Cultural Nostalgias: Historiography and Narrative Account of the Life and Odysseys of an Immigrant

By Merry Osemwegie

This is a narrative account of the lived experiences of an immigrant. In many ways, this book discusses a range of issues that transcend different sociocultural, philosophical, and political terrains. Paved with comical and simple narrative, the author located poignant and challenging issues within personal experiences of orphanhood, racism, race and sex, acculturation, deculturation, immigration, and his nostalgic feelings. Reflectively, he recalled how his early years in Africa were filled with happy memories of his parents and siblings and his lifelong regret over his failure to adequately care for his father. From a child who hated education to someone with five degrees, he has had to face many challenges, including his unstoppable desire to acquire academic qualifications, which oftentimes offered him no significant professional and material gains in return. The author is living a life in the UK that millions of people would envy, and yet he is troubled by cultural nostalgias. For a man who did everything to leave Africa, he could neither come to terms with why he could not just move back to Africa, where his heart is, nor is he able to make up his mind about where he would like to be buried.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496991898

Book preview

AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© 2014 Merry Osemwegie. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/26/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9188-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-9189-8 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Prologue: more like, Welcome to ‘My World’

Chapter One: There and Then I was born

Chapter Two: Early innocent years

Chapter Three: In and around my father’s house

Chapter Four: Healthy sibling rivalries

Chapter Five: A journey to the unknown - part 1

Chapter Six: Cultural groups and events

Chapter Seven: Orphaned fatherhood

Chapter Eight: Chasing a dream: a journey to the unknown - part 11

Chapter Nine: Crossing Bridges

Chapter Ten: Strange phenomena

Chapter Eleven: Early period of settling down in the UK

Chapter Twelve: Race and sex

Chapter Thirteen: Baptism: immigration pressure cooker and broken promises

Chapter Fourteen: Realising a Dream

Chapter Fifteen: Racial dialogue with white colleagues

Chapter Sixteen: My stressors of modern life in London

Chapter Seventeen: Reflections

Chapter Eighteen: Collectivist versus individualism

Chapter Nineteen: Lingering nostalgia: a yearning for a return journey

Dedicated to and in loving memory of late:

OSEMWEGIE EGHAREVBA – my father

ISERE ABANGBE – my mother

BERNARD OSEMWEGIE – my brother

Abiye Gambo – nephew

Iyobor Osemwegie – niece

Anthony Igbinomwanhia - nephew

Rosemary Williams – mother-in-law

Eremwanarhue Godwin Erhenrobo; Amasowomwan Captain Erhenrobo; Uleghe Abangbe; Owaghianye Iyamu Ekiro; Imarhiagbe Egharevba; Ayoboze Ekhator; Isaac Ekhator; Shadrack Ekhator; Erhenrobo Amos Egharevba; Eghianruwa Ehigie; Amiuwurinmwian Ojo Ebowie; Obasohan Erhiamator

Dedicated too to my late peers in the village: Friday Omobude; Francis Omobude; Abraham Omobude; Margaret Omobude; Godwin Omwanghe; Abel and Alfred Omorogbe; Amadi Omobude; Edobor Igbinovia; Itoghan Owie; Iyekoretin Owie; Andrew Owie; Solomon Omosigho; Alfred Okwonghae, Samson Osarumwense; Oghama James; James ‘Osemwegie’, Silvester (Kaskia) Ojo; Ogbemudia Igbinomwanhia.

And to others that I could not remember.

Acknowledgements

A few people contributed one way or the other to the writing of this book. It was made possible by the comments and discussions with people who read and commented on some parts of the original manuscript. I take full responsibility however for the contents and narrative accounts of my life story. First and foremost, I wish to thank my wife and children for the consistent and supreme joy they brought to my life. Without you guys my life would have been meaningless. I owe a great debt of gratitude to my brothers, sisters and cousins for allowing me to share my life experiences and to relive old times through reflections and recollections of both bad and happy memories without which my story would have been half-narrated. Many people miss out in life because there was never a guardian or a mentor to offer them the much needed guidance and support especially at a time of critical indecision. It is for this reason that I salute in particular my siblings Lawrence Osemwegie and my premature step-in-father and brother Moses Osemwegie and no less so for Godwin Osemwegie, Bernard Osemwegie and Isoken Osemwegie, Agbonavbare Osemwegie, Ekinadose Osemwegie, Jane Osemwegie, Edobor Osemwegie and Pius Osemwegie. My growing up was immensely enriched by my close relationships with Patrick Imarhiagbe, Sunday Iyamu, Thomas Okogho, Solomon Omosigho, Richard Omorogbe, Samuel Omobude and other people I may have forgotten to mention here.

My gratitude to Ben Uzour, Minna Amadi, Errol Green, Felix Ogundeyin and Godwin Ethapemi who were kind enough to offer their support in proof-reading the original manuscript.

