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Ayoabbey
My Husbands Ministry Brought Me Back To Nigeria
Today’s subject on Abroad Life left is a 25-year-old woman who left Nigeria for Dubai in 2013. She talks about living her best life, getting a great job, and then returning home because her husband is a pastor here.When did you first realise that you wanted to leave Nigeria?My parents were career parents, so they weren’t always around. They made up for their absence by taking us on trips abroad. We travelled a lot when I was a kid, and whenever we got back to Nigeria, I would realise that things were different.One thing that stuck out for me was television. I liked cartoons, so whenever we got back, I was reminded that the cartoons showing on our televisions were nothing compared to those I’d been watching in whatever country we just got back from. This made me want to leave Nigeria.Haha. So it was just the cartoons?I always knew I was going to leave Nigeria after secondary school to study abroad. That’s how it was in our family. But we still travelled at least every other year for holidays until things got bad for my parents financially.How did that affect things?We didn’t travel for about three years. Things started getting better shortly after I finished secondary school, so I could travel for university in January 2013.Where did you go?I went to the UAE.Why the UAE?The initial plan was Canada, but at that point, if you wanted to go to a Canadian university, you had to do 12th grade again in a Canadian school. I’d repeated SS1, so I’d already spent seven years in secondary school. I didn’t want to spend another year, so I found a Canadian university in Dubai that didn’t require the 12th-grade thing.Nice.Admission was pretty easy for Nigerians. Most of the Nigerians in the school were northerners, and they were very wealthy, so the school made it very easy for Nigerians to get admission. The plan was to stay there for one year and then transfer to Canada. That way, I would have successfully avoided wasting a year of my life in 12th grade again.Is that what you did?Nope. I got to Dubai and knew I didn’t want to leave immediately. It was so beautiful. I’d been to America a few times before I went to Dubai, and I liked it. One month after I got to Dubai, I had to go back to America. When I landed, I was almost disgusted. It was so ordinary. Dubai, however, was glamorous.What was it like moving to a different country on your own?I was prepared for it, so I liked it. It was a chance to be free. I cried when my mum dropped me off at my dorm, but that was it. I moved on quickly.What was it like at the university?It was amazing. There was a McDonald’s beside my school, so I ate McDonald’s every single day. I had to get used to the fact that the weekdays are different from what I was used to. In the UAE, weekends are Friday and Saturday, and the weekdays start from Sunday. Church was on Fridays.How did that affect you?I went to church two times in my first year and stopped. It was stressful ending the week on a Thursday and going to church on Sunday. Because of this, my lifestyle changed. I became lost. I started hanging with people I normally wouldn’t, and doing things I normally wouldn’t do. We were going to clubs with fake I.Ds and hanging with dangerous people. Looking back, I’m grateful none of us got hurt. Now, I hear stories of people we were hanging out with being in jail and I just thank God.One day, something happened that just made me stop hanging with them.Tell me about it.After we graduated, I randomly decided to go to a church. I can’t remember what was preached or anything like that. It wasn’t a repentance message. It was just a normal Sunday service. Something changed about me in that service. When I got back home, I felt like I needed to stop living that life.How did your friends take it?The next day, we were at the club again. We got there at midnight. At one a.m., I decided I wanted to leave. It was so weird to them. They tried to persuade me to stay but I insisted. From that day, they all stopped talking to me. Well, all of them except one, who I’m still friends with.That was it?That was it. I became a full church girl. I was the most dedicated worker you’d find in church. My commitment to Jesus Christ skyrocketed. It’s been amazing ever since.Continue reading: https://www.zikoko.com/citizen/my-husbands-ministry-brought-me-back-to-nigeria-abroad-life/
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Ayoabbey
My Fathers Family Showed Me Pepper
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.Don’t be caught missing out. Subscribe to the best newsletter for Nigerian womenDo you know why you didn’t grow up together?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.Continue: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said-caring-for-my-mentally-ill-mother-drained-me/
