CHICKEN STEW FOR A STRANGER

Romance is not the place for cleverness, but our world is filled with people who see relationships as chances to exploit, deceive, display their wit, and showcase their supposed wisdom.

You should be intelligent in your work, education, business, and politics- anything that earns your livelihood. However, corruption should not seep into your romantic relationships, as they are your refuge when everything else fails. If you tarnish even that with “smartness,” what remains for you in this intimidating world?

Also, when you hurt people, you think you’re only hurting one person. But you’re not. You’re hurting the thousands of others that person will go on to meet, because the version of them you helped create is the version everyone after you will encounter. So yes, you have a hand in the degradation of the world and of humankind.

About six years ago, I loved someone who loved me too, or so I thought. That relationship taught me lessons I’m still uncovering to this day. It was hard to name, because it wasn’t physically abusive, which is what we’re taught to watch for. It was emotionally and mentally abusive.

One memory I randomly returned to today was from earlier that year. He had finally got a job after about six years out of university, a bank job. I wasn’t in town, and he didn’t tell me, even though it was something I had worked hard for and encouraged him to pursue. When I planned to move back for a few months before returning to my base, I told him I was coming. He said he had a surprise waiting for me. I was anxious, but I looked forward to it.

When I got back and visited him, he told me he’d gotten the job. I was overjoyed. I hugged him again and again. I still remember exactly how happy I was. I rushed to the market, bought every cake ingredient and every small piece of equipment I could find, and baked him a big chocolate cake to celebrate. I was genuinely happy, genuinely innocent, and genuinely in love.

I stayed a few days, making his life lighter: cooking, cleaning. One of those days, I decided to surprise him at work, even though he’d refused to tell me the address. But since the bank he worked at was popular and there was only one branch in town, I knew which one it had to be.

He’d left early that day without eating, so I went to the market that morning, killed a chicken, and made him chicken stew with vegetable rice. I then took it to him at work. What followed changed my life.

At the gate, I told security I was looking for him, just to confirm he worked at that branch. When they confirmed it, I was happy, already imagining the grin on his face when he saw what I’d brought. I was about to go in when I caught sight of him crossing the hall. He saw me too, and ran towards me. I expected a hug. Instead, he looked at me sternly and pulled me back outside. That had never happened before.

He told me to wait there and said he’d be back. I looked around and saw a crowd watching me, some staring strangely, others mockingly. He was clearly popular with the women and men there.

About ten minutes later, he came back out and said, “Let’s go.” He never asked why I was there, what I was holding, or anything else. He didn’t care about any of that, only that I had shown up. We walked home in silence, neither of us saying a word.

That was the day my eyes opened to everything I’d been making excuses for. Once you start seeing the patterns, you can’t unsee them. I started recalling the things I had made excuses for that week.

The condoms in his work bag. The woman he always spoke badly of, whose photos filled his phone. When I asked, he said they were from a work WhatsApp group and that she was his line manager or cluster head, one of those, if I remember correctly. The question I should have asked was why he had no pictures of anyone else from that same group.

Then the constant refrain: “that girl na ashawo,” that the female marketers at the bank were into prostitution, that this was how they got their customers, and that for the lady in question to be promoted, she must have “seen a lot of penises.”

Another time, his friend at the bank admitted he liked the lady and asked for his help getting close to her.

All the while, I didn’t know he was dating the very woman he spoke so badly of. And because she worked at the bank, he didn’t want me anywhere near it.

 Instead of telling me he’d moved on, he kept enjoying the free labor I gave him: cleaning up after him and cooking with my own money, while I believed I was still with the person I thought he was. Everything I did was innocent, because I believed the person I was with was actually with me.

A lot of things started making sense after that day at the bank, so I went home without confronting him. That was the end. There was no closure. He simply didn’t call or pick up my calls the very few times I called.

What hurt just as much was learning that his family, the same people I had sacrificed so much time for, had known all along and still let me carry on, unaware.

I later heard it was because the new woman had a car, worked at the bank, and was from their ethnic group, while I was just an undergraduate, a struggling entrepreneur. His family made sure he married her quickly, before another man could “collect the gem she was.”

He married the unsuspecting ‘ashawo’ and probably has his children by her.

So, from that point on, I learned never to do for a man what he hasn’t asked me to do. What I thought was consideration- meeting people at their point of need simply because I could, because that’s how I feel when someone does it for me- isn’t appreciated the way I expected. I’ve learned to see people as separate from myself, because no two people are the same.

I also learned never to care about a man’s words, never to build anything on a man’s tongue, always to look the other way, to be selfish with my heart, and to give only when I have been given.

Now, whenever I see someone I care about growing close to bank women, or anything to do with a certain kind of “woman’s job,” you already know what runs through my mind. And you’d be surprised how a small inconsistency is enough to send a signal from my brain straight to my heart, telling it to shut the door and start moving on.

The point is this: romance is not the place to make money, to show off cleverness, to wield power, or to bring in anything that belongs in the work field.

Just let it be what it’s meant to be. Give freely. Receive freely. Live freely.

Enyo Dinta,
2026