Dear MIMsters: Should I Tell About My Neighbours or Not? (Part One)

Should I tell about my neighbours or not? This is the issue.

My family just moved into this neighbourhood in January. The environment is very cool but our next door neighbour and his wife are always at loggerheads. Once they start, the woman’s voice would be loud while the husband’s will be faintly heard. They fight all the time. I have never heard them laugh but fight. I have never seen them together, too. If not that we were neighbours and that their children attend the same school as ours, I would never have thought they were a couple.

My 10-year-old daughter told me one day when she got back from school that Tomiwa- my neighbour’s 11-year-old daughter who is in the same class as my daughter told her that she was tired of living with her parents. The poor girl told her that she hates her mother because she was always the cause of the fight. She said that her mother would always beat her daddy, and that her daddy would be pleading with her to please leave him alone.

I was shocked! I asked my daughter if she was sure about what she had just told me and she said she was.

An opportunity presented itself for me to hear from Tomiwa the day their school bus broke down and I had to go pick my children up by myself. When I noticed that they were still in school, I offered to take them home, too and their teacher allowed me since she knows we were neighbours.

That day, I wept when the girl told me all that was going on in their family. She asked me if I could allow her and her 7-year-old brother to move in with my family. I asked her what was wrong with hers, and she told me even much more than she had told my daughter the previous week.

According to Tomiwa, her daddy does all the house chores including cooking for the family. All her mummy ever does was to sit on their big sofa, cross her legs and watch Telemundo. She said her mother was always insulting her dad and hitting him. I asked her if her daddy does not earn a living and she said he does. She said her daddy owns an engineering workshop and that he is the one who pays all the bills.

I asked her if she has a relative- aunt or uncle she could tell about what was happening in their home, and she said her mother would be angry with her if she tells anyone. She made me promise her that I would not let her mother know she spoke to me about what was happening in their home.

When I drove into the compound, I decided to walk them into their apartment and probably talk to their mother. The children opened their front door and I followed them in. We all met their mother sitting on the laps of a man smooching away right in their living room. She was expecting to hear the horn of the school bus… She barely even acknowledged me so I left immediately the children settled in. No ‘thank you’ came from her, too. She is such a manner less woman.

I have been very sad since I spoke with the poor girl and I have been praying to God to let me know what step to take. Something happened today that made me know that God answers prayers….

….to be continued!