Lagos Accomodation Blues – there is a village girl in my house

“By their fruits, we shall know them?” – I think thats how it goes. One of my neighbors just got a new visitor, a “village girl” member of their extended family, who they “want to help” by sending her to an apprentiship school to learn a trade. My neighbor calls her a village girl, but I would call her a village woman.

My problem with this village girl or whoever she is, is that she takes her bath outside, in the open space around the house. Now, I wake up very early to prepare for work, and while I make my way to the bathroom, I hear the sound of water splashing on the floor outside. I’m upstairs, so I look downstairs and see a naked body with soap covered all-over.

Please note, I’m not looking for trouble, unlike oga David in his hey days. So I approached my other neighbor and told them about it. They too had been having issues with this village woman around the premises and her new bathroom. Besides, they are downstairs, so they are directly affected. They usually go out earlier than I do, and they’ve even tried putting bulbs around the house, perhaps to give warning to the village woman to make her feel embarrassed. Unfortunately, the village woman would rather carry her bucket under the bulb and start bathing, making her the more visible.

We’ve tried talking to the host of this village woman. They apologized profusely, lamented and said we should just bear with her, that little by little she will get ashamed and prefer to bath inside their house rather than outside. The question on my mind was: didn’t this village woman have neighbors wherever she came from, and do they still bath in the open in 2010?

On another note, I asked someone else, who gave me another low down. My informant, a female informed me that women who bath in the open are members of the occult world, and that they do so to entice men after them. Another thing, that perhaps the village woman was waiting for one of us, other neighbors to scold her about her actions, so that she could use such as a reason to do something bad against us. After I heard these, my heart skipped a few paces and this village woman suddenly began looking “village evil”. FYI, she is from the eastern part of Nigeria.

I told my other neighbor of my new info. They were not caught by surprise, and just advised me that we should all be careful, so that whatever problem she brought from the village would fall on her own head. We decided not to go approach the host about the possibility that their visitor might be a Witch- as this could pour more coals into the fire.

Now, the floor is open. If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Should I and my other neighbors demand that their visitor be sent away?: we are not looking for trouble o. How can a fully grown lady of marriageable age be bathing in the open twice a day, in 2010, in Lagos state for that matter? I just don’t understand this kind of JJCness. Or, how do we pass the message across that this village woman should carry her own wahala inside her hosts house.

Comments and opinions are welcome!

Posted in: Africa, Lagos, life, rants, women