Storytime: The Day My Nigerian Mother Caught Me Sneaking Out of the House

You see those scenes you see in Hollywood movies – those scenes were a fine boy will come and throw stone at the window of the girl he likes, then the girl herself will slide open her window, sneak out with the boy and go out for the whole night - Don’t ever try it in a Nigerian household!

I learnt this the hard way.

This happened when I was around 18/19. I was going to university in the UK at the time and there was this Nigerian boy I met there that I liked so we started talking. From talking, we slowly developed feelings, and from feelings it turned into dating. All the while in the UK, our dating and going out was fine. Until we came back to Nigeria.

At the time I lived with my parents like most students that age do. My mum was very strict and didn’t want to hear peem about me talking to man. And so every time my boyfriend Desire wanted to see me, I would have to find one excuse or the other to go out: either I was going to visit a friend, I was going to cinema. It was always one story or the other.

Then, one day I don’t know what possessed me oh. I decided to sneak out of the house. AT NIGHT. Without telling any of my parents.

Hmm, what followed next is like something out of Nigerian film.

That night, as soon as me and Desire went out, it was not even up to ten minutes later, I got a phone call from my mother. I didn't pick. She called me again, I still didn't pick. She called me AGAIN, this time I got an SMS asking where I was. Desire convinced me not to answer her. He told me to just switch off my phone and enjoy myself for the night because as he put it - “you’re already in trouble. If you go back now or you go back later, it’s still trouble.”

So me too, I made the decision to switch off my phone and completely ignore my mother for the entire night.

Huge. Mistake!

When I tell you that by the time Desire and I drove back, the number of cars that were packed in front of my house, I still can't believe it - it was at least 30 cars, I swear. All the lights in my house were on. Mind you, it was around maybe 2 a.m. in the morning.

Hmm. To say that I was scared to enter the house is an understatement. I didn’t even know where to begin, whether I should cry or I should just not enter at all. Which kind of story was I going to concoct now...although do you want to know something that is funny - I actually thought about lying that I was kidnapped 🤣. Desire will you believe simply told me “good luck”, dropped me, and then drove off on his way. Men. Even then - unreliable!

See ehn, when I stepped foot into that house, the way my heart was beating. Come and see the people! It was like every single woman that I have ever met in my life. Every woman that goes to my church, every woman my mother works with, so many families that I knew gathered inside our living room looking very shocked, relieved, and surprised to see me.

Then I saw my mom and my mom saw me. Come and see the way she FLEW to meet me. “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” she kept on shouting, over and over again. I didn’t even know what to say. She just kept on shouting.

Eventually, my father came and calmed her down a bit. He then asked me where I'd been and something about his calmness and just the way he asked it - I just confessed that I had gone out with a friend.

The slap I received! I never expected it, I couldn't have seen it coming. It was my mother and prior to that, she had not physically hit me in YEARS. Before I could even recover from the first slap, another one landed. Ha! I've never seen her so angry. Eventually, everybody rushed in and calmed her down, some people just carried me to a different part of the house. I just kept on crying. It was even worse cuz everybody there just kept on asking me why - why didn't you tell your mother? Why would you do a thing like this?

I didn't even know what to say, I just kept crying.

Finally though all the chaos calmed down and everybody cleared from the house. My mother didn’t talk to me for the entire day, in fact it could have been two days but I went to her room and really apologized to her.

She really made me feel bad. She told me about how she couldn’t stop crying and was just calling everybody. Even I didn't know when I started to cry.

Now, I have my own daughter, a little girl and I understand my mother's pain. I beg, the moral of this story is: No matter how strict and annoying you think your parents are, it is better to tell them about your whereabouts than to just go out and do whatever you want your own way. Nobody worries about you the way your mother worries about you. Please, help our hearts. I beg. I made such a terrible mistake when I was young and I can't even imagine how I would react now if my daughter did such to me.

That’s All.

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