Winny's Story

My name is Winny (for winner). But I feel that “loony” (for loser) would have been better suited name for me. You see, I was born a few days before my father had died in a car accident. I grew up with my widowed mother and three siblings who think I brought a bad luck to my family. They never told in those words, but I knew that’s what they had in their mind. To give you an example, they would tell me things like “well, I at least had a father for a while” and “I’m not the one wondering how my father looked”, etc.

They would also gather together and talk about me when they thought I was not around and would stop when I walk in suddenly. Their faces used to be red on those occasions and they looked uneasy when I asked, “why did you stop talking, go on. Let me hear what you are talking about”.

However, my mother was exceptionally good to me! She took my side whenever my siblings and I got into arguments and defended me even when I was wrong. I guess, she was sorry for me and felt the need to protect me!

I was married off very young; I was barely 16 years old at the time. I remember my mother and a few relative-ladies talking about my future husband, “He is so good; we can’t let him go. Our Winny is so lucky to find such a man...”

My husband was born in an elite family and he had already built good reputation of his own by the time we were engaged. He was also good looking and I was infatuated with his look the first time I saw him. I was mesmerized by the way he looked at me and asked me questions that were not even relevant, come to think of it!

He was a master’s student at a prestigious university; my mother had told me. He was living in his university’s dormitory, which was a day away from where his family lived. And, living in a university dormitory was a prestigious thing that none of my relatives could afford back then.

However, as I got to know him better and understood his intensions of marrying me --a girl who was 10 years younger to him, born in the family who had much lower status than his own--I felt that I was being used!

Soon after we’re married, my husband left home for America. I stayed behind in Nigeria with his family for a year and then joined him. The next year our daughter was born and a year later our son came along.

My husband was an unusual lad, and in a sense, he still is. He grew up admiring the “queen’s traditions” in England and tries living much the same way as the rich “English” man would. For instance, he wears tailor-made clothes made in England and France; follows the British table manners and uses fork and knife to eat his “Nigerian-foods”. His colleagues are mostly from England or other European countries. He is very conceited and doesn’t treat people politely, but expects others to be ‘civilized’ with him.

He had rented two bedrooms apartment in America when I joined him. He used one of them as his private-bed-room where children were not allowed to visit.

My husband expected our children to be quiet and polite, as he believed that “children should be seen; not heard”. He decided that our daughter ought to be a doctor and son an engineer. Any other career was not acceptable to him. However, responsibility of raising them and making sure they become what my husband expected was totally left on me.

Raising children in the foreign country was hard in the sense that I had no real help when I needed it and since my husband was raised in the family where even his female family members didn’t take part in the household chores, I didn’t expect him to help me around the household. That was okay, too, since I didn’t have much education and was taught to cook and manage household activities before I left Nigeria.

The problems I faced were related to children’s discipline. They listened to me and did pretty much what I told them to do, but they didn’t understand the dual-rules (double standards) imposed upon them by their father. They didn’t comprehend why their father would say he was a ‘progressive English man’, but expect his family to behave much like the traditional Nigerian households, and I had hard time explaining to them.

My husband had started teaching at a university by the time our children started their school, so my husband got up, ate his breakfast, went to teach, came home and expected his dinner ready to be served. He demanded all of these things be done on time by reminding me constantly, “I’m talking about the English time, okay?”

My husband never served his food by himself or to us. On the dinner table he would ask our son and daughter how they were doing in their school. Then he would turn to me and ask how their class marks were. I would let him know their marks, sometimes adding a few more on to what they actually had received. With that, my husband would be satisfied and go about his business.

The point of writing all this is that my husband only cared about his children’s marks but not other things that were equally important to them. For example, he never knew when our children were ill or were bullied in their school. He didn’t think social skills such as the mixing up with their peers and participating in extracurricular activities were important to them. This led our children to think that other things were not important as long as they got good marks in their school.

Our children eventually made their father’s dreams reality: Our daughter became a family physician and our son an engineer. Few years after that, they got married and settled down. But then, things started to fall a part!

Our daughter’s boyfriend had married her for her money. It was apparent to her only after she had conceived his child. By then, she had already bought him a Yamaha (motorcycle), a Lexus (car) and a whole lot of tailor made suits and, he was demanding for more. Then she found out that he’d been seeing another woman all these years. She was heartbroken to find out that the man she thought was her lover was using her to get what he couldn’t afford to buy for himself.

Our son had married with his high school sweetheart, who was a bit overweight, but now she is over the board and our son is afraid to suggest her any medical or dietary solutions to control her body with the fear that she might be offended. The hardest thing for me to see is our obese grandchildren. All of them are excessively overweight. Imagining their life when they get older makes me giddy!

Our grandchildren are never told “no, you can’t do it,” and when I point this out to our son and daughter their answer is “mom, we don’t want to raise our children like a bird in a cage; they’ll be fine when they grow up”!