“I don’t want to put our stuff out there. Yes I am scared. I should be scared because of the way marriages nowadays go. My mum tells me to cover my yam. Take care of my business. On his birthday, I post on Instagram but for anniversaries, we like to celebrate it in-house, with the kids.
We have been married for six years but been together ten years.
On what she does differently to make her marriage work, she said: “I try to identify the things we have in common and of course accentuate them. I work more on those things. We can’t be the same. I think it would be boring. It’s nice to complement each other but for the things that we have in common, we bond over that and we let it glue us more and more together. And for the differences, we try and talk about them. Believe me, marriage is not easy but its very fulfilling.”
On her husband and house chores: “He does, he takes care of the kids. I like that about him. It’s not a typical Nigerian male thing to do but I think our generation is changing. That dichotomy between a man’s role and a woman’s role, they are merging more and more now and it’s great because it really takes two. It takes two of you to create that child; it takes two of you to take care of that child. It’s not just one person’s job. Even with finances, if you as the mom are capable of doing it, then do it.
And for the husband, if your wife is ill and she’s tired, say ‘oh babe, take a break, let me take care of the kids.’ You should be like that. I think we are just at odds with the old way of doing things, they way our parents used to, the way we want to do things. But I think we just need to forge a new chapter. We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
On speaking Yoruba fluently: “A little bit, but I understand it very well. When I speak Yoruba, it’s terrible. Sometimes they call me for Yoruba films and I tell them, you want to laugh at me abi.
For my husband, he grew up abroad. He went to school abroad. He understands it but his speaking is just as bad as mine. I grew up in Lagos so being respectful is second nature to me so I think it really helped.
On her spirituality: “Oh yes, I’ve even grown between then and now. I’m even much more spiritual now. I think it started from the time I had locks. People started to know that this is somebody who’s obviously very conscious. I’ve always been conscious. When I found my consciousness, I just tried to keep on reading more, asking questions and being interested in other religions and trying to understand people better. And it’s brought me to where I am right now. I’m very accepting, very calm and I love it. I hope that I continue to grow spiritually because we grow from stage to stage. I don’t want to stay stagnant in any way.
