home to look after my dad and brother. I pretty much didn’t have a social life outside them.
Then what happened?
I started rebelling in 300L when I got into a separate hostel. If they asked me to go home, I told them I was writing tests or exams.
We stan a rebellious youth.
After uni, you’d think these issues would have died down because of work or something, but they didn’t. That’s when I realised they did not take me seriously. At some point, I broke down when they called me to go again. This time, my dad had gotten drunk and someone found him on the streets. He called my sister, who called me to go because she was busy. I cried that I couldn’t go, and my boyfriend took the phone and had to tell Amina that I couldn’t do it.
Was anything done to help your dad?
Apart from hospitals, my uncles came up with all sorts of spiritual things to do. They’d ask for goats and this and that. They think my dad being an alcoholic is my grandma’s fault and not my mother’s death. All of the women in my dad’s family have been labelled witches. If my grandma dies, she’d transfer her powers to one of my dad’s sisters. Even though they were the ones who supported us when things got really bad. The one that sold pepper gave us foodstuff when we had nothing to eat. Another sent money. But no, they are witches.
What was the origin of these allegations?
My mum was pregnant when she married my dad, and my grandma did not like her. She wanted him to marry someone she had arranged. For some reason, when they got married, my dad took in his four siblings and my grandma to live in the same mini flat that we did, and it was unbearable. Sometimes they’d wake up and find a calabash by the bed. They’d trace it to my grandma. A lot was going on then. Even my dad’s siblings did not respect my mum. One of his sisters slapped her once. My dad is quite spiritual and has said he had “dreams” about my grandma.
I always wondered why my mum put up with all that, but my parents were in love. He was 24 and she was 23 when they got married. After some time, she built a house and we moved away. I don’t think my grandma ever forgave her for that. She took her favourite son from her. I was four when we moved.
Till now, my dad’s family thinks my grandma is the problem.
Did things change after some time?
I had to fight for it. Three major things happened. First, my uncle’s wife died, and my dad started drinking in the hospital. My sister called and asked where I was. I said, “I’m at work.” She asked me to leave because my dad was drunk and misbehaving. I was like, “I’m at Berger, you know the traffic in Lagos, and you’re telling me to leave my office…” I told her it was too sudden and didn’t go.
The second time, something happened to him and they called me because I had mentioned I was working from home. I went on the family group chat to tell them that they don’t understand me and only have me around to take care of my dad. Why did they expect me to always drop whatever I was doing to go home? I told them I had my life to live. They insulted me and called me ungrateful.
The last time I refused to go home, I did another group chat rant and told them they don’t see me as valuable or appreciate me. No one ever asked me, “Sis, what are you doing right now? Where are you working? What do you need?”
If you don’t care it’s fine, but coming to impose your needs on me? I was done taking it. I left the group chat. Right after, my elder called to insult me. She insulted my job, said I kept saying I was working, but it wasn’t reflecting on myself or on them. My other sisters had achieved way more when they were my age, so what was I really doing with my life.
For some time I was hurt by this but not surprised. Whatever they said, they don’t call me now to go home and I don’t care what they have to say.
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 40-year-old woman. She talks about losing custody of her kids after an abusive marriage, travelling the world and how her dad’s love for food led her to start a confectionery company.
If someone was meeting you for the first time, what would you tell them about you?
I would say I am simple and a lot of people find that complicated. When it comes to my experiences, I would say I’m on my ninth life because I’ve had a crazy ride.
I grew up in a large family. I had two brothers and four sisters. I enjoyed my teenage years a lot. Sometimes I think I enjoyed it a little too much. I had friends from all over the world. At my school, people say you don’t gain knowledge, you gain friends.
My parents were free-spirited, open-minded people. When I lost my mum, a day before my tenth birthday, it changed our world. Somehow, my dad was able to fill that gap — cooking and caring. It was so seamless that we almost didn’t notice the void my mum’s death created. He filled that void so well, and we did not feel deprived. I got so interested in food because he was always cooking something.
And then?
Somehow I found myself married at the age of 20 to someone who was abusive. He stopped me from going to school, stopped people from seeing me. I had no friends nor money. I was caged in his house for years and had three children.
