Invisible but seen: Navigating neighbourhood nosiness as a woman living alone
Living alone? People who run businesses in estates can practically write biographies of our lives with shocking detail and accuracy.
What you need to know:
- I always thought my quiet, private life went unnoticed, but a casual Sunday errand revealed that my neighbors know much more about my habits than I expected.
- Despite my efforts to keep to myself, it turns out people observe and make assumptions based on what they see.
- This experience made me realise that even when we think we're living anonymously, others are paying attention.
About three Sundays ago, I disrupted my regular schedule and stepped out of the house to go and buy fish from my vendor. My Sunday routine is minimalist, and very demure (you know that word from TikTok?): I spend my day following an online service, watch a movie or two, and generally just put meaning on the phrase “Lazy-Sunday” by ensuring that, except someone’s life depends on it, I do not step an inch outside my door.
To the best of my knowledge, only my close friends and family know about my aversion to leaving my house on Sundays, except when I have to physically attend a church service.
Imagine my shock when on this particular Sunday, I stepped out to buy fish and the owner of the outlet says to me:
“Mrembo, leo naona umetoka kwa nyumba on a Sunday!” she posed. In English that translates to, “I see that today you have left your house on a Sunday!”
Write biographies
I tried to maintain a straight face as much as possible because, guys, haven’t I been living an anonymous life in this hood? How come she even knows that I do not leave my house on Sundays? Was I being watched? But perhaps even more alarming was the realisation that people likely know more about us than we’d like them to know.
After the encounter, I texted two close friends. One of them wasn’t shocked. She explained that people who run businesses in estates can practically write biographies of our lives with shocking detail and accuracy. Given my experience, I couldn’t argue. It seems our neighbours know more about us than we imagine.
If, like me, you pride yourself on being private and live by the mantra “mind your business and no one will know you exist,” this is unsettling news. For the past four or five years of living alone, I’ve minimised contact with people around my estate. I’m polite to neighbours and business people, but as Chinua Achebe says, I make sure handshakes don’t go past the elbow. I’m probably using that phrase in the wrong context, but you get the idea. Still, “minding my business” hasn’t stopped people from minding mine.
Even the best-laid plans to stay under the radar fail at times. One of my older friends drives an elite car with tinted windows. She occasionally drops me home, and for a long time, she didn’t get out of the car. I would just wave goodbye after she dropped me off.
The day she finally stepped out, I noticed relief on the caretaker’s face. Later, he told me he had always thought it was a man dropping me off at night, and it worried him because I didn’t seem like the type to be in those kinds of relationships. My friend and I laughed over this, grateful she got out of the car that day and cleared up the misunderstanding because can you imagine the rumours he would have spread about me in the neighbourhood!
Perhaps the biggest consolation is that I am not alone in feeling that I am being watched. Recently while chatting with my friend Charity about weird neighbours, she said a guy once knocked at her door to give her chocolate.
Possible criminal
“I was spooked because I felt like he was stalking my coming in and going out. Whenever we met at the gate, he always had this fishy smile going on,” Charity cracked me up.
From her tone, I could tell that she was not ready for the conversation that maybe this guy was her heartthrob and bringing chocolates was his way into her heart. Charity’s lawyer mind saw a possible criminal and she was not amused that this guy knew when she was home and when she wasn’t. A coincidence? Maybe. But not to Charity.
Reflecting on these events had me thinking even more broadly about how we overtly or covertly brand ourselves. I have written here before that you know what your brand is by what people say about you when you are not in the room. Those neighbours that you do not know, or that shopkeeper whose shop you only go to once a week when you need to do an Mpesa withdrawal, how would they describe you? Turning the camera back to you, what are some of the assumptions you have made about your neighbours that you need to either revise or discard?
The writer is the Research & Impact Editor, NMG