My overwhelming special thank you to my parents for setting the ground rules that allowed me to live and survive in a world with more questions than answers. To my parents, just saying thank you for given birth to me is not enough. Among other good memories, the joy of running to embrace you on your way from farm and market places and the joy of sitting on your shoulders remain live and indescribable as they were then. I salute you both for these wonderful and unforgettable memories.

Foreword

The author of this book was born in a remote African village. Orphaned at age 14, he had quickly learned to live alone and to survive in a metropolitan city. From an early age, a few things pre-occupied his young mind: football, food, his girlfriend and playing mindlessly. He was troubled by a range of childhood nightmares in the context of cultural beliefs, for example, his primary school education: education he hated with a passion and not least in coming to terms with his Arithmetic Times Table in a colonial era of corporal punishment. The value of education did not become obvious to him until he was bitten by a learning bug when he was about 15. Thereafter, his endless quest for education began in earnest.

Against the backdrop of economic down turn in Africa in the 80s he made his way to Europe where he obtained his PhD. By doing so, he had fulfilled the wishes and dreams of his parents. Working with a PhD in Law in a care home involving wiping and changing diapers for people unable to care for themselves was not what he had in mind when he was studying. It was however an experience that humbled and allowed him to view life in different perspectives. Whilst struggling to cope with his life-time regret for failing to adequately care and support his father who was physically ill for 11 years, his fond memories of his parents continue to keep him sane.

Looking into his future with his past, his personal narrative account looked at his ‘suffering and smiling’ memories of his early years in Africa and his troubled journey to and re-settlement period in the UK as an illegal immigrant. Some of his remarkable experiences in Diaspora are narrated through racial prisms as he touched on a number of sensitive racial issues that are hitherto inadmissible in public. When the going was tough in Africa he did everything to leave only to be continually tormented by cultural nostalgia – unstoppable yearning to move from his house in the UK back to his home in Africa.

From both immigrants and non-immigrants’ perspectives, this book is insightful, poignant and fascinating. It was written with a deep sense of humour and emotions. It is an eye-opener to learn from his firsthand experience of what it is to be a migrant. In many ways, a potential immigrant needs to have an inkling of what to expect before venturing into a complicated mine-laden journey of immigration for which many people never lived long enough to narrate their ordeal.

Moses Osemwegie - On behalf of the ‘communities of Osemwegie’

Prologue: more like, Welcome to ‘My World’

Not so long after my sister was born she was, like me, about to undergo some medicinal treatment involving a series of knife cuts on her ribs. Many children born in our time were believed to suffer from an infected blood clot on their rib cage. It was not clear whether it was an infection caused by a virus in an epidemic proportion or whether it was a hereditary or contagious disease. Not quite knowing the root cause of the infection, the solution was to ensure that every infected baby was made to undergo a form of surgery. My baby sister was laid on my mother’s lap as she cried uncontrollably as if she knew what was coming her way. What was in fact coming her way was a man holding a sharp knife. My baby sister’s little hands were held behind her back. In the absence of general anaesthetics, her ribs were rubbed down with some mashed green leaves aimed at preparing her body for the cuts to come. Beside my mother was a bowl of hot sand to be used as a form of healing. The hot sands were to be sprinkled with some force on the freshly cut wounds. Watching with infantile curiosity, I could hear voices telling me to go away. I ran away only to return a few moments later. I was curious to know what was going to happen to my little sister. For, as far as I could remember, she was not sick. Looking at the unevenly chopped scars on my left-side ribs, I suddenly realised that this was a routine practice. I could not however understand why and how I had come to be heavily marked.

Surprisingly, I was brave enough to look between crowded legs as the man began to cut my sister’s tender skin - the size of about a quarter of an inch. As the man began to cut, I could sense some glimpses of my past flashing before my eyes. I was unable to tell which part of my body was being mutilated. I could hear my own wailing voice. I could physically feel the poignant pain of my own and that of my baby sister. I was brought down to earth as if I was dreaming by some multiple voices yelling at me to go away again. I quickly moved away only to relocate to another gap between other legs. The cuts were oozing out blood. The spill of blood was quickly wiped away to allow some clear view of the next cut. Each cut was meant to be precise and swift but was not patterned or even. At this moment in time, I began to see some uncomfortable expressions on my mother’s face. She had noticed, like everyone else present, that this man, unlike the previous knifemen, appeared to be inexperienced and nervous amidst the resulting screams and some surrounding noise from my sister and other people urging him to be careful and steady. Events were happening so quickly. Being nervous meant that the man was losing what should have been a concentrated grip on the knife. Fidgeting, as if his entire composure was deserting him, he stood up to take a handkerchief from his pocket to dab some sweat off his forehead. He could only give a brief but convoluted explanation of what was going on. Frightened, shocked and bewildered as evidenced by my shaking legs and open mouth, I could clearly see that one cut had gone some millimetres too wide. Within a few seconds, I could see my sister’s intestines pushing their way out through the widening accidental skin cut. Anxiety was mounting and appeared to be increasingly so in the face of everyone present. In a state of sheer panic and knee-jerk reaction, my mother had to push the intestines back into my sister’s stomach as quickly as she could. As she pushes one end inside, another strand of intestine was seen bulging out from the other end. The struggle continued until my mother was able to push everything back inside my sister’s body. My sister and my mother began to weep as my mother covered my sister’s rib cage with one hand. Amidst the unfolding uncertainty and confusion, my mother held her nerves until some clothes were used to tie it all back.

