recently spoke with a number of ladies who have had a not-so-pleasant expereince of catching their husbands sleeping with their maids. First up is Mrs. Adedolapo, a mother
of two. She told Punch that she became certain her husband was sleeping
with her help when the very respectful 22-year-old housemaid she
brought into her home in February 2015 started to “look at me
from the end of her nose.”
She said:
“The
main reason I told the girl to come work for me in the first place was
because she was very respectful. I met her when I went for an outreach
in Yenagoa and brought her to Lagos.
“She
did everything perfectly; she was very nice and treated my children
well. But after six months, I noticed that if I walked in and she
greeted me by kneeling, she would mouth a welcome to my husband with her
back turned. I also realised that this did not seem to bother my
husband.
Later I realised that
her attitude toward me also changed. All the respect went out of the
window. Anytime she did something wrong and I got angry, she looked at
me as if I was a mere chicken. I also noticed that my husband no longer
spoke to her in my presence. If I told her to do something and I scolded
her for doing it wrongly, rather than my husband to add his voice, he
would look away.
I noticed that
she no longer respected or feared my husband anymore. I became really
sure something was going on between both of them when I noticed she
cooked when we had left the house one day. I got home that evening and
asked why she cooked again.
She
said oga (my husband) came home in the afternoon and was hungry and she
had to cook for him. My husband had never been in the habit of coming
home from work to eat in the afternoon. I sent her packing in August
last year.”
Mrs. Adedolapo, who works in a travel agency,
said she did not confront her husband and neither did she give him any
explanation as to why she sent the housemaid packing soon after.
“The surprising thing is that he never asked me why I sent the lady away,” she said.
SECOND
LADY works with a new generation bank in Lagos. She told pUNCH that she
had been married for 10 years until 2014 when she separated from her
husband. Reason? Her husband was sleeping with their housemaid too.
“We
have been on this matter now for almost two years. Our families have
been trying to settle the matter. But if I forgive him, it is hard to
forget. If I could erase what he did from my mind, then I would forgive
him completely,” the woman said.
She called herself Mrs. AngryNaijaWoman. She said she would prefer to be referred to as that in this report.
Mrs. AngryNaijaWoman told Punch that she first noticed the sign of
trouble when she realised that her housemaid was showing symptoms of
pregnancy.
“The girl was 24 at the time.
She had been with us for three years. The first week I started noticing
some physical changes in her body, I jokingly told her that I hoped she
was not pregnant. She said no. But by the third week, I was sure
something was not right. So, I took her for a test and it was confirmed
that she was pregnant.
I was
shocked. I took her home and sat her down to tell me who impregnated
her. She first gave the name of a younger cousin of my husband’s, who
was staying with us for some time.
I
informed my husband and we summoned his cousin, because he had got his
own accommodation not long before that. All this while, I was agonising
over how my housemaid could be pregnant under our noses, my husband too
expressed surprise.
When my
husband’s cousin came and we told him what the housemaid had said, he
denied flatly that he was responsible for the pregnancy. But
surprisingly, he told me that he had actually slept with her a number of
times but always ensured he wore condom.
We
kept pestering the lady for answers, asking her if any other person was
involved. I decided to calm down and took her inside to ask her
privately. That was when she told me that my husband also slept with
her. I beat the hell out of her but she kept repeating that she was
telling the truth.
I confronted
my husband and he too pounced on the lady and started beating her for
lying against him. Yet, she maintained her stand. I threatened my
husband that we would let the lady give birth and do a DNA test on her
child. But my friend told me that if I did that, it would be like
shooting myself in the foot. I personally took the lady for an abortion
and sent her packing afterwards.”
Mrs.AngryNaijaWoman told Punch that the marriage has been strained ever since.
She said even though her husband continued to deny the accusation, she
knew in her heart that the housemaid was telling the truth.
Asked why she took the maid for an abortion, she said she did not want
to wait to find out the father of the child between her husband and his
cousin.
“It was clear they were both sleeping with the maid without the other knowing,” she said.
As harsh as it may sound, Mrs. AngryNaijaWoman’s case is one that has become all too common.
THIRD WOMAN, a middle-aged woman named Kabirat Jimoh, in November 2015
approached the Oshodi Customary Court in Lagos over her husband’s
cavorting with their housemaid. But the husband allegedly took the
affair a notch higher.
Kabirat was in tears as she told the
court that her husband, Sefiu, had to abandon his matrimonial home
altogether and moved in with the housemaid in an apartment he rented for
the teenager.
Kabirat said he allegedly abandoned her and their three children to live in a one-room apartment.
She told the court that they had been married for 17 years. She said
she had travelled briefly when her husband started sleeping with the
girl. According to her, she only knew something was going on between the
two of them when the girl became insolent.
“Whenever
I asked her to do a chore, she would look me in the eye and tell me
that she was tired. Whenever I threatened to take her back to our
village, my husband would threaten to deal with me,” she said.
However,
with all these kind stories as the backdrop, Saturday PUNCH found out
ways many career women are devising to prevent ‘sexcapades’ between
their housemaids and husbands.
Saturday PUNCH spoke with Mrs.
Rachael Fasina, who explained that when she found out that many
housemaids deliberately go out of their way to seduce their bosses’
husbands, she decided never to leave her housemaid alone at home.
“When
I took the children to school in the morning, I took her along with me
to work. She would stay in the office till we closed and we went home
together. I thought it was better not to give chance to any temptation.
But I had to later let her go because people advised that there was no
point keeping her if I could not leave her alone at home,” she said.
Fasina
said she later opted for a middle-aged house help, who comes around the
house in the morning and leaves at night because “that is safer.”
“I don’t want a young lady that would come and wear mini-skirts in my house,” she said.
Another
career woman, told Punch that if a man does not have sexual restraints,
even the wife’s relations would not be off limit to him.
“If I am going to take a relation as housemaid, I would rather take my husband’s relation,” the woman said.