Rescue me

Exactly how much is one supposed to pack to take home to Lagos? I understand you can get great furniture there but am being encouraged to go down to John Lewis and purchase everything I feel like I'm getting married and am writing a wedding and gift list.Was also told to buy three spare of everythinhg as NEPA was likely to blow stuff up.why the preference to buy from abroad? would it be price or quality issues or do we just purchase from abroad by habit.I am also told to pack as much washing powder cereal tea coffee and as much dry food products as I can fit in to my container.Erm what about rats and other vermin do they travel on the high seas?

So do I pack everything including the kitchen sink, how about a spare husband !I was also told to keep a close eye on him as he is prime chowder for the Lagos girls.
As they can spot that he has just "arrived" Pray how can they tell? Can they see it written on his forehead has someone stuck a post it note on his butt?Heeelp.

Part 7-The Journey in

On seeing me enter she lifted him out saying "see e be like fish" and before I could fully process what I was witnessing she dunked him again. I pushed her aside and grabbed the baby. I saw a glazed look in her eyes. She had finally broken down under the immense pressure of caring for this child all day and when he woke at night.I forgot my direct relationship with Christ and as I pounded his back I recited my hail Marys over and over again praying that she, The holy mother, would revive this child.He came to spluttering and gasping for air and then I remembered to thank Jesus. I wrapped his shaking form in a towel and dried him off as she brought out fresh clothing nonchalantly as if what I'd seen had been a figment of my imagination. Putting on his clothes he seemed to be fully recovered and was giggling and gurgling as usual on my knee as I rubbed Vaseline into his soft hair. Oh how I wished it had been a figment of my imagination as i did not know how to deal with what i had seen.

I should have never been up there ,my father had warned me not to go visiting peoples houses when they were not in. My mother, hard at work, expected me to be downstairs doing my homework and helping with the care of my own two brothers who were coincidentally in the care of our own house help. It also dawned on me now why my mother never let the house help, or anyone in that fact, put her children in the bath when she was not present. Had she imagined such a scenario herself? Our househelp drowning my brothers in the bath? I sat with my maniacal friend quietly observing her behaviour and wondering what to do next.I knew what time her madam came home so I decided to wait till her car pulled into the drive then hand over the baby I was protecting and run down the stairs to the safety of my home were I could pretend to be a child again. Surely nothing could happen in the five minutes it would take the madam to walk up the stairs?. As the baby fell asleep on my lap exhausted by his unknown fight for life I wrapped him in his blanket and put him in his cot in the living room where we were sitting. As I called out to my friend she reached over and changed the channel on the TV that she was watching except it wasn't on. Oh dear. I got on my knees next to her and holding her hands said God would forgive her her sins today if she prayed with me and asked forgiveness but if she killed the baby she would never see heaven or her mother again. She just smiled blankly it seemed she had disappeared into herself and could not hear me. As she continued to stare at the blank screen I watched with her and saw her swimming in a dark green river,her long braided hair glistening in the dappled sunlight coming off the lush vegetation around her I prayed she would return, the water bringing a renewal of her soul.

I left out of the back entrance as madam's car pulled up and ran down the stairs to check my brothers scared that the madness that was upstairs had seeped through the floor like the excrement had previously done. As I watched my youngest brother asleep in his crib I wished for the little one upstairs to be as safe as my brother was.I asked God to reveal my friends madness so her madam could return her to where she belonged in her village of rivers.

