This week’s What She Said is Modupe Ehirim, a 62-year-old Nigerian woman. She talks about growing up in a close-knit family, choosing to marry rather than continue with her education in the UK and not knowing how to make friends until she was 50.

Let’s start from the beginning.
When I look back now, my parent’s relationship with the world and then with us formed a significant foundation for my life. My father lost his parents before he was 10, so he had to figure out life by himself. My mother’s parents left their hometown for Jos, so they were removed from their local culture. When my parents started a family in Lagos, they started a culture of their own.

What was the culture like?
In a nuclear family, you have to get on well because you only have your parents and siblings. I have four siblings, and if I reported any to my mum for offending me, she would hear me and my sibling out. She would show us how we both contributed to the problem.

I was encouraged to read. My mom would say books are good because if there’s anything you want to do, and you don’t know how to or can’t find somebody to show you how to, you’ll find it in a book. My parents also knew that they couldn’t give us what they didn’t have, so everytime we had an obstacle they didn’t have answers to, they told us to figure it out and come back with what we found to make further decisions.

Were there any downsides to this?
The only downside of being brought up so close-knit was that I didn’t know how to connect with people. So I didn’t have any close friends until I was about 50 years old.

What did you have?
Just people. In the 60s and 70s, I went to a primary school that was close to home in Surulere. Schools then were for the locality, so everybody in that school came from the area. It was so close-knit that, if you did something, the headmaster would call your name with the school loudspeaker and the community would scold you even before your parents did.

So what happened after primary school?
I was one of the first people to go to secondary school from Standard 4; it used to be up to Standard 6, which meant you spent 8 years in primary school. But the government wanted to see if six years of primary school education would hurt students, and I was one of the first set that tried it. I did the common entrance and passed, then I went to Queens School, Ibadan.

How did moving away from your home and community feel?
I’d never been with other people before in my life, but it helped that I came from the kind of home that I came from — though I missed home, I never forgot where I came from. I was overwhelmed by some of the things I saw.

Like what?
The first day I went into the dining hall, I was laughed at for not knowing how to use the cutlery. That made me feel bad. I looked at them and wondered what kind of people would treat someone that way. I was also much younger than my mates and very tall. Anytime we had an outing, we were always made to stand according to our height. By the time they counted, I almost always got left out.

Was any part of school good?
Oh yes. Everything else was good. School taught me to live with other people, and we learnt how to be responsible.

When it was time to go to university, as they dealt with most things in my life, my parents said, “Okay, you know what? We’re not knowledgeable in this area. Go find out how they’re doing it and then come tell us so we can look at it together and have a plan of action.” When I was filling my forms, I looked at the courses and looked at the subjects I liked. I didn’t like writing, I didn’t want history, bible knowledge, economics or any course that required you to write notes, but I loved maths and reading.

Continue: https://www.zikoko.com/her/what-she-said-i-almost-left-my-husband-because-he-was-an-unbeliever/

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