Aunty Shalewa was my mother’s cousin and she died on her knees.
She was a beautiful woman, the prettiest in her family.
I went to live with her when she came back to Nigeria after so many years abroad.
You see, her parents also relocated back to Nigeria in the early 1990s. They felt that aunt was getting too old and wasn’t talking about marriage again. They wanted her to find a good man in Nigeria before she got too old for marriage. So they deceived her into coming back. Her parents had strong connections in medical world and they used it to lure her back to Nigeria with a juicy job she couldn’t say no to.
She was 38 years old, then, and spoke with a British accent, having lived abroad all her life. I found it at first difficult to understand what she was saying when I first began to live with her somewhere on the island. After some time, we kind of jelled, and I got used to understanding her. She was fun.
My aunty didn’t need much persuation because you see, I think she was tired of living abroad. She lived in the UK and was was doing well, having studied nursing and then radiology and Psychiatry.
She made bad choices when it came to men. However, she was married for less than a year. The guy, a Nigerian too, was said to have been beating her. She called the police on him and he was arrested. The marriage ended.
Anyway, my aunty came to Nigeria in the mid-2000s and resumed a top job in one of the big hospitals in Lagos. I won’t mention names.
I said big hospital, meaning they had high net-worth clients, right?
My aunty soon began to get propositions. At first, I’m sure she was flattered but she soon began to loosen up. Her weekends and week nights were full.
As in if you lived in our estate, you would always see one exotic car parked in front of our house after another.
The men came and left
They had orderlies who delivered huge packages to aunty.
They were mostly married men who, thinking back now, just wanted a plaything.
My aunty was a big babe. She drove a big jeep…well, she had a driver, sha but you get my meaning. We had maids and we lived in a duplex in an exclusive estate on the island!
After a few years…you know, I had finished school then and was supposed to go for my NYSC. That was the year my aunty turned 46…and that was the year she told me she had become born-again.
All of the years she was dating and dumping big men from Lagos to Abuja, my aunty never went to church. I mean, it wasn’t like I was going to church myself. My own parents are Muslims, so…anyway, she said she had become born again and that was it.
I couldn’t question her decision, nor was I particularly concerned about her Christianity. It was just like, ok, o. I went for my orientation up north and was working on getting redeployed back to Lagos when this happened.
What happened?
Robbers came into the estate!
The estate was guarded by security operatives, In those days, once you tell the guards whom you were looking for, they would just point it out. Now, they will grill you at the gate, search your boot, use guard dogs, and call you before they let anyone in. At that time, the security was quite slack, so robbers enter the estate and my aunty’s house was one of these that were robbed.
They not only robbed her, but they also raped her!
I mean, if I had been home too at that time, I most probably would also have been raped! She didn’t tell me but I’ll tell you how I found out.
That was the end of all life for my aunty
I didn’t even get to know about the robbery until I came back from camp.
I went to the house and the maid had been fired. My aunty told me she wasn’t sure who was who anymore, so she fired the maid.
From nosing around the estate, I found the facility managers of the estate, were immediately fired. The house owners felt it was an inside job. All the security guards were also replaced. I had heard some women were raped the night of the robbery.
My aunty had become a shell of her old self. I doubt that she told the police she was raped. I also doubt that she told her family.
One more thing so significant, I noticed she was very sad. She began to be, you know, all prayers and prayers and fasting and generally not going out. When I asked about work, she told me she took her annual leave and would be going abroad for a while. I took all of these to mean she was traumatized by the robbery and all this her new Christianity. Even though I wasn’t present when the robbers, I was very fearful, especially at night.
Nobody thought about her trauma
Now, like I said before, my aunty was all praying, and fasting and I often heard her praying at night. One night, that night, I heard her praying. It was a normal thing now, she was speaking loudly. I went to bed.
The following morning, I went about my normal duties, since the maid had been fired, I did the morning chores, nothing much to do, it was just two of us in that house. Around 8 am-ish or thereabout, my aunty would normally have got up to go downstairs to the kitchen for coffee. There was no aunty downstairs and I noticed an unusual silence from her room. You know when she is awake, I would hear movement or hear her talking on the phone or even her TV on BBC.
So I went to check on her.
I found her on her knees in a praying mode.
You know, I thought, ok, she is praying. I left and continued with my general not knowing what next to do mode.
I came back an hour later and there she still was, on her knees! Something wasn’t right here. I moved towards her to see if she had fallen asleep. She hadn’t.
Rigor mortis had set in. She was stiff and fell sideways, knees bent, face hidden.
She was dead. Had been from the night, obviously.
I screamed. I began to cry because I knew she was gone.
Her driver had been fired and since and I couldn’t drive. So I called our neighbor, he came, saw aunty, and went out to get help. Aunty was put in the boot of her jeep and driven to the hospital she worked at.
We knew she was gone but…
I called my mum and told her what had happened, and the rest of the family met me at the hospital.
Everyone wanted to know, “What happened?”
I had my theory but I didn’t share it. I just told them, “I found her like that.”
So here’s the thing.
Did my aunty commit suicide?
Did she feel so much shame at being raped that she couldn’t continue?
At that time, I had no idea. I was just mulling things in my head.
Months later, like some 7 -8 months later after she had been buried…. And no, there was no autopsy done. Her parents just wanted closure. They said it was an “act of God and that it was her time.”
They knew about the robbery, they had heard of the rape of other women in the estate…they had contacted the maid that was fired…they knew what had happened. I didn’t find out until I ran into the maid, who told me my aunty was raped that day!
So she was raped, couldn’t live with the trauma, and took her own life?
I want to remember my aunty with fonder things…I want to believe her heart just stopped beating because she was in so much pain. I don’t want to believe the suicide theory. She was so heartbroken, she prayed to God to take her life…He did.
( Series written and edited by Peju Akande and based on true stories)