With the household packed we headed for a leafy suburb in Ikeja. As we parked outside I noticed my mother's face light up.She had wanted so badly to move from Surulere for a while,she was fed up with living in what she called a concrete jungle. The house was in a secluded spot in a cul-de sac with a beautiful front garden with mature palms and shrubbery with fragrant hibiscus framing the front door. I could see her out there everyday pottering around planting new flowers. It had been awhile since we had all seen so much greenery. There were lots of empty plots of land which made the whole estate look quite park like, my brothers and I looked forward to exploring all this unknown territory. A few weeks later my father presented my brother and my self with brand new Chopper bikes. We spent the summer combing the streets on them, stealing fruit from our next door neighbours dwarf tree and making camp fires on empty plots of land to roast the cocoyams we had dug up. On one of our many trips out my brother and I ran out of water. The heat was quite intense that day and we were too far to return home so we stopped off at a ramshackle house next to a mechanic's workshop to ask some children for water. Our thirst quenched we pulled out into the dusty street. A young girl dressed in stripey trousers and a brown top, with surprisingly messy hair for a black girl said in the most prim and proper English accent "Do you often make a habit of stopping off at stranger's houses to ask for water?" "Yes", Said, "and what of it?". "They are my neighbours" she replied and their house and water supply are filthy". "My stomach is as strong as cement and my little brothers even stronger" I retorted. As we biked back home I found myself intrigued by the girl with the oh so English accent I had cast mine off years back with lots of practice as I wanted to fit in, I only spoke that way to my mother who would have it no other way. This girl however had held on to hers and I wanted to know how long she had been in Nigeria and what her transition from England had been like for her . I wanted to perhaps touch some of her Englishness that used to be my own.

The following morning I sought her out. I could smell burning beans as i knocked on the door of their small duplex house. She didn't look surprised to see me so I suppose she knew we be drawn back into each others company as we had so much, yet nothing, in common. We began to feel each other out. She trying hard to maintain her Englishness, me trying so hard to be Nigerian. She had arrived the same year as me with her three brothers two of which were older and one the same age as my own brother, Tim, and hated most things Nigerian. Her life spent at public school in the genteel green belts of the English countryside totally unprepared for the roughness of life she was experiencing. She chose not to associate herself with what she called "bush people", i.e. the ones who had never been to England. I sensed I might be an even bigger disappointment to her as I had been to England but was fast becoming as bush as you could make them. She was black. She didn't have to work so hard at defining herself to people they knew what she was as soon as they saw her unlike myself who had to work harder by way of vocality before I got my respect in the neighbourhood or indeed anywhere I went. My colour then to me was a constant barrier to immediate integration with my people.

She hated the food and would eat nothing but plantain. On one of my many visits to her little oasis of Englishness I found her listening to the Archers a programme on the BBC World service as I tried to pry her out of the house to go biking she asked me to stay and listen. As I listened to the quintessentially English accents on the radio I remembered the things i had left behind, biking through the countryside, strawberry picking in the summer, travelling round churches in the south east of England making brass rubbings with my parents which today still hang on our living room wall and I realised that as much as I was trying to win her into the Nigerian way of life she did not want me to forget where I came from and take pride in it.Whilst these things were wonderful I could not live in past glory and was much more interested in the here and the now .

I quickly discovered she had a brand new bike parked in the boys quarters in her compound. She said she did not bike out much as she was afraid of getting knocked into one of the huge gutters which lined all of our streets. I told her it would be half the risk if I rode behind her. So began our sometimes uneasy alliance over my new summer in Ikeja.I was more used to the company of boys. They were what I was used to as I did not have any sisters. I also found the girls in the neighbourhood too sedate and ladylike to want to get into the scrapes I involved myself in with their more interesting brothers who I picked up daily to add to my bicycle train.I would feel their eyes on me, cool and disdainful, as we all pedaled off on our adventures. I didn't care. I had it good. Boys rarely had tantrums, they didn,t cry when they fell off their bikes or out of the trees we were pilfering from. Communication was mostly without any language rather with gestures and grunts which were handy during raids on various neighbours gardens disarming them of ripe paw paws,mangoes and bananas. This suited my temperament at the time but Temi seemed different. There was a depth within her and I knew she had stories to tell so I decided to overlook her less boyish tendencies and took time to tone down some of my more colourful verbal and non-verbal language when we were together as I didn't want to frighten off a potential interesting female friend, and determined to show her how I lived my summers.

The sun shone hazily as we rode with our two brothers towards Airport hotel. It was a particularly warm day and the lure of their huge swimming pool with various diving boards we could throw our self off made us pedal even faster. Our walkmans, hung round our necks for convenience, banged against the handle bars as we skidded to a halt at the entrance. We paid the gate man and hastily parked our bikes on the green metal fence, stripped down to our costumes and jumped in to the cool blue waters and swam lazily back and forth. The hotel pool was almost always empty and with the sounds of birds singing in the trees that surrounded the pool I would always pretend I was swimming in a tropical paradise though my imaginings would be frequently ruined by my brother attempting to dunk me as I floated on my back.

