When Arinola’s (36) husband died of lung cancer, just two weeks after she gave birth to their son, she expected his family to support her as she grieved. Instead, they accused her of witchcraft, claimed her son wasn’t her husband’s child, and stripped their home of everything they owned.
This is Arinola’s Story As Told To Sofiyah
My husband, Olu*, was an orphan, and because he was the first son and grandchild in both parents’ families, he had to take on a lot of familial responsibilities before he even turned eighteen. Because of this, everyone began to feel entitled to him, his money, and his time, and I guess that was one of the reasons they began to detest me even before I married him.
As Olu’s girlfriend, I faced a lot of blink-and-you-miss-it passive aggressiveness from his family, especially his siblings. Right from the moment he introduced me to them, I could feel the coldness radiating from them. They acted like I was dirt under their shoes; they would often mispronounce my name and occasionally make snide jokes about me being a mere HnD holder. Around Olu, they were respectful, but when he was out of sight, they would make subtle mockery until I was near tears.
I felt like I couldn’t tell Olu about it because he loved his siblings very much. When I told my mum, she said that was how my father’s siblings had acted towards her before, but now they like her, and she advised me to give them time to get used to me. I listened to her advice and, even in the face of all the meanness, did my best to be nice to his family. That’s something I regret even to this day.
The day after Olu proposed to me, I remember my eldest sister, Lola*, sitting me down in our shared room to tell me to at least get acclimatised to the ways of his household for at least a year before deciding to get pregnant, because I might never know what might happen. Honestly, I should have listened to her instead of getting pregnant three months into our marriage. If I had, maybe Olu’s sudden cancer diagnosis wouldn’t have completely changed my life as it did.
It was lung cancer. Olu had been experiencing some worrying symptoms, like his blood-streaked coughs, and, concerned, I told him to go to the hospital because I thought it was going to be something curable, but he came home and informed me that he had been diagnosed with second-stage lung cancer. I remember being six months along in my pregnancy and going mute for an hour after he told me about his diagnosis. I didn’t want to cry because he was crying, and even though it seemed selfish of me, all I could think about was the fate of our child and me. I’d believed that getting married to Olu would make his family’s hearts soften towards me, but it didn’t work like that. They still hated me, and a part of me already predicted the amount of shege I would endure if Olu’s condition got worse.
From the day we found out about his diagnosis, my perfectly normal life capsized. Suddenly, I was drowning. Before I knew it, his condition got worse, and he had to be at the hospital all the time. All our savings and any little money we had went into his treatments. I became someone who had to beg people for money because Olu’s family, who should have been there for him, kept lying to me, saying they didn’t have any money to give me. They were completely useless and barely visited the hospital. Thank God for people at Olu’s workplace and my family, who kept giving me the money that the hospital requested or else I would have been completely helpless. It’s a shame that all that money we put into ensuring Olu would survive was useless, though, because just two weeks after giving birth to our son, Olu died, and my journey into hell started.
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It was like Olu’s family was waiting for their son to die so they could finally express their hatred toward me. My husband’s body was not even cold in the ground; I was still in post-birth pains and grieving the love of my life, who could barely even hold his child before he died. I thought I would be allowed at least two months before family wahala entered the mix, but they didn’t even give me the grace.
After Olu’s burial, his family started accusing me of the most ridiculous things. At first, it was killing my husband, saying that he was completely healthy before I stepped into his life, and how did his condition worsen so quickly? Somehow, they accused me of witchcraft. I was in the throes of Post-Partum Depression, and yet I had to face all those accusations. At the time, my siblings, who would have faced my in-laws head-on, had already relocated abroad, and my parents were honestly just concerned with keeping my child and me alive.
Every day I woke up, there was always someone from Olu’s family in the house. I didn’t even know they had somehow found a way to duplicate our house keys so they could enter whenever they wanted. They expected me, in my state, to cater to them, and when my mum gently reminded them that I’m a new mother who just lost her husband, they would make it about them and ask us if they also didn’t lose someone.
Their mistreatment got worse, and the rumours went from me killing my husband with witchcraft to my son not being Olu’s child because, in their words, he didn’t look like him. They called family meetings on my head and kept telling me to confess to it. I don’t remember a lot of what happened in the months after my husband’s death because I was completely numb to everything. I could barely give my son the attention he deserved in those months, so when they called family meetings, I would just keep quiet and let my mum lead. Every day, it was always a new thing with them, but my mum and I knew they were trying to find something to pin me with because they wanted to take Olu’s properties. I know they were particularly resentful that Olu and I had a large amount of money saved for our son’s upkeep, and that I was the only one who could access it. The thing is, I understand that some families get cruel and greedy after the death of a family member, but the fact that they couldn’t hide it at all? It felt like they were waiting for him to die so they could take all his things and deny my son and me.
The witch hunt continued, and as everything became overwhelming, I decided to visit my aunt, who lived two states away. That was the first time since my husband died that I had anything close to peace, and it was only when I experienced that peace that I allowed myself to mourn my husband. It was genuinely so cathartic, and after crying all the tears I could, I reached a strange sense of acceptance. Maybe that was why, when I got back home a week later to find out that Olu’s family had raided the entire house in my absence, I wasn’t too surprised or angry. They took everything down to the generator, and the only things left in the house were me and my child’s belongings.
I’d already made peace with the fact that they were horrible human beings, and I decided in that moment that people who were capable of causing me more pain when I was already in a dark place do not deserve any attention in my mind. I moved back to my parents’ house, and it was there that I finally had the time to care for my son the way he deserved. I deleted all my in-laws’ contact numbers and focused on healing and finding a job that would sustain me and my child.
A year into living with my parents, my brother, who had already settled down in the United Kingdom, suggested that my son and I come live with him, and he even offered to cover all the bills. I agreed immediately because, frankly, being in Nigeria just constantly reminded me of all the what-could-have-beens with Olu. I needed a fresh start, so I agreed to join him, and in four or five months, my son and I said goodbye to Nigeria.
It has been about eight years since I left the country, and around my fourth year in the UK, my in-laws somehow found my contact number and have been harassing me. They either call to beg for money (which is ridiculous because what money did they put in my hands?) or tell me that they want to see their brother’s son. When I blocked them, they began to harass my parents and even my siblings. It was really pathetic to see them do that, and I was just glad I was no longer in the country, because I know they’re capable of finding me at my house. To me, my in-laws belong to my past, and even though they still occasionally find a way to reach me, I am determined to forget them and the pain they caused me.
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