Love Not My Neighbor

12:05 AM 5 Comments A+ a-

Hey, Hey, Hey Lovies……

How’dy do peeps? I hope you all are keeping warm if you are in the abroad or cool if you are in Naija. I’m doing great – thanks for asking! I've just not had that much drama lately or maybe one that can see the light of day. I've been thinking of correct yarns for you lately and then gbam, my neighbor’s wife decided to go cray cray on me. See how I call her my neighbor’s wife when in fact she’s also my neighbor. At this point I've just decided not to even give her that title. She’s Mrs. Nobody as far as I’m concerned.

Mrs. Nobody brought a whole lotta drama to my door step over the weekend and mehnnn…thank God for emi mimo (Holy Spirit) and the fact that I love my face & body too much and can’t afford letting anyone beat me biko. I stay away from all this mighty Igor wannabes. Mi o le ro ejo (I can't talk abeg) The girl is like a raging amazon so I had to respect myself and not succumb to her bipolar behavior. This whole neighbor business however reminded me of my neighbor in Port Harcourt.

So I lived in a building that only had 2 flats (one on the lower level & the other at the top), and we lived in the lower level flat. My neighbor was married to a European expatriate. Now according to her – not me oo, she was the one who jejely told me & everyone else her stories.
She said she used to work as a hooker there in Port Harcourt for many years and frequented hotels\bars\joints frequented by expartes. It was at one of this joints that she met her husband. How she managed to land this man, I do not know. This couple were like night and day. Him: well educated, engineer at a multinational oil & gas company; sharp dresser, handsome but a bit on the older side. She: illiterate, cannot construct one sentence in proper English grammar, her skin is part black, part yellow, part brown with green veins popping, all in her attempt to look like someone from obodo oyinbo; zero dress sense – I had to stop her from leaving the compound a few times due to the clownish outfit she had on each time and she thinking she’s Elizabeth Taylor or so. Mchewww. I would run out of my flat soon as I spot her in any of those questionable outfits trying to leave the gate.

Me: Aunty, biko are you going out
Neighbor: Ehen Cinderella (Yup, she called me Cinderella when she was in a good mood), how na.
Me: Aunty,  I dey….. ke kwanu. Are you going out like that?
Neighbor: (cheesing ecstatically) You like am? Na my Oyinbo husband buy am come from obodo oyinbo. I be wan go wan parti with my friend for Presidential.
Me: Aunty, mba, you no go fit commot with this obodo oyinbo dress. Oya biko, go commot am now. No go disgrace us wey dey live for this compound.

Sighhhhhh, yup this was our conversation many a time.

Then one day o, just one day like that I came home and Sule the gate-man after locking the gates behind me said “Aunty, madam wey dey up don born.

Me: Born? Born wetin?
Sule: ahn…. Ahn…. Aunty, pickin nau.
Me: Pickin ke? She get belle before? I've not seen any belle on that woman before so where the pickin come from?
Sule: ahhh small madam, I no know oo. Na so she just come back home today come talk say she don born.

And so I stood there transfixed at the news I just heard. How could she have been pregnant and I would not know? She’s not plus size at all so there’s no way she could have hidden the pregnancy under her weight or body fat, so please where did this baby come from?

Anyways, as the small madam I was then I bought a box of diapers and a box of wipes and decided to go visit my neighbor. I entered and went straight to the bassinet, ready to coo at a delicious looking baby, but instead there was a baby wayyyyyyy darker in complexion that most babies by 2 naturally dark complexion people, staring right back at me. Aunty was married to an Oyinbo man so please where did this dark child come from? I honestly couldn't carry the baby cos I literally was in shock. Was I really about to find out a real life example of a cheating wife, who got knocked up & passing another man’s baby as her husbands’? Omo, it’s not every day I come across complex mouthwatering gist like this in my quiet life. My head was in overdrive as I watched her drinking gin like it was water. After a while I retreated to my house. She was not being talkative that day so there was no gist for me per the baby.

