Grandpa’s Soup: A Motivation to Excel

By Sepribo Lawson-Jack Ph.D.

Grandpa’s Soup tells a story for the pleasure, information, and entertainment of the reader. It is a narrative of the author’s memories of growing up in a tiny island village in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria in Africa. It was inspired by memories of his grandpa, who passed away while he was still very much in the formative years of his life. They are memories that he considers worth sharing because of the lasting impact they have had on his adult life.

The author hopes that the book affords the reader a peek into Kalabari-Ijaw ethnography and culture while not losing its very essence, which is motivational—a motivation engendered by the seemingly innocuous acts of a grandfather that roundly impacted the life of his grandson. Also, he attempted to present the book in a simple prose format for easy readability by a wide range of audiences across cultures and demographics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669860129

Sepribo Lawson-Jack Ph.D.

Sepribo Lawson-Jack trained as a physicist and a nuclear and materials engineer both in Nigeria and the United Kingdom. After obtaining his PhD from the prestigious Imperial College London, he worked briefly as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Birmingham before moving to the United States of America. In the USA, he worked as a research and development engineer for many years in advanced-technology companies, including AT&T Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, and Cingular Wireless. For a brief period, he was the head of nuclear-energy planning and capacity development at the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission. Also, he has served as a professor in a number of universities and is widely published in academic journals. He possesses a strong interest in social and community affairs.

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Copyright © 2023 by Sepribo Lawson-Jack, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 01/18/2023

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Preface

1: Memories of My Grandpa

2: A Stock of the Kalabari Kingdom

3: The War Canoe House

4: Early European Influence

5: Dispersal from Elem Kalabari

6: Arrival at Nyemoni

7: British Colonization of Kalabari Kingdom

8: Grandpa Tasker Young Briggs

9: Grandpa’s Famous Father

10: My Early Life

11: A Playful Childhood

12: Preparing for Life as a Fisherman

13: Starting School

14: Grandpa’s Soup

15: A Motivation to Excel

Glossary

Preface

This book was born out of two personal convictions: One, everyone has a story to tell, and it is best that we tell our story by ourselves rather than let someone else tell it for us. And two, although our story may seem insignificant or unimportant to us, it is nevertheless a story for the world and should be told through a medium that is easily accessible to anyone anywhere. These convictions are derived from my perception that important African stories had been (and are) lost to the world on account of the age-old tradition of passing stories orally from one generation to the next—more so since African communal life has changed drastically over the centuries. Unlike in the long-gone past, it is very rare today to find more than two generations of an African family living together, even in the remotest villages. For many families, the children and grandchildren are scattered all around the world. It is no longer feasible to gather the little ones under the moonlight and tell them stories. An African adage says, When an old man dies, a library is lost. The old man must tell his story while he is alive so that his knowledge, experience, and wisdom are not lost to posterity.

I did not set out to write a fictional novel, history text, biography, or even autobiography although the reader may find bits of all of these in the book. If the book must be put in a box, it should fall under the genre of memoir more than anywhere else. It is a narrative of my memories of growing up in a tiny island village in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria in Africa that is inspired by memories of my grandpa, who passed away while I was still very much in the formative years of my life. They are memories that I consider worth sharing because of the lasting impact they have had on me as an adult.

A brief history of the Kalabari-Ijaw people of the Niger Delta region of Nigeria occupies a significant space in the book since I cannot adequately introduce my grandpa to the reader without situating him geographically, ethnographically, and culturally. It is said that an Ijaw man or woman can only properly introduce himself or herself by stating the community, quarter, and family that he or she is from—in that order. However, I have deliberately failed to provide any references or ascribe sources to my historical account of the Kalabari people to avoid giving the book the appearance of a research work or history textbook because I believe that not doing so does not, in any way, detract from its authenticity. Also, I have attempted to be cautious in expressing personal opinions, especially contentious ones, concerning Kalabari history. My goal is to allow the reader to enjoy the book without being unnecessarily concerned about references, sources, or opinions. After all, all I wanted to achieve was to tell a story for the pleasure, information, and entertainment of the reader.

Nevertheless, I hope the book affords the reader a peek into Kalabari-Ijaw ethnography and culture while not losing its very essence, which is motivational—a motivation engendered by the seemingly innocuous acts of a grandfather that roundly impacted the life of his grandson. Also, I have attempted to present the book in a simple prose format for easy readability by a wide range of audiences across cultures and demographics.

1

Memories of My Grandpa

I think it was Thomas Fuller, the seventeenth-century English churchman and historian, who said, Memory is the treasure house of the mind wherein the monuments thereof are kept and preserved. Human memory is not like the memory of a computer. And Pieces of information stored in a computer will be in the same state whenever it is retrieved. It is not so with human memory, which is affected by time, mood, situation, and even other pieces of information, making the retrieval process essentially a reconstructive one that may not completely preserve the original state of the piece of information. As the years roll by and time travels farther, human memory inevitably begins to fade, and the treasures are lost forever when we die.

And so, our memories are recollections of our experiences; they are stories that need to be preserved through generations and for generations—from parent to child, grandparent to grandchild, and great-grandparent to great-grandchild.

In that sequence, grandparents appear to have a special role. In many cultures of the world, grandchildren are as special to grandparents as grandparents are to grandchildren. There appears to be a special bond between grandparents and grandchildren—more so than between either parents and children or great-grandparents and great-grandchildren. Perhaps this is because great-grandparents, even when they are alive, might be physically and mentally too weak to relate meaningfully with great-grandchildren while parents may be too busy with the seemingly more important things of life.

Grandchildren intuitively love grandparents. Grandparents dot over grandchildren, showering them with unconditional love and affection. It would appear that they cherish a chance to become parents all over again after twenty or thirty years to make up for any perceived mistakes or inadequacies they had while raising their own children. They tell grandchildren little secrets about their parents that the parents would rather keep away from their children.

And grandchildren love spending time with grandparents and being pampered in ways different from their parents’; they could ask simple questions and get long-winded, complicated answers reminiscent of age and wisdom. They could be told stories from the past that are embellished with the idiosyncrasies of the storyteller to the amusement or consternation of the young listeners.

Grandparents are a family’s most prized treasure. As the bridge