Real Stories: How I found out my real mother was our househelp

I grew up in Lekki, in one of those duplexes with huge gates and marble tiles. People always said I was lucky. My “parents” were wealthy and respected. My dad was a retired general; my mum ran a boutique. I went to the best schools, had my own driver, and never lacked anything.

We had house helps come and go, but one woman stayed longer than anyone else, Mama Eka. She was quiet, older, always wearing wrappers and rubber slippers. She wasn’t like the young girls who came for quick cash. She moved like someone who had history. And she had this way of looking at me, like she was watching something she’d lost.

I never paid her much attention. She was just there, serving food, cleaning, occasionally asking me how school was. I called her “Mama” out of respect. I never imagined she was actually mine.

Everything changed when I turned 22.

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I came back from school one weekend and overheard a heated argument between my parents. They thought I was asleep, but I heard everything. My mum, or the woman I thought was my mum, was shouting, “If she ever finds out the truth, everything will fall apart!”

I froze.

That night, I went to Mama Eka. I don’t know why. Maybe deep down, something had always felt off. I asked her, “Who’s my real mother?” Her eyes widened like I’d slapped her. She tried to deny it at first. Then she broke down crying.

She told me the whole truth.

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She gave birth to me when she was 17. She’d been a househelp in my father’s military home. He got her pregnant and sent her away. His wife, the woman I’ve called “mum” my whole life, couldn’t have children. So when Mama Eka had me, they took me from her and brought her back years later to work in the same house as the maid. To “keep an eye” on me.

I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was dreaming.

Everything started making sense. The way the woman I called mum never showed real affection. How she always introduced me as “my husband’s daughter.” How Mama Eka once cried during my secondary school graduation for no reason. That wasn’t a maid’s pride. That was a mother’s pride.

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I confronted my father. He begged me to keep it quiet. Said it would “destroy the family’s name.” I haven’t spoken to him since.

Now, I live with the woman who gave birth to me. We’re strangers in many ways, but she holds my hand like she’s afraid I’ll vanish again. I look in the mirror and see her nose. Her eyes. Her resilience.

I lost everything I thought I knew. But for the first time in my life, I know who I really am.

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