Nigerians Share What It’s Like Living in a Face-Me-I-Face-You House

Living in a face-me-I-face-you house means sharing more than a building with your neighbours. Between communal bathrooms, unreliable water supply, and insane landlords, privacy is a luxury. For some Nigerians, the experience also comes with enough compound drama to last a lifetime.

We asked Nigerians who have lived in face-me-I-face-you houses to share the most unbelievable things they witnessed. Here’s what they said.

“We had to go two weeks without water” — Kenchak*, 31, M

Water was a constant problem in our compound. Sometimes, we went days without it. Whenever power was restored and the landlord pumped water, everybody rushed to fill their buckets before it ran out.

One morning, I was in the bathroom using pure water sachets for a bootleg shower before school when I heard two women shouting at each other. One accused the other of jumping the queue and moving her bucket to the front before the other residents woke up.

I thought it was an ordinary quarrel until one woman started singing insulting Yoruba songs. Then they began dragging each other’s clothes and throwing buckets around. People had to come out of their rooms to separate them.

The funniest part was that the landlord eventually got fed up with their fighting and locked the tap. He didn’t reopen it for two weeks. It was a crazy time.

“She poured palm oil on her cheating husband” — Kudirat*, 26, F

A man in our compound lived with his wife and two children. He was one of those adults who terrorised the kids in the compound all in the name of discipline.

He acted like a responsible husband, but everyone knew he was unemployed and brought another woman home whenever his wife went to her shop in the market.

One day, his wife came back from the shop in the middle of the day and caught him with the other woman. She poured palm oil on both of them and started screaming for everyone in the compound to come out and look at them. The man was so embarrassed that, for months afterwards, he couldn’t even shout at us for playing in the compound.

“My landlady used to give me unsolicited relationship advice” — Joseph, 26, M

My first apartment was in a compound where the landlady monitored everybody’s business. At first, I thought she was simply observant, then I realised she was repeating things she could only have overheard through our thin walls.

One day, after I’d just seen one of my casual partners off, she called me over and started advising me to be a “good boy”. She warned that the next time she heard that I brought another girl home, she would “show me her red eye”. I was only 23 at the time, but I yelled at her and told her to stop poking her nose into my life and mind her business.

She never spoke to me again, but that didn’t stop her from making life so uncomfortable that I moved out within a year. I honestly don’t regret it, she should have saved that advice for her useless son that kept impregnating the whole neighbourhood.

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“My neighbour’s generator scattered the whole compound” — Blessing*, 27, F

When I was a teenager, we had a neighbour whose I-better-pass-my-neighbour generator sounded like a danfo trying to start. She ran it almost every night, sometimes until 2 a.m. Whenever anybody complained, she would say that she had paid her rent and had the right to enjoy herself.

One night, a neighbour with a baby went to beg her to switch it off at midnight because the noise was keeping the child awake. Instead of apologising, the generator owner told her to rent a house in a gated estate if she wanted peace and quiet. The new mother got angry and poured a whole sachet of sugar into the generator’s fuel tank.

The owner came out screaming, and the two women started fighting. Other residents rushed in to separate them, but the damage was done; the generator had stopped working. The landlord had to call a compound meeting the following morning to settle the matter.

Eventually, the generator lady moved out because she said the compound was full of jealous people who couldn’t stand her success.

“The paraga woman he owed disgraced him in front of the whole compound” — Femi*, 30, M

There was a man in our compound who dressed like he was going for a job interview, even when he was just stepping out to buy bread. He carried himself like he was better than the rest of us, so nobody really liked him.

One afternoon, the woman who sold paraga, agbo and local drinks at the junction showed up with her giant bowl and declared she would start selling her wares in front of his room. Apparently, he bought drinks on credit and promised to pay her back, but he’d been avoiding her for weeks.

She started shouting and advertising her drinks. The landlord tried to persuade her to move outside, but she refused to leave without her money. When he finally came out, he tried to play it cool, but she didn’t let him.

She mocked him for always dressing like a big man when he couldn’t even pay for the drinks he consumed. People started laughing, and he got so embarrassed that he went inside to bring part of the money. After that day, he started greeting people in the compound. I think the shame humbled him small.

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