Every week, Zikoko spotlights the unfiltered stories of women navigating life, love, identity and everything in between.
What She Said will give women the mic to speak freely, honestly and openly, without shame about sex, politics, family, survival, and everything else life throws our way.
Tari*, is 48, a mother of four, and the owner of two thriving frozen food stores that her husband does not know the full details of, even now. She married young, dropped out of university, and spent the better part of two decades watching one man specifically, make decisions about her life while she looked for gaps to breathe in. This is what she said.
Can you tell us about yourself?
I am Tari. I am 48 years old and I am from Bayelsa but I do not live there. I’d rather not say where. I am married and I have four daughters. I run two frozen food businesses or cold rooms and I have other things on the side. I am a busy woman. I like being busy. Keeping still was never good for me.
When did you get married?
I was twenty. He was introduced to my family through mutual friends. He was in his early thirties, established, well to do. He owned a shipping company and dabbled in real estate. By every measure the people around me were using, he was a good catch. I did not exactly choose him the way people choose things nowadays. It was more like, this is what happens next. You finish school, you find a good man, you marry. I was in my final year when we met and before that year was over I had dropped out and I was pregnant with my first child.
Why did you drop out?
He asked me to. And the people around me at the time thought it made sense. Your husband is providing, why do you need the degree? I was twenty years old. I did not exactly think I could fight. So, I left.
Hmm. What were those early years of the marriage like?
He was very generous in the beginning. I come from a family that needed, and when I married him I was able to do things for my siblings, pay for their education, support them in ways I was proud of. That part I do not regret.
The marriage gave me the ability to show up for the people I loved. But even then, he was a particular kind of man. Very much the head. Very much in charge. You moved around him. His church, his schedule, his decisions. Barely any room for you.
Eventually, we had three more children.
So you had four children together?
Yes, four girls. And he never let me forget that they were girls. He wanted a son and I never gave him one. He said it enough times in enough ways that it became background noise in the house.
Eventually he had his son, with another woman, while we were still married. I will not go into how that period felt. I will just say it happened and I remained. But I did leave him though, twice.
You left twice? Why?
Once in my mid twenties and again in my thirties. Both times I left the children behind. That is the thing my daughters hold onto and I understand why. He was not a kind man and I left them in that house. But I also could not take four children with nowhere to go and no degree to my name. What I would have done with them I do not know. I came back both times, the second time mostly because of them and partly because the world outside that house was harder than I expected without qualifications and without money that was mine.
I’m sorry. Did you ever decide to start doing something of your own?
Yes, it’s the main reason I left the first time. We were living in a large estate at the time and I noticed that nobody in the estate sold frozen foods. If you needed fish or chicken you had to leave entirely. I saw an opportunity. I spoke to my husband and he agreed. We got a big freezer, put it in the store room of the house, and I started. He even supplied some of the stock at a discount sometimes because of his shipping business. I printed fliers and my daughters walked the estate one Saturday morning and put them on every gate. I still think about that Saturday. How excited I was.
How did it go?
Better than I expected. Almost immediately, people came and kept coming because they genuinely needed what I was selling. Within a few months I had regulars, I was managing stock properly, I was making real money. For the first time since I dropped out I felt like I was doing something that was mine.
What happened?
My husband happened. Slowly, the way he did everything. It started with the children coming to take things from my stock because something had run out in the main house. He would tell them to take from my store and he would pay me back. He never paid me back. Not once. And when I brought it up he would get disgruntled and say things like, am I not the one who bought the freezer? As if the freezer was the business and not everything I had built around it. He kept doing it until there was nothing left to sustain the stock. The business collapsed.
What did you do after that?
I left the house. That was the first time. I came back about a year later and for a while I worked in his office as his manager because it was the only way I could have income without a degree. But I always knew I wanted my own thing again. Eventually I had another difficult conversation with him and made him promise that what happened the first time would never happen again. He agreed. I started over.
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Did you believe him?