The resulting pandemonium echoed quavering and wailing cries from women who could not hold their nerves. Panic was immediately followed by some sudden inquiry about the sources and qualification of the traditional surgeon. I could see my mother cuddling her baby and crying. I began to imagine some of the things that could be going through my mother’s mind at the time (as were going through my mind too) such as whether in fact my baby sister’s intestines may have received accidental cuts or received any internal injuries as a result of the physical manhandling during the state of panic. There was no way of knowing any more than what I saw soon before the intestine was hurriedly pushed back in. The knifeman and people around were reassuring my mother that everything would be okay. My mother had until then not experienced similar accidents with her previous 5 boys. My mother’s tears, anguish and outcry were against the backdrop of having lost her first daughter at the age of about two though through different circumstances. Miraculously, my baby sister survived. Yes, fully recovered. Like my sister, I recovered from a similar ordeal with a knife as well as a circumcision knife. The healed marks on my rib cage (steady on: I have not as yet noticed or been told that there were some obvious marks resulting from the latter cut) have, since their insertion, been explained repeatedly to people who were always astonished by my, in retrospect, crude cultural ordeal with knifemen. Strangely enough, the excruciating pain resulting from the cuts on my face, ribs and manhood never left, as far as I could tell, any life-long psychological impact on me, my sister or any of my siblings. It remains an uncomfortable memory however whenever my childhood ordeal was re-told. That my ‘part’ was savagely robbed off some length by the unkindest cut of all was never an issue since losing my virginity many years later. It was just as well that people say size does not matter. I was not sure if this was an argument against circumcision. In retrospect, it was something that I was glad I did.

It was not surprising therefore that 26 years later, a sexual intercourse with a black African woman was not new to me. But there I was, standing naked in front of a naked white woman right in the heart of the city of London. For this particular purpose, my most significant part was fully ready not just immediately before I took off my trousers but long before I stepped inside her house. ‘Hmmmm! come over big boy, come and have it’, she yelled out to me. You don’t muck about, do you? She added. I remember thinking it was the first time ever that someone had so overtly complimented me. A voice in my head took it upon itself however to dampen my heightened accolade by telling me that perhaps women in my home country were too familiar with similar if not bigger ones. Glaring at her, I could see a gorgeous and well oiled body frame before me. She was well made with curvy hip and long legged. For her age, I thought ‘her breasts ought to have sagged by now but they were clearly not’. Yum yum, I thought ‘she is one of those people that God had spent some overtime in creating’. Interestingly, I could see that her private part below was smoothly shaved and so were her armpits. Down below, I was staring straight at something very unfamiliar and yet something that was inviting me to come forward. It was also becoming immediately obvious that she did not experience any ordeal with any circumcision surgeon. Behind closed doors in central London, and thousands of miles away from my African village, it was impossible to verify whether wrestling in a smooth surface of this kind was culturally permissible. Confused, perspiring and hot, my most significant part was not ready to retract. ‘Put any automatic switch-off button in front of me, I would certainly ignore a retraction at this moment - cultural dynamics notwithstanding’, a voice in my head was heard saying. This was a long-awaited opportunity with a white woman and for the very first time involving smoothly shaved-round vagina. Besides, with the exception of my parents and my teachers, I was not used to being ordered around, and certainly not by women in Africa, well until now. There was something sexually commanding in her tone of voice. Strangely enough, it was excitingly inviting. At first, I was superficially unperturbed by it.

Dangling between her two fingers was an elastic ring. ‘What is she doing with that?’ I asked myself. Before I could give many guesses, I heard her yell out again as she was lying in bed, ‘come on, come and get it, I have not got all day’. ‘She could only mean one thing’, I thought. So I moved forward quickly to climb over the bed and on to her. ‘Not so fast’, she intervened! Pointing to the dangling ring in her hand, she added, ‘you need to put this on first’. Before I could say a word, my most significant part was wearing a cold elastic band. Less than a minute and about five hasty press ups later, it was all over. It was not a time to think about not calling the Lord’s name in vain but I nearly exclaimed in the line of Oh my God. The performances from both sides were far from my expectation. Before this time, I was not aware of any racialised sexual discourse in this kind of encounter. ‘Have I let my race down? Have I committed a cultural taboo? Disappointed and confused, and in the midst of the aftershock, a voice in my heard continued to ask these questions repeatedly as I slowly made my way back home. Before leaving her room, I had wondered about what her feelings and thoughts were just before and after she had made ‘love’ to a black man or to me for her very first time. ‘In the future, this and any other questions would have to wait and be answered by her or another white woman because my currently hasty and bullying situation does not permit me to ask her and at best not now’, I thought. Culture shock indeed! But did this experience prepare me enough on how to defend myself and my community honour when a few years later I was asked by women in the western world to get down on my knees to engage in unimaginable and abominable job or to drive through the next tunnel? A range of other conflicting cultural experiences and challenges were to shape my future years in the UK.

