Real Stories: My mother-in-law used juju to ruin my marriage

I should have known something was wrong when the chickens started dying.

It was our third month of marriage, and my mother-in-law had "kindly" gifted us six live chickens to celebrate our new home in Owerri.

A peace offering, she said, smiling too widely. By the end of the week, all six were dead. Stiff in the coop, their eyes milky white, their beaks stained black. 

My husband Chike brushed it off as “Bad feed, maybe. Or heat.” But something in me wasn't convinced. I kept remembering how Mama had insisted on feeding the birds herself, sprinkling something from a small calabash bowl before she left.

From the very beginning, it was clear Mama Chike didn’t approve of me, and she made no effort to hide it. She'd wanted Chike to marry a girl from their village, the daughter of her fellow women's church leader. Instead, her first son brought home a Lagos "ajebo" with a university degree.

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The problems started creeping in slowly.

Chike, usually the calmest man I knew, would fly into terrifying rages, his eyes glazing over as if something had taken hold of him. He once overturned a whole pot of ogbono soup because it was “too salty,” something he’d eaten happily just the week before.

He stopped touching me, too. He’d sleep on the edge of the bed, turned away like I had something contagious.

And then the dreams started.

Every other night, I’d jolt awake, sweating, heart racing. I would see an old woman standing in our room, watching me. No chanting, just watching. When I told Chike, he brushed it off.

“You watch too many Nollywood films,” he mumbled, eyes still closed.

I began to lose weight. I was always tired. My period stopped for two months, then came back with a vengeance.

The day I collapsed in our sitting room, Chike rushed me to the hospital. That's what I found out that I had been pregnant the whole time.

Unfortunately, I had a miscarriage.

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Lying on the hospital bed, weak and bleeding, I heard Mama’s voice. “She’s not strong,” she told a nurse quietly. “I warned Chike. Some women are not built for family.”

That was when something in me hardened. I went back to my own village for help.

My grandmother, a renowned herbalist in Abia State, took one look at me and spat. "They've tied your womb with black thread," she growled.

She prepared a bitter concoction that made me vomit for hours, expelling what looked like strands of blackened rope. Armed with my grandmother's protection, I went back to Owerri and started observing more closely. 

I found Mama Chike's stash of charms buried under our doorstep. Next, I cornered our housegirl, Nkechi, whose nervous eyes darted away when I asked why she always stirred my soups with a particular wooden spoon.

A few crisp naira notes loosened her tongue. Mama Chike had been paying her to add "powders" to my food. She said Mama had given it to her, calling it “a blessing for fertility.”

I started collecting evidence. A recorder under the table during Mama’s next visit caught her muttering: “That Lagos girl will be gone before the new year. I’ve made sure of it. She thinks she’s clever. But Chike is still my son.”

The truth came out at the next family meeting. When Mama denied everything, I brought out my phone and played the audio clips. Then I revealed my positive pregnancy test, just a week after I started taking Grandma’s herbal teas and stopped eating Nkechi’s food.

For the first time, Mama Chike looked unsure. She opened her mouth, then closed it.

Chike said nothing either. He simply stood, took my hand, and walked out of the compound. We eventually moved to Lagos, far from his mother's influence. Last I heard, Mama Chike's new daughter-in-law, the village girl she wanted, has given her nothing but trouble.

As for me? I'm writing this with my six-month-old son sleeping peacefully beside me. The same son my mother-in-law swore I'd never have. 

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