I wanted to. I also did not have many other options at the time so I took the agreement and built anyway. And for a while it was good again. The business grew. I also started a charity around that time with other married women and mothers. We had regular meetings, we were doing real work in the community. That period, even inside an unhappy marriage, I felt like myself.
That’s really good. Isn’t it?
It was at the time. Two, maybe three years later, the same pattern started again. Taking from the stock, promising to replace and not replacing. This time he was more deliberate about it, sometimes intentionally not buying provisions for the house so the children would have to come to my store. What was I supposed to do, let them go without? He used my children to drain my business and he knew exactly what he was doing. When he had finished that, he told me I had to shut down the charity as well. His church had apparently decided it was not good for me to be doing it. That it was stealing his light.
How did that feel?
Like the floor came out from under me. The business I could almost survive losing again. But the charity was something I had built with other women, something that was making a difference, and he took it because a pastor told him it made him look bad. I shut it down. I stayed. I had already left those children once and I was not doing it again and I could not take them with me. So I became a housewife and I stayed that way for four, five years.
What did those years look like?
My children watched me become someone they did not recognise. My friends watched it. My siblings watched it. I was there physically but something in me had gone very quiet. I stopped being someone who did things and became someone things were done to. I do not like to think about that period of my life too much.
I’m sorry. Did anything change?
Yes. First, I left again. I could not look at him and I was useless around my children but after a few months of what felt like proper suffering and deeply missing my children, worst of all, having them call me again and again because he would hit them, I just had to go back. Then maybe 7 months later, my people did their thing. That is the only way to say it. My siblings, who I had spent years supporting, and the women from the charity group who had remained my friends even after I had to shut everything down had quietly, without telling me, found a store. On the other side of town, far from my husband’s house, far from his office, far from any of his properties. They put it in my name. They furnished it, stocked it, made it ready. And then they showed it to me on my birthday.
What was that moment like?
I dropped to my knees on the floor of that store and I cried for a long time. Hot tears. I could not speak for a while. These people had taken their own money and their own time and built me something because they had watched me disappear and they refused to let that be the end of my story. My siblings ran the store when I could not be there. For a long time we had to be very careful about who knew what because my husband could not find out. I told him I was taking a catering course or something. I do not even remember the exact lie. He did not ask too many questions because by then he had stopped being particularly interested in what I was doing.
How did the business do?
Where do I even begin? It did very well. The location was good and I knew how to do this by then. Within a year I had a sales rep and a manager. A year after that I opened a second store. I have had both for over five years now. I also started putting money into other things because I learned from losing everything twice that one stream is not enough. I do some small real estate now, buying and selling. I also do bulk supply on the side, connecting buyers to sellers for food items. Nothing dramatic but it adds up and it is mine.
And the charity?
It is still running. I just do not show my face. I work behind the scenes, provide support, help with logistics. My husband thinks it ended years ago. It did not.
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Did he ever find out about the store?
About a year ago he did. Someone saw me or something slipped. He was furious. How dare I not tell him, who did I think I was, all of that. And then he moved towards me like he was going to hit me, like he always did when he was very angry.
What did you do?
I told him directly, you can beat me black and blue but the moment you lay a hand on me I will leave this house with my children and you will never see any of us again. I do not need your money. You have nothing to hold me here. We can continue this arrangement we call a marriage or you can start a war. I am ready. My brothers are ready.
How did he respond?
He did nothing. He stood there and did nothing. And we have lived in a kind of cold cordial arrangement ever since. He does not bother me. I do not bother him. We share a house.
Why not just leave?
This is my life. These are my children, my home, the years I have put into this place. I will leave if I must. But right now I am okay. I have my business, I have my people, I have my money. The thing he always used to control me was that I had nothing of my own. I have things of my own now. That changes what staying means.
What do you want someone reading this to take away?
Build anyway. Even when they take it. Even when you have to start again and again. Find your people and let them find you. I would not have any of this without the ones who refused to watch me disappear. That is the whole story really. Not what he did but what they did for me.
*Names have been changed.
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