I left Africa in 1986 with a tremendous sense of community, family and personal expectations to live in the UK. There I was holding a PhD in law in my hand 25 years later. Working with a PhD in law in a care home was never a career imaginable by my short-sightedness. Indeed, it was just not a typical job expected for an individual with the highest educational achievement and not least a qualification in a well respected academic discipline. And there I was contented and in the middle of a shift work. Standing there in his toilet, I am about to change a big diaper and wipe the bottom of a 60 year old white man with physical and mental health difficulties. A white man, who by his physical built, reminded me so much about my father, and a white man, who only a few hours earlier had racially abused me. I remember an African proverb which says that ‘a woman (and an outreach prostitute, for that matter) does not truly account for her night out experiences’. Interestingly, I asked: could it be that such a non-disclosure accounts for the lack of sufficient information about the nature and degree of homosexuality, lesbianism, buggery and other malicious, gratuitous and inappropriate sexual acts in Africa? It is the same Africa however that I am yearning to return. It is the same Africa where people told me in 2002 that I had lost my ways when I sent some computers and other equipments to set up a charitable organisation. A man, they said, with a misplaced priority. A man, they continued, who had lost his ways because his first priority should have been to buy a plot of land on which he should build his own house in Africa. He was a man, they say, going through a confused trajectory of life.

Living in the UK 27 years after I left Africa, it was dawning on me to recollect and account for my lived experiences in Africa and in the UK. But why should I relive, in print, my life story now? I could only imagine that writing an autobiography would perhaps have some implications. One resultant implication, in this instance, would be an inherent risk of self-accounting. For, I would have no one else to blame for any critical error of misjudgement or misinterpretation. Indeed, a number of deeply embedded personal thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behaviour about my entire way of life and thinking may be revealed. The revelation may cause others to see me perhaps in a different light positive and/or negative. This may include people who for many years thought they knew me inside out. Suffice it to say that I have no dark secret. At aged 55, my mid-life experience was not typical of many people who are expected to live till about 108. Short of being deluded and with a bit of luck, I might just reach such a remarkable grand old age. That certainly would not be the case if any hidden socio-economic and health variables have anything to do with it. If data on mortality rates among my peers in Africa who never lived anywhere near 55 were anything to go by, my sense of optimism may be just a wishful thinking. If ever there was a time ripe enough for my life story to be told, it would rather be now. In doing so, I have neither targeted audiences in mind nor any regrets about baring my inner-self out in the open.

It is, it would seem, rightly due in my eyes because I realise, as if it was a sudden realisation, that I was not young any more. Coming home from work, I would often crash on to my settee on the ground floor lounge. My intention for the evening was to listen to the news and sharing my evening with my family. Like many people, I had planned to do a few things that evening before going to bed. Suddenly my sleep is disrupted by some noise coming from the TV set at about 3.00am. Looking around, I would realise that I had managed to finish my dinner. My wife and kids had left me to go to bed upstairs. Perhaps they did not want to disturb my deep snoring sleep. Noting that I had been watched by the TV rather than the other way round and regretting that I had missed out on an earlier film or some documentary programme, going to sleep prematurely was not to repeat itself. It was a promise however so often broken. Before my kids would retire to bed, it was often a case of calling out for my children Reece, Isys, Eden and Faith. When no named child had responded, resorting to a loud ‘is anyone out there?’ would follow. The call out was often meant for a child afar in another room to come over to give me a TV remote control positioned a few metres away from my armchair. By the way, I was only 14 stone in weight.

My thought and willingness to go to bed was hampered by inherent procrastinations. My thoughts included what might happen to me between bed-sheets and the thought of climbing the staircase to the bedroom. As an animated and highly sexualised young man growing up in an African village, I never quite understood then why women would quarrel so frequently with their husbands for failing to fulfill their marital responsibility at night. That was in a chauvinistic era when women’s rights and choice of when and how to make love were not given a free rein. I remember thinking, ‘if I was married to any of these beautiful young women I would be having sex every night’. And here I am’, I had said to myself, ‘at 55, I am ducking and diving’. Looking back, I now realise that, like me, it was not because these husbands did not find their wives any more attractive or that they did not feel the urge to make love to their wives that particular night. Rather, it was the thought of potential resultant exhaustions that may require the help of painkillers afterwards. It was requiring, like for me, the need to balance the benefits of ‘short’ pleasure with subsequent lingering physical penalties bearing in mind other never-ending assignments waiting to be fulfilled the next day, weeks and years to come. For, I have heard of food rationing during World War periods except that my rationing was horizontally schemed out.