Dea reader, that is it for now. I will continue this later in a book. In the meantime I will focus on other topics (like the small matter of packing up the family and moving back to Nigeria. Again)

Part 6- The Journey In

The box set was called "Finding A Friend In Jesus."My Catholic roots begin to disintegrate as I read through the books. I did away with my hail Mary's and weekly confessions, as I realised that everything came directly from the father and to get to him was through Jesus Christ. I believed and it worked as I realised that Jesus was not just housed among the cold statues and incense in the musty church where I prayed,he was alive and at home with me. Giving my life to Christ at the age of ten fundamentally changed my thought patterns and my way of thinking,I was no longer bound by religiosity,rules and various regulations. I could pray and express myself however I liked,there were no more boundaries in my communication with Christ.He answered every prayer I ever uttered and where I was burdened he would carry my load.



The rest of the Christmas was spent visiting relatives,my favourite being my uncle Ibe,who always had time for us.Taking us on drives into parts of the city we had never seen and who always had a couple of Naira in his pocket for "Coke money."His wife with her face always painted to perfection was a popular caterer to the "Lagos big boys." Her food always tasted so good it was almost as if it were charmed. She would always cook up a storm of various dishes for our arrival,there would be pots of ofensala, jollof rice,chicken ogbono soup and pounded yam;She always cooked like she was expecting an army.Christmas was also the opportunity to eat as much chicken as we could get,as on regular weeks we could only get chicken on Sundays as a special treat.



With the roads getting busier and busier and our neighbourhood changing from a quiet suburb into a thriving mini metropolis my mother raising her beloved Alsatian dogs,and three of us wanted to live somewhere quieter.My father was also fed up with having to wake up three neighbours in the morning so they could move their cars out of the very narrow compound were the all the vehicles were stacked up one after the other.I looked forward to the move but would miss the hustle and bustle of Surulere which I had begun to know like the back of my hand.I would also miss the bright and shiny supermarket at the top of the road called UTC,going in there always reminded me of England,they had all the imported toys and books and a well stocked magazine and paper rack outside which I would browse until I was asked to pay for something by the shop assistant.On a good day I would time it to about forty five minutes in which i could read five comics,read two chapters of a book I could not afford but was almost half way through, and when her slippers would start to shuffle under the counter I knew it was time to make my purchase which was usually two comics usually of the supernatural variety.I Had also struck up an unlikely relationship with a mischievous and slightly psychotic house-girl about the same age as me who lived upstairs with the toilet flushing lady and her husband,she looked after their twelve month old baby called Junior.On arriving back from school I would tear up the stairs to find out what she was doing.Although she was supposedly eleven years old she appeared and acted slightly younger than me she could not read and did not attend school which I thought was strange at the time.what I found even more baffling was that she was left at home all day with a little baby.Her treatment of him was at best rudimentary,she would whip up all manner of foods to feed him with which in my eyes did not look to appetising ,his cerelac always looked to lumpy and she forced it down him adding intermittent spoons of water into his mouth for his digestion saying "na so madam show me" as he choked and cried trying to spit up the revolting mess being shoved down his throat.On finishing she would change his cloth nappy,I stood back with bated breath praying she would not stab him once again as I had seen her do many times with the large safety pin for his nappy.With the weight of the unmentionable amount of cerelac she had stuffed down him he would immediately fall asleep,we would then proceed to the kitchen were she would throw random things in the pot to cook so she could eat before madam came home, she often complained she never got meat to eat only bones ,I quietly mused that God must be taking away her meat in punishment for the way she treated that really beautiful baby surely she must know better.She wasn't a very good cook and nothing ever came out of that pot that tasted good.I felt sorry for her as she missed her mother who had sold her when she was eight to a calabar lady who had then passed her on to her madam.She often wept as she tidied up the remains of her unsuccessful meal and began to chop efo and grind crayfish for her madam to prepare when she returned from work late in the evening.I would also worry about the baby,as she would take out her sorrows on him with kicks and slaps,just as her madam had taken out her sorrows on her.I think this was the reason that drove me up there again and again,the baby was so small and vulnerable he would cry in pain as he was hit but when the pain subsided he would coo and smile at her not fully registering what she was doing to him but I was sure it was leaving an imprint.When I was there she was happier less likely to hit out at him,I was her break from the monotony as she was never let out except on short runs to the local shop for basic provisions.She would tell me stories about her life before she came to Lagos,spent swimming in the waters of Rivers State were she was from being told stories by her grandparents and having her long hair braided by her mother,hair which had now been shaved off by her new owner.I would bring her sweets and read to her my comic books and wonder why even if she was a slave she had to be mistreated,but there were always yells and screams from the children being beaten in the compound there heads being conked and their ears being twisted it seemed that this was the way my people parented their children.
I was late for my regular afternoon visit as we had extra lessons at school that day ,as I ran upstairs to the flat I had a dry metallic taste in my mouth,the front door was open and I heard her laughter and splashes,coming out of the bathroom I walked in on her drowning him under ice cold water she had filled the bath with......