That’s awful. Why did you get married so early?
It’s complicated and I do not like talking about it. My mum was not there and I relied on others to guide me. But some of them were misguided and they misguided me as well. I was advised to marry early, have kids early so I could move on with my life and grow with my children. My dad was also pressured. They implied he was a man and wouldn’t understand these things. It must have all come from a good place, but it ended up wrong.
I ran away with my children a couple of times, but I ended up coming back. He would beg for my return and promise to change. But that didn’t last. In two weeks he would be back to his normal self. Until one day, I decided it all had to stop.
He took my children away from me, and it’s been 14 years without them. In a case like this, where a woman suffers is when she goes to court or when the police are involved. If you’re young, policemen say things like, you’re sleeping with other men or “If we should lock him up, you’re the one that will come begging.” The policewomen would take his side because he has money. They made my life miserable. I tell people that whatever you do, make sure you don’t find yourself in court in Nigeria or have anything to do with the police.
What did you do after you got out of your marriage?
When my marriage ended, I had ₦40 in my account. I started all over — I had been in school but my ex asked me to stay at home until my first son was ready to go to university. I didn’t defer my admission, so I started from 100L when I got out of the marriage. I was in school studying marketing when I decided to start crafting chocolates. Not for the money; it was more of the statement — I wanted to create a chocolate-crafting Nigerian company.
Tell me about your relationship with food.
My early memories of food were with my mum. She was a midwife, a businesswoman and a caterer. She and my dad enjoyed cooking for the whole family. When she died, my relationship with food was elevated by my dad. He could cook anything! He would make local soups, especially soups indigenous to our people, Delta-Igbos. We enjoyed vegetables and would pile our plates high with them.
My dad would make sundaes, salads, Mediterranean food, English food. His pounded yam was always on point. He was open to experimenting and I took on that. I started a confectionery business.
What happened next?
I got a job. During this period, I was going to court every year. It was painful, but I did it. I wanted to keep myself sane for my children. I didn’t want them to meet a woman that was broken into pieces. I had to forgive myself.
I’m thankful that even with the ugliness of my situation, God has been faithful. I tried my best to make sure that I kept my head up and my feet on the ground. There were horrible days — times where I’d convulse in bed, thinking about my children. Were they cold, crying, calling my name? Was someone beating them? I had a crazy day where I drove to the house and demanded to see them.
I had to pull back. Doing that was not going to help. If I lost my mind, what they’d get is a mad mother. The police were saying if I showed up at the house again, they would arrest me.
Where was your family in this scenario?
My family members are not fighters. There were times where I blamed them, like why didn’t they go and fight and bring my kids? But we weren’t raised that way. Even my extended family — they preferred a diplomatic approach to everything. So they engaged in conversation expecting a truce, which didn’t happen in this situation. He wasn’t a willing party.
What’s happening with you now?
For me what is paramount is being happy, expanding my mind, building my brand, seeing the world — just living. I still work with the same company where I’ve moved from entry-level to directing sales and marketing. Doing my confectionary thing and working with the firm is fun. It’s a way to challenge myself — I can be whatever I want. I can always say, okay, this has happened, shit has hit the fan, moving on.
Tell me about seeing the world.
When I started working, it was nonstop. There were days I would work till 4 a.m., take my bath and continue — I would do this for days. I just buy Redbull and keep going. The business had just started and we were trying to push it.
During this period, I never went on leave. I always wanted to be around. Once, one of my colleagues wanted to go on leave and I was in my boss’s office to discuss it. His response was, “Hey, since you started working, you’ve never gone on leave.”
I said I didn’t really need and he went, no no no no no, you have to go on leave. I started complaining, and he said that made it worse. He opened my calendar and went, “From this date to this date, don’t come to the office.” I was like, two weeks?! No way.
He changed it to one month, and I started crying. That Monday, he sent me out of the office and told me to just go somewhere. Before then, I liked Benin Republic. On trips to Togo and Ghana, I would pass through. I fell in love with the place, so I went for a week.
And it was a blast. I made friends and had so much fun. Two days after I got back I thought, I have a whole month to myself, so I went again. That’s how travelling started for me. Now my boss can’t hold me down again and he regrets starting this. I called him two weeks ago that I was on my way out of the country again; he was stressed.