My life story, as with other people of my age, was not without the usual mid-life crisis. As with most people who struggle to accept the inevitable old age, looking after myself was a given. Vanity, it may seemed, I grew up following fashionable trends at any given time and place. Name it, and I would respond that I had done that, dusted, being here and there although I did not have any corresponding youthful face to show for it all many years later. With the exception of bleaching my skin, I was in the midst of any unfolding beautifying development such as Afro-hair style and high heel ‘boggy’ shoes in the 60s and 70s, the greasy Jerry Curls in the 80s and 90s to the current shaved skinned-sided and flat-top hairstyles. Astonished, as if this was not to be expected, I suddenly started picking up fast-emerging grey hairs out of my goatee and side beards as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror. They were, and at first, isolated few hairs. But these were a few stubborn grey hairs that were spreading fast in the most unwanted places such as nostril and other private environments. ‘Bloody hell’, I had listened to a chorus of reactionary voices in my head saying, and adding, ‘where did these come from? ‘I am not ready for these grey hairs just yet’, I thought. I remember my secondary school days when the definition of weeds as ‘plants that grow where they were not wanted’ was debated.

Immediately before the year 2010 was a period when different hairstyles did not matter so much to many people of my age. Managing to disguise your hair with all kinds of discolouration was not new to me. I had seen many elders in the village and cities go through this hair dying experience. For me, this was not an easy task and oftentimes frustrating. I was going through a phase at a time when numerous uncertified and untrained barber shops were springing up rapidly around me. Haircut was becoming increasingly a big business and personalised at a time of increasing unemployment in the UK, Nigeria and beyond. It was equally an era when self-taught ‘Do It Yourself’ individual barbers began to shave themselves at home. People had taken it upon themselves to forget all about any hairstyle. For many people, it was a time to adopt a completely skin-shaved Kojack hair style on a daily basis. For rather cheap olive oil shaving foam and easily affordable razor blades, shaving could not be any smoother. A completely shaved head was easier and less expensive way to prevent embarrassing moments both in scale and scope that grey hairs reveal at unwanted places and time. For some reason, I could not imagine my head without any hair, grey or black. My grey hairs however were springing up fast at a time in my life when my facial and physical presentations were not quite matching up with these ‘disclosers’ of old age. It is true to say that I was feeling worse off inside than I was physically making it out. Growing old is a phenomenon that human beings, like me, are never ready to easily accept.

Indeed, I should have been warned by people who were giving weird looks at my oiled and drifty Jerry Curls in 80s when I was in my late 20s. But having people glare at the white edges and the base of my hair (because the white edge was different from the top black hair) was something I was not prepared for. When I had forgotten to meticulously dye my hair (leaving me with unintentionally missed patches) or when I had failed to sufficiently wash the dye off my hair only to see spotted white collar shirt in the office later that day was another concerning matter. When I suddenly realised that a gigantic single white hair was standing right there in the middle of my increasingly wrinkling forehead, the time has come when facial cream and other cosmetic intervention seem to be offering anything but a state of plateau if not a feeling of diminishing return. When a single hair is seen sticking out of my nostril and steering at me right in front of my bathroom or in my car mirror - or a single hair in a fast receding forehead which, for some reasons, I had missed earlier, then the time has come. At first, trying to handpick the individual grey hair was a reassuring solution but handpicking became a waste of time afterwards. These are some embarrassing moments suggestive of signs of the time which unfortunately confront millions of people like me. People who whilst clearly inwardly admitting that their time is running out and yet are outwardly in denial of a fast journey in a pinewood box heading towards six foot down under.

The question for me is: why do I care to go through the stress of colouration and camouflage? The same question can also be asked of millions of people if not billions of consumers worldwide who continue to patronise a huge industry of hair colouration. Perhaps, my attitude towards grey hair may change with time. Somehow, black men, even at the time of Jerry curls in the 70s and 80s, were not inclined to use any form of toupee or wigs. They did not need them in the 50s and 60s and were not prepared to use them in 2014 either. It is something that finds no favour with me too. It was a little comfort though knowing that hair colouration was not only widespread but equally a very lucrative industry worldwide. At the same time, there were people like Alistair Darling – British Chancellor of the Exchequer (2007-2010) who would gracefully display to the world that his entire head was white with the exception of his eyebrows that were singled out as black or perhaps dyed black. There were other people who would happily leave their grey hair on and other people who would be grey one moment and are seen with black hair some days or weeks later. For some reason, I would give respect to the brave men and women for their courageous display. In most cases, and for most people, their grey hairs give them a sense of identity and make some people more distinguished and dignified. However, for many men and women with unkempt grey hair, the appearance of their grey hair was bordering on repulsiveness. It was a time for the naturally bald-headed men to be thankful. And yet, I remember an African saying that you had better be bald-headed, and at the same time, be rich because bald-headedness and poverty hardly go together, prestigiously speaking. And still, I continue to see isolated individuals with Jerry curled hair in 2014. I would see women who had forgotten to use their black mascaras for their eyelashes. For so many thousands, if not millions of black women, toupees or wigs have been conveniently helpful in a variety of shapes and sizes and on public occasions. Wigs became a convenient saviour of what many years of chemicals in saloon and alopecia left behind. For many other women still, they could do what men do, if not better. And why not have a kojak hair shave as well? Of course, I have always acknowledged the concept of choice and how this notion has made my own world interesting. One of the reasons for my dislike of grey hair is that a grey hair tends to be a marker to pre-define, pre-judge and age-classify individuals just like people tend to do in the case of uniformed professionals such as police officers and nurses. Reflectively, it was time that I was grateful for the absence of hairs on my chest and arms. For, these parts of my body would have been extremely problematic if not impossible to dye.