Part 5 - The Journey in

The journey home was slow that day as I pulled my brother along. I couldn't wait to peel off my school uniform as it was sticking to my back. The mixture of sweat and blood was itching like mad but too painful to scratch. My brother commiserated with me and showed me his "war wounds" from the day before. I was not the only one fighting a battle it would seem. On reaching home I rushed to my room to remove the offending dress, quickly showered myself and applied ointment to the wounds I could reach and wanted no one to see. I slept fitfully that night. The pain was intense, a physical and mental reminder of my unfortunate circumstances where school was concerned.

I so badly wanted to be back in England where things were cool, safe, orderly and predictable. I planned how I would run away to the airport, smuggle myself through the baggage carousel and onto the plane when no one was looking and on arrival put myself up for adoption. Surely there were lots of childless couples out there looking for a well behaved little mixed race girl who could help around the house in exchange for a quiet place to just be?. I awoke to the delicious smell of fried eggs and plantain and wondered if I could smuggle onto the plane various Nigerian food items as I could not go back to eating baked beans and sausages. At the least I would need to carry a big bag of dried pepper.

My mother (pictured above) had breakfast waiting downstairs. This was an occasional treat when she had the day off from her work as a secretary . My brother blurted out are you better now? as I sat gingerly on my chair. Whats the matter? my mother asked. My brother, between swallowing bits of egg said, they beat her black and blue. My mother eyes filled with tears as she removed my uniform and saw the wounds I had been given. She had a tendency to get very emotional and would now link my unfortunate episode with a lot of other injustices in the past and would go off on a diatribe that would inevitably affect the whole household. This was something I always wanted to avoid as it drove my father first to distraction and then drove him our way as inevitably it would become our fault.

My father was from the tribe called suck it in and take it like a man (just on the outskirts of Asaba), and we, my brothers and I, never wanted him to see us weak. After a lengthy discussion my mother decided no one was going to school that day. She professionally bathed, disinfected and bandaged my wounds bringing all her qualified nursing skills into play, sent my brothers off to play and put me to bed. I awoke to shouts a few hours later. Not surprisingly an argument had ensued over my treatment. My father had popped back for lunch and as my mother unleashed the full weight of her unhappiness at my treatment it was doubtful my father would be going back to work. I eased myself out of bed with a mixture of fear and unhappiness as I did not want to be the topic of this argument and did not want my father looking at me with disappointment in his eyes as I was not living up to his Nigerian dream. Obviously I must have done something wrong to have gotten myself flogged. As far as he was concerned that was the only reason children got flogged in school. He insisted I went back to school, that this was how thing were done over here and I would be toughened up. "Over my dead body" my mother screamed. She had sent me to school for an education not physical and psychological damage. As they took the argument into the bedroom I dressed and made a dash for the back door determining to spend the rest of the day outside keeping watch and hoping my father would return to work. His car pulled out a couple of hours later and i headed back to the safety of my room. On hearing my return my mother informed me my Catholic schooling was over. Amen. Hallelujah.

