He Promised Me Work In Lagos, Na Trap I Enter (EPISODE 3)

EPISODE 3 – When Umunze Turned Their Back on Us

After my mother’s burial, the house didn’t just become quiet — it became empty.

Not the kind of emptiness where nobody lives there, but the kind where people deliberately stay away. The kind where footsteps stop coming. The kind where greetings no longer reach your door.

Before my mother died, our compound was always full. Neighbors came around. Women gathered in the evenings to talk. Children played freely in front of our house. But after the burial, everything changed.

People started avoiding our gate like it was cursed ground.

When I walked past them on the road, conversations would suddenly stop. Some women would pull their children closer. Others would pretend they didn’t see me at all. If I greeted them, some wouldn’t answer. Those who did answered with forced smiles and quick steps.

I remember one afternoon, I went to borrow salt from a neighbor we had known for years. As soon as she saw me standing at her door, her face changed. She hesitated, then told me she didn’t have salt. I later saw her daughter cooking with salt that same evening.

That was when it hit me.

This wasn’t normal grief. This was rejection.

Rumors moved faster than truth in Umunze. People said my family carried death. Others said it was sickness that shouldn’t be mentioned. Some even said it was punishment from God.

“Two women don die from same thing. No be ordinary matter,” I overheard someone say.
“That girl sef, better make we dey careful.”

I was still a child, but I felt the weight of it all. I began to shrink myself. I stopped playing outside. I avoided eye contact. I learned to walk fast, head down, like someone who was guilty of something she didn’t do.

Even during church, people changed seats when I sat near them. During sharing of communion cups, I noticed hesitation. Some people wiped the cup again after I drank from it.

At home, my father became quiet. He stopped correcting people. He stopped defending us. It was as if he, too, had accepted the judgment of the community.

Some nights, I would hear him sigh deeply in the dark. Other nights, he drank silently. He never explained anything to me, but I could feel that he was tired — not just of loss, but of shame.

And me? I started to believe the lies.

I began to wonder if I was truly the problem. If my birth really carried something bad. If death followed me wherever I went.

That was when loneliness truly entered my life. Not the kind that comes from being alone, but the kind that comes from being surrounded by people who refuse to see you.

Episode 4 Coming Soon
But rejection was only the beginning. Soon, I would discover that being avoided was better than being labeled. And the name they gave me would follow me for years.