My other early warning signs of old age began to manifest when I started to gasp for breath in the process of letting out half-ready fart. It was concerning when I started to struggle to pick up objects from the floor, cream my feet or when I could not tie my shoe laces without using a staircase or some physical object to assist my waist and knees - my olive oil and other vitamin supplements notwithstanding. If I was honest, these signs of old age were always there except that I did not notice them much earlier. I could not however be precise about exactly at what age they all started. It was as if all the signs were individually creeping up on me. Goodness me, I had to think quickly on my feet when one day my beloved son thought he was looking at someone else. Looking at my grey head for the first time, he had exclaimed: what is that?!! This question and answer session was following my visit to the barber shop for a low hair cut which had exposed my underneath grey hair all over. A face cap was usually useful at this point in time and heading home to commence my DIY colouration. As kids would do, my son ran into the unlocked bathroom before his dad could cover up.

As if these embarrassing moments were not enough, they were further compounded by unsolicited respect, courtesy and greetings such as the use of customary prefix ‘uncle’ in public places. A traditional African greeting accorded to old people but which is now duly offered to me by people who when I see them in the streets or public events would physically present as far older than me. They were people who, to my surprise, ought to be my age if not older. Perhaps dyeing my hair was not useful after all. These rather premature, surprise and unsolicited greetings were certainly not easing my discomfort and something I was not expecting from women who I may have a chance of chatting up. I was clearly aware that I am a married man with children. My occasional harmless and friendly chat-ups with women had never led to any bedspread outside my marriage. Rather the rare chat ups were used to measure whether I had gone past my sell-by-date. It was useful to gauge where I may end up should my wife decide to give me her elbow one day. After all, I was married and living in the UK. I did not stand the slightest chance of reversing the long historical trend of high divorce rates in the UK. It is a common knowledge in the UK that when it comes to human rights and marital issues women’s wishes and needs oftentimes prevail over that of the men counterpart. It is also a common knowledge particularly so among black immigrants that it is bad enough to grow old in the UK and worst still to be old and single in the UK, a dreaded terrain that I must avoid by all means necessary. Could it be, I would ask myself that such highly unsolicited accolade was one tactical move by these young ladies to fob me off before I had even began: an indication that perhaps, I did not clearly stand a chance with them? Perhaps, I have been eliminated by my age. ‘Have I passed my use-by date?’ I had asked myself. These feelings and questions would come in different shapes and sizes and at a time when I would rather not look at pictures taken during my vibrant and handsome youth, a youth full of a huge cause to be sanguine about how to fill my promises to achieve ‘this’ and ‘that’ in Africa or anywhere else. In fact, I had boundless aspirations to go with my youth. After all, my ideas, dreams and wishes were free. All I needed was optimism and unwavering commitment to realising some if not all of my dreams.

Aged 40, it was a time when I felt that there was still time to fulfill all my promises. When I see a slow moving horse-driven coffin on the way to the cemetery, I could not help but to think that he or she was probably not far older than me. Unlike my time in an African village, life in London was not slow. A city that patient dogs would not necessarily end up with any bones let alone fattest bones for foreign dogs. Inevitably, the realistic possibility of hitting 50 and 60 very soon was confronting me right in the face before I could even begin to think about it. Women, I was told do not like to tell their age. They also do not like asking people to guess how old they look or to be asked about how old they are. It was not however common for men to want to be asked either. On a few occasions when I had asked people to guess how old I was, I could make no sense of the feedback I received. When asked to guess how old other people were I would often give a dishonest feedback having chosen to be carefully calculative and sensitive in my judgement. I was growing up to know that age is not nothing but a number. Indeed, I did not believe in ‘it is just a number’; ‘size does not matter’ and all that patronizing nonsense. And yet I wonder about people, like me, who are always in self-denial of the reality of life. I knew that I could have given a true and yet higher score but I had hesitated in order to avoid hurting people’s feelings. The safe option was to give a lower number far below the true age. Now on the receiving end, I realise that the pleasantly received positive feedback was better – better knowing however that the guess-estimated figure was patronising. On the other hand, the publicly received positive feedback would not make me feel any better knowing that, deep down, the truth lies out there somehow. But there were some bitter truths that were better off ‘unannounced’. I never had the ‘blonde option’ available to a white man. That many younger men were displaying their grey hair served no consolation for me. Dressing up smartly in suite and tie only serve to mask the underlying inevitable feeling of ‘time is running out of me’ syndrome. Frequent and increasing news of Ms X and Mr R passing away only serve to compound my feelings of health insecurity even though regular medical checks always give me a clean bill of health. Well, do the medics actually know it all? I would wonder.