The Christmas season came and with it drier air and expectations. Lagos felt lighter, with less traffic as many of its populace would travel out to their various states to spend Christmas with their extended family. We woke up on Xmas day to our presents ,two huge boxes of books to be shared amongst us. I was beside myself with joy as I could never have, or get enough books to read. I was constantly saving my coke and gala money to buy them and then berating myself for reading them too fast. There wasn't that much on TV to interest me except the Village Headmaster with Amebo being my favorite character as she was forever meddling in other peoples business. This pile of books in front of me seemed to be unending.

As I emptied the box onto the floor a box set caught my eye. It had a picture of an eagle soaring into a big cloudless sky and two pages into the book I was sold out I had found the holy grail.........

Part 4 The Journey in

The rainy season routinely caused chaos in Lagos,and there was never a definite guarantee of getting to school on time through the waterlogged roads. We would leave earlier and earlier with me rushing my brother out of the house in the pouring rain. We would wade to the bus-stop barefoot weaving in and out and out of the go-slow traffic. We took our leather Bata shoes off to protect them from the murky waters. The fear of the cane was always at the forefront of my mind during our morning journeys. I would remember the feel of it on my hands, the big red welts would throb for most of the day and would disable me from writing thus incurring more wrath from my teacher. It was a vicious circle. She routinely flogged me on my left hand - the one she knew I used to write with. She thought the use of the left hand was inappropriate for writing and was probably hoping the routine caning might change me around Needless to say it didn't work.

I tried my hardest to fit in but was still, after a couple of years, like a fish out of water unused to the roughness of the school education I was receiving.I was confronted by prejudices based on my racial identity on a daily basis by my teacher in the classroom who would routinely laugh and make fun of my accent, telling me and everyone else I looked like a witch or a mammy water if my hair was slightly out of place.This not only had an effect on me but the children around me who for fear of the teachers wrath would not associate with me. As I began to disappear into myself my grades slipped and she sometimes failed me for the hell of it, which I only discovered when my mother appalled at a D I got for history (one of my favorite subjects) read the paper then made an appointment with the head of the school who marked it to a B and could offer no explanation for the failing mark.

Inevitably, I began to truant off school now and again dropping my brother off and wandering around Tejuosho Market merging myself into the vibrant chaos and wandering in and out of a myriad of colourful shops selling fabric, shoes, bags, imported clothes and jewellery enjoying my own safe company till the school day ended. Nevertheless I managed to pass my common entrance exams and moved into the secondary school which was housed in the same compound.

It was a Monday morning school assembly and inspection day. I came looking forward to my literature first period lesson. I adored literature as it was a slice of heaven reading and discussing books by authors such as Chinua Achebe who brought West Africa alive to me with his book Things Fall Apart. My former class teacher who by some bad hand of fate happened to be on inspection duty that day ordered me to stop, looked me up and down, head to toe and proceeded to tell me I was wearing false eyelashes and should report to the teacher's staff room where she would trim them for me, and oh yes my hair was a mess. Being a tomboy, only out of trousers when I'm in my school uniform I hadn't a clue what false eyelashes were.The morning was spent kneeling on the floor in front of the staff room my face red with embarrassment, pain from the concrete floor and the shame of watching my classmates walking past whispering words I could not hear but could well imagine. At midday my former class teacher showed up with a pair of scissors and attempted to hold me down so she could trim my eyelashes. I could not be still as I thought she would take my eye out .

After we danced outside the staff room to the amusement of students and staff she decided to cane me instead. Relief flooded through me briefly as the welts would heal but one could not buy another eye. As I stood with my face against the wall she chose to flog me on my back and shoulders. It seemed like an eternity, the pain was intense not just physically but mentally as through my tears of pain I wondered why this woman wanted to break me. She seemed appeased after the flogging and had a strangely relaxed look on her face. My eyelashes were forgotten. I vowed that day she would never lay hands on me again.

How do they do that?

Crossing the road this morning I was surprised by the lack of interest shown on people’s faces as a half naked man, totally out of his head, struggled up the hill of our somewhat genteel neighbourhood. There was half a loo roll hanging out the back of his dirty blue jeans and trailing along the pavement behind him. He spat out obscenities with every step to the people who passed by pretending not to see him, or perhaps just oblivious to him, as if he did not exist in their world. For all intents and purposes he was invisible.