What’s next?
Expand my confectionery company, see more of the world, be more and live more.
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is a 55-year-old Nigerian woman who is a Christian and a feminist. She talks about how discriminatory experiences as a female worker in church made her change churches and how she became a feminist.
When did you first notice life was harder for women?
I think I must have been 15. I grew up with five sisters and a brother. My brother is the last born, while I’m the oldest. Before my mother had our brother, much to the disappointment of my father, she kept having baby girls. So, my sisters and I grew up knowing that it was important to have a brother.
I was 15 when he was eventually born, and from that moment everything changed. Before he was born, my father treated us like queens. I remember they used to call him “daddy girls”, but once my brother was born, they replaced “girls” with my brother’s name. We all lived to serve him. In one instance when he was about four or five years old, we were supposed to eat something for dinner and my brother said he wasn’t eating that. He wanted rice, which is what we ate for breakfast and lunch. My father ordered us to make rice instead. Or was it the time that my father was going through a hard time financially, and I and my immediate younger sister had to stop going to school so he could enrol my brother in a private school?
I didn’t really notice it was a boy versus girl problem. I noticed that my parents had favourites and we girls were not their favourite. It made sense because my brother is the last born and they always treat last borns like they’re fresh agege bread and hot beans.
Haha. So did it affect you in any way?
If it did, I can’t really say. It was normal to us back then. As I grew older and started to see more of the world, I saw that that was the way the world was. When I was 18/19, I was with someone whose mother used to lay his bed and do his laundry. This was when he was on campus. She would come every week to pick his dirty clothes and arrange his things. It was somehow to me, but I didn’t think it was because he was a boy. Me, I was an adult even before I even started school — maybe the last thing my mother did for me was to breastfeed me. Being the first girl, I had a lot of responsibility.
At what moment did you realise that this was not normal?
I should start from when it actually registered that it was a man’s world. This was after university, when I decided that I wanted to pursue my calling to be in ministry.
I went to a bible school my church organised and was refused admission because I am a woman. What the person in charge of admissions initially told me was that there was no space that session. Then later he asked what did a woman even want from the programme? He didn’t know that I knew some higher-ups. I eventually got in.
I was indeed the only woman in the programme. My husband wasn’t a pastor or even a minister. Till today, he’s not. So I got a lot of comments from even my friends asking why I was doing the programme. I told them God called me, but they were not comfortable with that information. That was how I went through the programme, finished, graduated and started working in the church.
What was the experience like?
Very political and biased against women. People had opinions that I didn’t have the right to be teaching bible classes or leading the evangelism team. They didn’t always say it to me. But because I was more religious than my husband, they said that “I was wearing the trousers in the family.”
When women led things like charity events and children’s events, they expected me to be there. But those things weren’t for me.
A lot of times, I felt like quitting, but I knew I wasn’t doing it for men. And my husband kept reminding me about this. There was a time a guest minister gave me reasons why my role in church as a teacher wasn’t for me. He showed me bible scripture even. My husband was a bit radical. He wasn’t religious, but he told me to be a change in the system.
Did you?
I tried, but I soon realised that I was part of the problem.
How?
I was generally harsher to women. On the other hand, I gave easier passes to men and forgave their excesses. On one occasion, we found out that one of our members, a young unmarried woman, had gotten pregnant for another church member. The church member was a young man who worked as a mechanic. The young unmarried woman was the sister to one of the pastors, who was also a really wealthy businessman. I think that this pastor made some threats about dealing with the young man when he found out about it. Before the next Sunday, the young man had committed suicide. Before he committed suicide, I remember blaming the young woman and saying she must have lured him, asking what did she go and do in his house — I didn’t even know whether they slept together in his house. But I was quite critical of women.
Then after he committed suicide, the narrative became that the young woman had destroyed the man’s life. Back then, I completely agreed.
It didn’t take long before I started realising my own flaws. I thought to myself, but this isn’t normal. For years, when I counselled couples about to get married, I would ask the woman if she knew how to cook. I didn’t even ask the man if he was making money or had a good job. After I realised what a problem this was, I stopped doing it and started asking the men if they could cook.