Whilst working in a building site in London at aged 27, I was involved in a conversation with an Irish man named Raymond about how old we were. I had ridiculed him about his grand old age of 33. Many years back when I was in my teens in Africa, I had wanted to grow older fast because the pace of life was somehow slower and because there were things that adults were doing which at the time I could not do or was not allowed to do such as sleeping with my own woman every night or having my own room to myself. At aged 27, 33 years seemed an age that was approaching fast as if it was unprepared for. I told Raymond that there was so much that I had in mind to do for the next 6 years. ‘That was what I thought’, he replied. Like the initial intentions of millions of immigrants in Europe, America and anywhere else on earth for that matter, leaving my birthplace was meant to be temporary, and it was always with a promise to return home sooner rather than later. Not so long after arriving in Europe, I was gradually realising that many unfolding obstacles on my way meant it was not realistic to specify a definitive month or the year when I would eventually pack my bags to return to my folks in Africa.

Clocking my 50th birthday, I was wishing in retrospect that I was 33 if not 27. Looking back there was so much I did not do during the preceding 13 years as if Raymond’s prediction was manifesting. When Raymond said this to me at the time, I did not read too much meaning into it. Now, it is looking like it is time to walk rather than to run. I am now however made to run down the hilltop by forces beyond my control. It was a time when I started to question myself about where the time and years had gone. Still carrying hitherto unfulfilled promises on my shoulders, it was a time when I would hear numerous true and false stories about fellow migrants who have achieved so much and some of these migrants had migrated long after me. These were stories that oftentimes would not sit comfortably well with me and at a time when I would start to make comparative assessments of contemporary immigrants. It was bad enough to watch people leave Africa before me and worst still to see others who left Africa or other parts of the world after me doing better than me. Conversely, perhaps unknown to me, other immigrants were envious of my progressive movement and calculated ‘long-term accumulative richness’. There was no way of knowing this with a view to consoling my heart. There were some subtle unspoken words and/or body language that those who arrived in London long after me would not say or display directly to me. Perhaps, it did not need to be pronounced. Whenever I say to late-arrival migrants that I had lived in England for more than 28 years, their responses always seemed to suggest, ‘what have you achieved or what are you still doing here?’ Of course, they were people who knew little or nothing about me, and so their reactions were not issues I could not live with. And yet, these were moments to ask questions about what may have gone wrong. Perhaps, they were right. As Marlon Brandon is noted as saying in the film, On The Waterfront, ‘I could have been somebody’. And if not, why not?

Knowing that it was impossible to turn back the time or the tidal wave, it was time to blame the era and location of my birthplace and wishing, ‘I wish I was born in the UK (it did not matter at this moment whether I was the descendant of slavery), America or other developed country where my talents could have been nursed better from an early age and with better facilities’. It was oftentimes comfortable to attribute the success stories of this group of immigrants to negative or illegal means. And yet, some had worked extremely hard to overtake me as if there was only one last lap to finish. It was time to wonder about children and adults who were born in developed countries like the UK and some groups of them who had failed to make better use of already-made-available facilities at their disposal. Arriving in England aged 26, I had more than 39 years ahead of me before reaching my retirement at 65. What that gave me was 39 years to share the birthrights and privileges of the indigenous population of the United Kingdom. My legitimate rights to share the privileges in the form of, for example, the ‘already-made-available socio-economic and political facilities with the black and white natives did not however come about until I was age 31. The 5-year difference was spent doing unauthorised underground work in order to survive and to envisage my future full of hope and aspirations.

At this junction, I often asked myself some soul-searching questions in relation to what I would do and would not do if I were to re-live my life. Such questions include: has life been kind or bad to me? Were there women I could have slept with? In the midst of all these reflections, it was also a time however that I was grateful to God and my parents for all, in my eyes, commendable and wonderful achievements. I remember a short story as told by my parents that a little pig had asked his father why he was not extremely rich, the little pig was simply told among other things by his father, ‘before I could finish cutting one piece of wood in front of me, another wooden obstacle was rapidly replacing it’. ‘But what about other pigs who had managed to completely cut all their woods?’ The son replied. ‘Well,’ said the father, ‘you just have to wait to find out yourself son’. At aged 55, I have long found out that cutting a piece of wood was not that simple however sharp my machete was and irrespective of my high level of energy. Is happiness not a relative concept? Like the denial of ‘age is a number or size does not matter adages, I know that more money would make a huge difference to my state of happiness.