And then one day, just like she randomly does, she spots me in my kitchen through my open windows and goes “Cindellela, this heat no dey disturb you? Wia you dey abeg make we gist”.
Lollll, as the gist loving person that I was\still am, I decided to go outside my flat and sit with her around the flower beds under the shade and enjoying the evening breeze. Then she started:

Neighbor: Amerikana (another one of the many names she had for me), you no dey look my baby since I born am?
Me: Palms turned upward – aunty I dey look am o. The boy fine well well. E resemble im papa. You try.
Neighbor: (Smiling), Hummmm if you know the kain wahala this belle thing give me ehn; All these years wey my belle no gree born pickin for my Oga. Hummm na so my friend tell me about this baba, say make we go see am, say the baba e good for people wey wan born.
Me: (Ohhhhh sheeeeeet!! There’s a baba involved here? This story is about to get good) Aunty, biko wait make I get something. I return 30 seconds later with my plantain chips & half frozen bottle of Fanta (the one I had been hiding in the freezer for days like this). Lolll. Aunty oya kontinu.
Aunty: Na so the baba come mix some black thing for me o and some leaf wey green, come tell me say make I dey drink am every day, dey rub my belle too every day, say belle go enter.  After small time I come see say I don get belle.
Me: hummm.....na wa o......ehn..hen. 
Aunty: Na im na. I come happy when i get the belle. My oga happy sooooo te. Na so i come born the pickin and the boy come black like that. My oga dey ask say na why the pickin color be like that but your know all this oyinbo people and their qwesion ehn. I tell am say me i no know o.  People dey talk say na another man get the pickin. But i know say na that black thing the baba give me to drink make the baby come black like that. The thing enter my belle, come mix well with the baby skin, come make am black.  Amerikana, shebi you go school now? Dem no teach you for school say if you drink black tin, your pickin go black?
Me: Sighh (eyes closed & wondering WTH!) Aunty, dem no teach me that one ooooooo but I no too like science that time so maybe i no dey class when dem teach us.

This woman won't kill me o. So the black drink is why her child is dark – as in first cousins of charcoal, kinda dark, and his hair is soooooo nappy. As in not even one curl hiding anywhere on his head kinda nappy!. Arghhhhh aunty oo.

And please o, is it not obvious to the oyinbo husband that this is not his child?

I thought it wasn’t sha until when he was kidnapped by all these Naija Delta kidnappers for 3 weeks. The day he was released ehn, he left from the kidnappers den straight to the airport, and on to Europe –never to come back again.

The Oil & Gas Company showed up at our building a couple of days after he was released, and bundled Aunty and her child out of the house & onto the streets.
Yup, Oyinbo left aunty behind as in completely left her and the kid behind.

I guess whatever “magic” she had been using on him was no longer effective with him being away from her for 3 weeks.

I really don’t know why the bible commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Xoxo

Love is a beautiful thing. 

5 comments

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Anonymous
AUTHOR
March 5, 2015 at 11:09 AM delete

lollll Sav, how do you get this stories!!
I guess the Oyinbo knew this entire time and just played along.
So wait, how long were they married? She didn't have UK papers courtesy of him?

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Tomi
AUTHOR
March 5, 2015 at 11:15 AM delete

I was thinking the same with Annon above o. But this expartes in 9ja, majority of them are married and have families in the UK or EU as the case maybe so they are just using this women in 9ja to catch fun. And these girls also want fine looking half caste children so they won't waste time having kids.

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Savannah
AUTHOR
March 5, 2015 at 11:31 AM delete

Haaaa errm Tomi, i don't think people still use the word "half caste" o. Children of mixed race are now called "Bi-racial".
That being said, I totally agree with you about these men having families in their home country & just "catching fun" with the girls in Naija.

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Savannah
AUTHOR
March 5, 2015 at 11:37 AM delete

Lol.... in this my life I've seen and heard all sorts oo. That's why I have my frozen fanta always ready.
You know, I always wondered about that too. Aunty was quite the illiterate though so I don't know that she could have convinced the man to file for her or something or maybe she just knew he had another family back home or so. OMG though, so usually the man would travel for about 1 month to the UK on his yearly vacation and aunty would of course pack her bags and tell myself and the gate man they are going to the UK on vacation. I had no reason to doubt she was actually going on vacation with the man until the second supposed vacation when I saw her at a market really far from our house. She did see me and after recovering from her shock she just walked on like she didn't know me. Me sef, I walked on and we never spoke about it. So i'm pretty sure she never left the shores of Nigeria on her oyinbo's account.

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Anonymous
AUTHOR
March 7, 2015 at 8:58 AM delete

Ashawo no be work oooooo

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