MY WOMEN FRIENDS

Since moving to Lagos I have heard many women say that they don’t have women friends, they don’t want women friends, they don’t like maintaining relationships with other women and they do not join women groups of any kind.

I have been blessed by so many women that I find that hard to understand. Am I missing some valuable piece of knowledge? As long as I can remember, I have always had women friends and thoroughly enjoyed the relationships too.  While in Paris, I helped birth a thriving Christian women’s group; we met most times to share information on how to cope with living abroad, ate different meals together, planned outings and just hung out. But I knew I had sisters there and I knew they had my back.

Before I left for Paris, I had women friends my husband called ‘the wolis’. We met through our children who had become friends in school and later started meeting on Monday evenings to pray. Mondays extended to mornings at the gym, weekday lunches at our favourite restaurants and weekend hang-outs in each other’s homes. When I was in hospital giving birth to my last son, one of them had my first son stay with her while the other had my daughter.

I can never forget the dear friend who read through my fears as a first time mum when I had to return to work after my maternity leave. ‘Would I leave this child with a nanny I wasn’t familiar with?’ She watched my son for months while I went to work. I didn’t have to pay her; he was ‘our son’.

My very first boss in the bank was a woman. She patiently taught me everything she knew about banking and beyond the job opened her heart and home to me. She influenced me a great deal showing me how to be hardworking and straightforward in all my dealings. And these days, another female boss has freely shared her office and resources with me, to help me grow and make a living along this path I have chosen to take.

Back in university, I remember a group of 13 girls we simply called ‘us’. We would go to the botanical garden to pray for one another and the manifestation of God’s plan for our lives. Those girls could pray! That was when I tried a 3-day dry fast for the very fast time and thought I would die in the process but they held me up. We held each other up.

I love having women in my life; sisters and friends. When I got married, I met my husband’s many sisters and sisters in-law who right from the very beginning embraced me with their hearts and not their hands alone. I marvel sometimes at the fact that that it is marriage that brought me here; it often feels like I am back in my father’s house with my very own blood sisters!  

 When I went to work in the church office, I met this woman there with such a prickly façade and a heart as soft as butter. She calls me sometimes at midnight asking me to pray and I get up right away. I bb stuff to her which I say right after ‘please delete’, and I am fine with that. Why, right across the road from where I live, I have found another friend, another sister and prayer partner. She also holds me up like I do her and sometimes, she calls me just to say ‘Id, my cook just made that edikaikong soup you like, come for lunch’. I have another friend here in Lekki with whom I can leave my children for a week and not even call or worry. I know they are safe with her.

 Is it that I have been truly blessed and I have not met ‘these other women’ everyone in Lagos seems bent on avoiding? Maybe, not but I have had my fair share of fights and disagreements with these women, some days they infuriate me just as much as I realize I also make them mad. I have 8 blood sisters, we fight consistently, make up and move on, and I have never thought to give up on them. Still, I wouldn’t trade the lovely women God has placed in my life for anything and in fact I pray each day that he sends me some more.

So I am still wide open to increasing my circle of women friends; just a few days back I had lunch with 2 women. New women friends and definitely my sisters. 2 of us had met late last year, while none of us 2 had met the 3^rd. We relied on telephones to lead us to each other and when we all got together, we put our facades away. And how refreshing that was. The lunch hour wasn’t enough; we laughed, we squealed, we clapped hands and hugged each other. It was like we had known each other for years.

While I do have some male friends, none of them come close to ‘my sisters’. How many men will linger over lunch, laughing out loud talking about everything and nothing? How many men have recipes to share or stories about children’s antics to swap? Will men understand things like menstrual cramps, menopause or even infatuation and depression? Will they understand that sometimes what I need is just a good cry not a solution and that even if I am in love with a good man just for this moment, just this one time join me to yap him well and not tell me what a great guy he is? How will I justify calling a man at 2 am to pray with me, no matter how tight the friendship? How will I break the barriers of the sexes and nurture deep fellowship with a man friend? How?

A woman is a sister and mother, whether she has birth a child or not. Look at me; my life has transformed because of the touch of all the sisters/mothers in my life. You have birth the qualities of who I am today and I celebrate you. I pray that God will in turn bless you with women friends like all of mine.

Happy Mother’s day.