How did you first realise the importance of money?
It was from making it. I was born and raised in a village in Kwara State. We were farmers in my family and planted crops like cassava, corn, and potato. On Saturdays, my friends and I went to the market to sell what we could and split the money among ourselves. My share was usually around ₦‎1k, and I usually gave it to my grandmother to use for the house and keep the rest for me.

What about your parents?
My father left the village to work as a driver in Lagos in 1993. But in 2000, he asked me to go live with his mother. He wanted someone to be with her.

So I was working on her farm and going to school. But I stopped school after primary school.

Did you want to?
I don’t even know. My father had two wives and six children. We were just managing, so going to school wasn’t what anyone talked about like that. Everyone just worked on the farms. Even when I left the village for Lagos, it was to go and work.

When did you leave?
2003. My father said I should come, and he helped me find a place to live and a job with one of his friends who sold fabric and clothes at a market. I was a salesgirl for the woman, and she paid me ₦10k/month.

I left the place after a year.

Why?
In 2004, I found out I was pregnant. The father of the child and I agreed to move in together. We didn’t do much. He just met my parents, and we did a little introduction before moving into his once.

What did he do for money?
Police work. And because he had a job and was earning money, he didn’t want me to work. When I asked for a reason, he said he didn’t want me to work for anyone. He promised to open a shop for me, and I believed him. So I stayed at home without a job for two years.

I was getting some money from him. Before he went out every morning, he’d give me ₦500 – ₦1k to cook something.

I don’t know how much he was earning because he never told me, so I’m not sure if he could have done more. But he was leaving money for feeding and paying our house rent.

Did you have arguments about money?
Sometimes. If we fought, we settled it. Thank God we didn’t have too many responsibilities, so it was easy to manage the money he left.

What about the child you were pregnant with?
I lost the pregnancy.

Eish. I’m sorry
Thank you. But I got pregnant again and gave birth to my first child in 2006. There was one more person to worry about; I decided to find a job since my husband still didn’t set up the shop he promised.

I got a job as a cleaner in a school. By fire, force and plenty of begging, my husband reluctantly agreed to allow me to do the job. I told him I couldn’t just sit at home anymore.

How much did the job pay?
₦5k. I don’t know why my husband didn’t want me to work because the money I started earning at the job was used to support him and the house. One person cannot do everything.

Now that I had a job, he didn’t have to give me money every day anymore. But I left the job in 2008 when I was pregnant with my second child.

How were you managing when you left?
I was back to living on whatever the children’s father gave us. Nothing after that. He was still saying that he’d open the shop for me, but he did everything by mouth. It never happened.

About the time I started thinking about finding another job, I found out that I was pregnant again. This was in 2010, and I was at home for another two years before I found another cleaning job in 2012.

How did you find that job?
I started telling everyone around that I was looking for work and someone introduced me to a family. I’ve been with them since. When I started, I was going there to clean the house and wash their clothes once a week, and they were paying me ₦10k/month.

I was also working for other people during the week. After calculating everything, I was making up to ₦40k/month.

Was this enough to take care of the house and the kids?
We weren’t paying school fees because the kids were in public schools. But I was paying for their feeding, school books and uniform. My husband was taking care of the rent. On months when we didn’t have a lot to spend money on, I saved ₦10k. However, there were always reasons to touch the money and it never grew.

As the years passed, we were managing and the kids were growing older. Everything was fine until my husband started misbehaving and picking fights with me.

Why? What happened?
He never wanted me to have a job, even though he saw what the money did for us. When I didn’t stop, he decided that I was having affairs and seeing other men. I think he was just jealous because where was the time to do that?

He’d been fighting me for years, but it got worse in 2020. Every day, he’d listen to my calls to see who I was speaking to. Most times, these people just wanted to give me work. Then he started checking my phone at night when I was sleeping. To him, everybody that called me was my “boyfriend”.

Omo
There was a time he sent me and the kids out in the middle of the night, but we had no place to go at that time. When it was morning, I took my kids to my father’s house, and we stayed there for two weeks.

Where did you go from there?
Back to his house. Our families settled the fight, but it didn’t end there. Sometimes, he’d wake me up in the middle of the night and force me to swear that I wasn’t cheating on him. At some point, he even accused me of blocking his destiny because of my affairs.

That’s a lot
It was. When he told me to leave his house again in 2021, I knew I wasn’t going back. Even his parents said I should leave the house for him because they were tired of his wahala. I carried my load, my three children and left.

I’m sorry. But where did you go?
We stayed with one of my sisters for a few weeks. But she also started doing somehow, so the children and I had to leave. I had only one option left.

Read full story: https://www.zikoko.com/money/the-nairalife-of-a-low-income-cleaner-nanny/