Tell him I was with you. Say you have not heard from me. If he calls, say I am at the shop. Most people helping somebody in this situation are asked for something like this eventually, usually at short…
Two fears sit on either side of this. That telling an employer will cost you the job, and that not telling them means nothing can be arranged when you need a morning for court. Both are reasonable. The answer…
Six or eight months in, when the practical things are working and the worst is over, a great many women describe the same experience: a week where they cannot function, for no reason they can identify, having been fine…
Leaving a marriage in Nigeria is rarely a matter between two people. Within days there is a delegation, or a series of calls, or elders arriving at your parents' house, and the process of bringing you back begins in…
One of the more predictable things about this work is that a woman arrives needing help with housing, money and a lawyer, and turns out to have a health problem she has been carrying for years. Not an injury…
Losing a school place is one of the most damaging things that happens to a child in this situation, and it is one of the most avoidable. A child who has lost their home, their room, their father's presence…
Everything about getting help is harder in a language you are not comfortable in, and the difficulty is systematically underestimated by people who have never had to do it. You can describe an ordinary day in a second language…
There is a consistent, slightly uncomfortable finding in this work: a woman who arrives alone is treated differently from a woman who arrives with somebody. The complaint is taken more seriously. The questions are less dismissive. The file moves…
A great many women dial the number, listen to it ring, and put the phone down. Sometimes for months. The reasons are consistent: not knowing what to say, not being sure it is bad enough, being afraid of what…
He has photographs or a video, and he is using them. Sometimes to stop you leaving. Sometimes after you have left. Sometimes they have already been sent to one person, as a demonstration of what could happen next. Two…