It was probably the right time, I thought, to begin to make plans. In beginning to ‘make plans to make plans’ to return back to Africa, it was important first to account for my lived experiences in Africa. For me, the advantages and disadvantages of leaving my birthplace to live abroad are complex and interwoven. So it was my own free will decision (unlike refugees) to leave my beloved country behind to live in the UK. Little did I know that my departure would come with a price. Asking fellow immigrants who left impoverished African background to live in London and New York etc, I was often offered candid answers that they would rather prefer to return home but for the state of never-seem-to-be-improving African economy. For the majority of them, they have in fact somehow regretted their decision to leave Africa in the first place. And yet, the regrets and wishes to return back are never acted on, generally speaking. The regret is never to be listened to or believed by millions of Africans back home who remained ever so desperate and who would do anything humanly possible to be in our positions abroad. And so many people have lost their lives, for example, hundreds of people who died in the desert extreme heat for lack of water having being walking for miles and days and hundreds that died through many different boat and ship wrecks in their desperate struggle to leave their homeland for economic or political reasons to live in a green pasture abroad. For many of us who had migrated, it is not obviously easy to return back home. Thus, for many Africans like me, save for economic reasons, a concerted decision to return home is never simple despite the continuing cultural nostalgias.

On a short visit home after my first 13 years in the UK, I discovered to my disappointment that my expectations were misplaced. Differential status meant that people I used to hang out with were now addressing me as ‘sir’; an unwelcome courtesy that I hated and tried so passionately to reject. We were equal before I left and we should still be equal on my return. In my humble view, such equal status should remain irrespective of subsequent differences in educational, financial or ‘travel-abroad’ status. One of my aims of travelling to acquire education in the UK was to, one day, return and hang out together with my childhood peers perhaps in the same way and with the same old friends. The main focus of our discussion was now on how I could help them and their extended families financially. I should probably have expected our culture and my relationship with those I left behind to change over time. It has in fact changed so significantly and continues to change so differently. My ‘left-behind culture’ had diluted so much so to my dislike. My old friends were never in the mood to reminiscent about our old times together, for example, how girls were taken months and years to ‘think about’ my proposal to be their boyfriend and how for many of these girls, they never ever intended to make any decision or to think about it in the first instance except a calculated ploy to string me along with lingering false expectations.

To change or to forget the memory of my life in Africa would be impossible because it was the only early life that I lived. It was a way of life of which my modern way of living could not change, replicated or diluted in any significant way. Thusly noted, if research studies on human beings were to be believed, I would stand to remember about ten years of my entire life. This would, I guess, depend on at what point in my life that any attempt to recollect my life story was accounted for bearing in mind a number of interfering variables such as possible dementia. Research studies also demonstrate that hidden and perhaps poignant memories can be re-activated through hypnotic or psychodynamic interventions. I would perhaps need some help to remember details of my happy early days as I yearn so much to remember all of my happy memories. So many aspects of my good memories however remain indelible and needing no reminders or re-activation. I certainly do not need any socio-dynamic intervention to remember my bad experiences. There are some memories best lost to the past and millions have gone to their graves with some undisclosed secrets and pains too. For millions of people still, it was better to get these memories off their chests. From a psychological school of thought, re-visiting and dealing with my past painful memories could perhaps help me to deal with some lingering issues. Perhaps, such a psychosocial intervention may help my life-long regret over my failure to adequately support my father: the extra support my father mostly needed when he was physically ill for more than 11 years until his death.

In recollecting and accounting for my life experiences, I owe no one any apologies for any ‘un-thriller’ and unflavoured graphic description of my lived experience because that was the way it was. When I was ‘giving birth’ to some faecal impaction from my backside, for example, and if I were to be blunt, (having my private shit), it was my unique and specific experience - experience that I went through alone except that there were inwardly recorded account of ‘external’ communications with my creator and multiple voices in my head at the time about why I should not, for example, have eaten whatever it was that was subsequently given me some discomfort. For it is believed that we all hear voices in our head all the time except that voices, like mine, are not associated with any signs of unwellness, psychiatrically thinking. My life experiences may not therefore be related or collaborated by other people’s life account owing to the specificity of my lived experiences. These experiences may also not be shared by others owing to cultural differences and cultural diversity. That means that my views and experiences in life would be different from the views, opinions and experiences of other people. That my story be learned from or collaborated by other people was never the rationale behind this narrative life story. The primary aim of accounting for my biography was to make available, the history of my immediate and extended families, which hitherto was never written, and no more so in formally historiocising our local community. In studying my family history, writing and reflecting on my own life story, it reminded me how very much I wish I could read written accounts of the lived experiences of my parents. My ultimate hope is that my narrative account is placed in my family archive. Happy I would be though if it was by default published, rather than as initially intended.

In the same line of thought, a narrative account of my life in London and earlier experiences in an African village may not be representative of a typical lifestyle of every African who had spent some considerable time outside his or