How old were you then?
In my 30s.
Did realising that there was a problem help you start fixing it?
No. My energy did not carry it. I eventually left the church and joined a church where there seemed to be more women leaders, even though they were pastor’s wives. They were given the freedom to minister and that was good. This was the 90s, by the way.
I didn’t stay there for long too because I started to notice that there seemed to be a lot of pressure on women to be married. And if you were single or divorced, or your husband didn’t attend church with you, you’d be discriminated against. And they’ll be feeling sorry for you as they’re discriminating against you. I can’t explain it. A few people there thought I was a prostitute. Imagine me going to church with my two children and my own car and someone walking on the road with their husband and child was shaking their head at me. Under hot sun o.
Lmao.
I eventually went back to my old church after the pastor and his wife came to talk to me about it. They were very persuasive, telling me about how the units I led were not growing. When I returned and tried to introduce some new things to the church, I was met with a lot of resistance.
What kind of new things?
Dressing was the main point for me. In the church I left, women dressed really well and colourfully. In this church, the women wore really dull colours. Especially the workers. There were a lot of rules on what they could wear for service or to their own events — like weddings. I wanted to change that. There were rules about no jewellery, no synthetic hair, no trousers. I used to be conservative, but when I left, I dropped all of that and started dressing differently. With the resistance, I just decided to leave again and this time, like the song says, “No turning back, no turning back.”
Haha. So what happened next?
My husband and I moved countries, and we started going to a baptist church. I wasn’t a worker. It was good to be away from the politics. There didn’t seem to be a lot of wahala in the Baptist church. You know Oyinbo people don’t have wahala.
Distancing myself helped me start and pray about ways I could actually serve God. So I started teaching women on my own.
That sounds interesting.
It is. Then very recently, we moved back and my son got married. You know how you children are. Before the wedding, the bride, my daughter-in-law said she didn’t want some things at the traditional wedding. For example, she said she wasn’t going to go on her knees. She told the alaga that they shouldn’t say or sing anything that made her feel like property. And that they shouldn’t ask her to sing the same thing.
I told her, but this is the way things are done. There was a lot of back and forth. One of my sisters jokingly said, “She’s in a feminist na. That’s how they do.” I didn’t think too much about it. We all compromised on a few things and moved on. I think it was a few months after the wedding that I was talking to her — my daughter-in-law — and she got talking about her values as a feminist. She would often say, “This life no balance for women. You self, check am.” She asked me, “Do you like the way you’re treated like a second-hand citizen?” And since then, she’s been teaching me about feminism.
So would you say that you’re a feminist?
Last year when my daughter-in-law told me about what the feminist coalition did in Nigeria, I was proud and honoured to call myself a Nigerian woman. I took it one step further and called myself a feminist.
Haha. How do you marry your Christian values with your feminist values?
They’re not conflicting. Jesus said we should love everyone. Not men more, not women less. And that’s what he did. So it’s about treating everyone the same way, no matter who they are.
I had no idea how big the problems women face are and how much of it is done by people in the name of the God of whatever religion they’re from. That’s not good. We should treat women better.
Right?
As I’m teaching the word of God, na so I’m preaching that we should treat everyone equally. This life must balance by force.
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The subject of this week’s What She Said is Ijeoma Ogwuegbu, a Nigerian woman who was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia, a condition that causes widespread pain all over the body. She talks about how difficult it was to get a diagnosis, coping with it while raising three children and how music helps her escape.
When did you first notice something was wrong?
I first noticed two years ago, in the first week of January, 2019. I was going through a lot emotionally — my marriage had just ended and I was attempting to move forward. That week, I felt a stabbing pain in my back and couldn’t move my right arm. It was really odd. This wasn’t something that had never happened to me.
That weekend, my sister and kids were in the living room, so I sent my sister a text to come to the room. Seeing my face, she knew something was wrong. She tried to move my arm, and it was hell. She called our other sister who lived nearby to come and drive me to the hospital. When we got there, the doctor looked through my records and said, “You complained about something like this about this time last year.” I didn’t even remember that. He gave me muscle relaxers and said to go home and rest.
What happened next?