What is it that does not make the English stop and stare like Africans do when presented with these sorts of scenarios? I mean all you have to do is drop a coin in Lagos and a crowd gathers to watch you pick it up!!

Are they too comfortable in the security of their own routine? Have they seen it all before? Are they just blotting it out? I am puzzled. Me, I stopped to watch. As the police drove up a few minutes later to wisk him away I wonderd who phoned them, must be one of the twitching curtains.

Part 3 TheJourney in

I awoke one rainy day to the screams of my mother,there was excrement flowing out of the toilet through the hall and into the living room of her "English Cottage".It was now completely apparent after living there a few weeks that the landlord had contravened every building regulation there was,and the flat was a nicely painted shack.Every time the neighbours flushed their toilet above us,our toilet downstairs overflowed,the smell seeped into the house and buried itself into the walls.This happened on a twice daily basis,my mother begged and pleaded even sending up copious amounts of" waterboy"this was a product used during times of water shortage to hide and deodorise the mess for want of a better word in the toilet,to stop the neighbour flushing her loo until it was fixed .To no avail she continued to flush.My mother was semi-broken at the end of the week, insane amounts of mopping with Izal and bleach had taken its toll on her and she took to her bed with a fever.My dad finally went to see the lady upstairs I snuck up behind him intent on hearing what was said,I heard a few indiscernible words and as I remember she never flushed her toilet again till the piping was fixed.I always wondered what my father had said to her in a few seconds that was so different to what my mother had said to her over the past week.

I was placed in a school called St Saviours but early on found it hard to fit in ,being light skinned made me stand out,I had to work harder, listen harder and was expected to be better in some way,by virtue of skin colour and accent.I had become the latest English mascot for the school and was routinely pointed out when prospective parents came looking for a place for their kids,"Look that's Mandy,our latest child from London."I got a bit fed up with minding my "P's and Q's" and persuaded my mum into transferring me into a more "Nigerian" school.This backfired with my father transferring me into a catholic girls school in Yaba,back to my catholic roots.I had always gone to catholic schools in England and the horrors of my knuckles being rapped on by a ruler came back to me,although this enabled me to read at the age of four which bought me immense pleasure.I prayed these particular nuns were not the violent type,how wrong was I. If you were late for school you were caned.If your uniform was dishevelled,you were caned.If your plaits were not three days fresh,you were caned.My hair had a life of its own so i was routinely caned on that point.

One morning after many screams of "Daddy!Hurry up, if we are late they will beat us oh!"He decided to introduce us to public transport,thus my adventures dragging my five year old brother on to Danfo's and Molues began,and i loved every minute of it.I couldn't quite comprehend how the twelve people waiting at the make-shift bus stop were going to fit into the little yellow Danfo that pulled up,the conductor calling "Yaba!Yaba!" as they screeched to a halt, almost running over the local vulcaniser,always on the prowl for any punctured vehicles.As my father waved us off,my travel route and N3.00 in hand we squeezed into the ramshackle bus,I noticed how intimate the seating was and made myself as small as possible putting my brother on my lap,with the conductor hanging on the outside for dear life,all twelve of us began our journey.Whatever fearful insecurities inside of me faded as I became part of the fabric of humanity on that ride.All of us as one,focused on getting where we needed to go. As the weeks went by I became adept at running after moving buses clambering on at times with my brother on my back,his legs much smaller than mine,sometimes could not meet up to my Olympic runner standards.Before and after school these buses became our second form of education,we were ministered to by various preachers who hopped on and off the buses with mixed messages salvation and freedom in Christ,to eternal damnation for sin.In tandem we observed the principles of pick-pocketing,begging,haggling and the mechanics of fixing a broken fan belt with cheap black electrical tape,majority of the buses we rode in were routinely just patched together,we endured many a ride,observing the road beneath us through a gaping hole. We learned how to be totally independent and street wise,my brother picking up pidgin English and Yoruba well before me and using it to his advantage when haggling over roasted corn,boli or fried akara at our midway palmgrove bus stop.The women so impressed by his skills routinely dashed him extra snacks,whilst pinching his cheeks calling him "fine boy."