The next Monday, I felt an electric shock going from the top of my head down. From then on, I was always in constant pain.
Oh wow. When did you eventually find out what was wrong?
Almost a year later. So, for about a year, I didn’t actually know the problem. I did different scans and tests, but they couldn’t identify the problem. My test results always came back fine.
To determine that it was in fact fibromyalgia, they had to do an elimination process where they ticked every other thing before coming to the conclusion. And up until this diagnosis, the pain kept getting worse. It got so bad that I couldn’t move my body.
Did they tell you what caused it?
Generally, there are two known causes of fibromyalgia: psychological trauma and physical trauma. I know I didn’t have physical trauma before this time. However, I had some psychological trauma from getting separated. So when I got the diagnosis, I knew it wasn’t completely out of the blue. The thing is, If you keep pushing emotional stress down and thinking it has gone, you’re wrong. It’s inside your body, and fibromyalgia will basically tell you: “Guy, you can’t keep stuffing these things here, your body will break.”
When you don’t deal with physical and psychological trauma at the time they happen, your body stores them up. Then the pain receptors in your body will break down and stop functioning properly. Your brain will begin to interpret every single thing as pain. You won’t be able sleep properly, you’ll be tired all the time. In fact, you’ll constantly be in pain.
Wow. I’m so sorry. Is there a part of your body that suffers more than the rest?
My limbs. I now walk with a walking stick, but I’m looking forward to getting an electric wheelchair.
I’m curious about the journey to getting diagnosed. What was your experience with doctors like?
I went from hospital to hospital between January and March but couldn’t get any help. Then I went to LUTH. In the first meeting I had in LUTH, I tried to explain the electric shocks I was experiencing anytime I put my foot down, but the doctor didn’t get it.
Eventually she said that what I was experiencing could be due to family issues I was having at the time and recommended that I needed to relax. She also prescribed antidepressants. I was a bit disturbed by this initially, but honestly, I needed them at that time. I had previously been diagnosed with depression and anxiety but had never done anything about it.
Using the antidepressants made me feel better. I didn’t feel as much pain on one hand. And on the other hand, I was seeing the world differently and was quite shocked. My brain is usually switched on and constantly evaluating my actions and everyone else’s. But with antidepressants, I realised that wasn’t the way the world was. It was a big ah-ha moment for me.
Did the antidepressants stop working to treat the pain?
Yes, it did. After about a month or two, the pain was back. However, because the use of the antidepressants gave me clarity, I was able to advocate better for myself. I knew that the antidepressants were not the solution to the pain. So I did more tests and eventually got diagnosed.
After being diagnosed, what kind of support did you receive from your family?
Even before I was diagnosed, they were there for me. I come from a really large, loud and boisterous family. I have five sisters and three brothers. My parents are alive. They were there for me all step of the way. My mother and sister moved in with me. My entire family treated the condition as a thing that happened to all of us. I never had to worry about my kids.
That’s good. How do you cope with the pain?
I’m not religious, but I’m a spiritual person. The way I experience spirituality involves a lot of physicality. I listen to music and can feel my body responding to it.
Because I’m constantly in excruciating pain and can’t move — fibromyalgia doesn’t want you to move, exercise or maintain a peaceful existence — I had to utilise music and sound in some way. Music generally opens up a folder of memories. So when I listen to music, I revisit the parts of my life that were positive and meaningful in some way and bring them to my present. I love Abba. When I listen to Abba, I remember all the joyful and blissful moments I spent with my siblings as kids. So these days, I listen to Abba with my children and all the pleasant memories come to my mind.
What about medication?
Very few medications work. You can’t use opioids for long because of dependency issues. So you have to figure out how to live your life with that amount of pain. That’s why music and movement are important to me. When I move, I immediately start to feel light — I’m not thinking about how I look or how someone else will perceive what I’m doing. My muscles will scream at me to stop, but if I keep going, then my body will loosen up and I’ll feel peaceful. I do this for about 15 minutes. And for the next hour or two, I feel lighter, like a weight has been lifted.
I’m not a fan of suffering, that’s why this is escaping through music and movement are important. There’s no place where they wrote my name next to “sufferhead.” I have fibromyalgia and that’s enough stress for 25 people and three lifetimes. No need to add anymore suffering on top.
Haha.
In fact, this is what I was thinking of when I created this thread. Two people, a man and a woman, came together and had children. One person has already used all her body and mind to have the babies. Yet, you who were involved in it, feel it’s okay to go on and live your life, leaving the children with her. People think that the mother and father are equal — 50: 50 — when raising children, but it’s not true.
The woman is already deficit because she’s spent nine months carrying the child. Her body is broken. The first three months after I had my child, I was just like, what the fuck is this shit? It is the absolute ghetto. Let’s not even talk about what happens to the woman’s body when she’s pregnant or what happens when you step out of the hospital with your child. You don’t love the child yet, because that child has crashed and burned your body to come out. It’s only normal if the first thing you think is “I don’t know what I feel about you right now.” You just know there’s something between you and your child.
There’s literally nothing to compare the pain of pregnancy to. Unfortunately, women don’t get the time to acknowledge and process what happened. You’re not even allowed to contemplate it in any serious way. You’re expected to bounce into motherhood. Then you start breastfeeding which is another torture.
But we’re supposed to experience all the stages of pregnancy and childbirth in pure and unbridled ecstasy. This idea of just moving on to the next thing forces us to drink so much trauma. We have normalised it so much that you’re the odd one if you question it.
With all of these in mind and the fact that you’re divorced and living with fibromyalgia, what’s it like raising your children?
I simply don’t have the time to do a lot of things. In a day, I might get just one hour to be active. All of this has forced me to be so conscious about even the smallest interactions and how it contributes to my wellbeing and my children’s well being. I hardly fly off the handle because I’ll probably say something that’ll hurt them even though I don’t intend to. At that moment, I’m not myself. So when I am annoyed with them, I ask them to leave, so I can process what happened, think of my reaction and then react.
We play music in the evening after their classes and sometimes, spend an entire day doing that, since mummy cannot jump up and down. Fibromyalgia forces me to consider my needs, their needs and how to make both work, rather than dwelling too much on could haves or would haves.
How has it affected working?
This is the hardest part. I’ve always been a writer. Because of how crippling the condition is, it is difficult to do any kind of sustained work. Fibro fog is an aspect of fibromyalgia that affects your memory. Short term memory isn’t saved as well as it should. You forget names, conversations, meetings and other details you should know. So I can’t write and even if I try, joint and muscle pain in my hands is another challenge.
A while ago, I started gardening because I was depressed. I also had a gardening group. I can’t garden or manage the group because of fibromyalgia.
On the other hand, fibromyalgia has forced me to focus and ask myself, if I can’t do what I used to do, what can I do? That’s how I became a painter. There’s a sense of freedom I get when I’m painting. I might never have discovered painting if this didn’t happen. Once I start doing something, I will become So immersed in it until I know everything about it.
— Vaginal Horoscope Agba feminist🏳️🌈🌈 (@IjeomaOgood) December 16, 2020
Currently, I’m script editor on Tinsel. They’ve given me a lot of concessions to be honest. We definitely need companies to start to think of their people beyond being a bottom line feeder.
What are the peculiar ways in which fibromyalgia affects women?
Women are more likely to have fibromyalgia than men. And I feel it’s because of all the ways in which we internalise trauma and are okay with it. That’s why so many women have fibromyalgia. It’s basically your body saying it’s enough — o ti to. In hindsight, I realise all the times when my body was trying to get my attention. We women end up treating our bodies in ways it’s not built to handle. Your body is not built to be constantly traumatised.
Then there’s the fact that the things we go through in Nigeria are not normal. We are so used to it that we have dehumanised ourselves. We don’t deal with the anger and the rage, but it’s still somewhere, either inside of us or we’ve transferred it to someone else to deal with.
Living with fibromyalgia has made me realise that I just want to have positive energy around me and transfer that positive energy to other people and by doing this, somehow improve the world. Even if it’s just for one person. I don’t have energy.
One important thing I learned from my mother is that valuing yourself. My mother was very clear that she deserved to be happy. She valued herself. Women need to know that we don’t need the trauma. We have value just by being here. Eyan nla ni e. We don’t need to break ourselves and our bodies to be anything.
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