The Road to Naijiriya

Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-Chief
Last Modified: 03:54 AM EDT, 24 November 2009

LAGOS, Nigeria – It was 1970 when my father announced that we would be moving to Ile Ife, Nigeria. The move was precipitated by an incident in which my father was unjustly arrested by a racist policeman while driving me and my siblings home from school. The policeman did allow him to contact our mother who came to pick us up, but the image of my father being roughly shoved into the back of a black and white was traumatizing.  In fact, I wondered if we would ever see him again.

Later that evening, when the police finally allowed my father to call a lawyer, we received word that he had somehow “broken” his arm while in custody. We were thankful that he had not been killed while incarcerated, which was not an uncommon occurrence during the era of the Civil Rights Movement.  The injuries he sustained while in custody, reinforced his decision to leave the States, especially since he believed that if he stayed, “they” would kill him.

I was born six years earlier on Eglin Air Force Base, where my parents had relocated after graduating from Howard University.  This was my father’s first post, which would subsequently be his last, because of his outspoken, radical tendencies that resulted in several disciplinary actions, thus earning him the reputation of being insubordinate, outspoken and a radical non-conformist troublemaker.

My father was a Commissioned Officer on the base located in the Northwestern part of the state known as the Pan Handle.  This area was also disparagingly known as Lower Alabama, because it had high numbers of Klu Klux Klan members, incidents of racially motivated crimes and bigotry, and the belief by many of its white citizenry that the Southern Confederacy would rise again.

A black man, who wouldn’t conform, especially in a system as rigid as the military, was by definition an aberration. His open opposition to what he viewed as European Western Imperialism, of which, in his estimation, America was the most egregious offender; coupled with his vociferous pronouncements that “the chickens would come home to roost”, referring in particular to the crimes perpetrated by White Americans against the indigenous peoples of this country, put him on a watch list. It was also a dangerous combination for his growing, young family, which consisted of me, who is the eldest, and my two siblings, twins, who were just a year and a half younger.

My father was born in the Mississippi, and had a genetic heritage which consisted of Scotch-Irish, African, and Choctaw Indian. His anti-White rhetoric was not unusual, but his anti-American sentiments, Pan-African Socialists ideals, and his Islamic leanings made him a definite anomaly in the Deep South. Unlike his siblings or contemporaries, who quietly complained about the injustices perpetrated against the community by the white supremacists, my father openly railed against the system from an early age. It was only because of his intellect, perseverance, and rage that he was able to prevail against a substandard educational system which deemed him and all like him, fit only for menial labor.

Although his father, my paternal grandfather owned 500 acres of farm land, bequeathed to his father by his father, a former plantation owner; and all twenty-three siblings worked the farm while growing up, my father always dreamed of returning to Africa where he could be a free man. He knew this would only be possible through education, and the easiest way for an African-American, then as now, to secure an advanced degree that is financially out of reach, was through the military.

Through the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), my father was able to attend Howard University for his undergraduate degree. While there he met my mother, who was the middle child born on the cusp between the “new” America and the “old”. It was a time of segregation by “colored” and “white”, and the black community by force of consequence developed their own institutions to foster upward mobility through education and various traditions.

Her mother, my grandmother, whom I called Nana, was a fiercely bitter woman, with dark-skin and strong features. I remember her best for her long hair, natural and braided, which fell to nearly the middle of her back, but which she kept tightly bound beneath a succession of wigs. She wore the most fantastic designer clothes and furs, and drove top of the line cars. She was from the Gulf Coast area of Mississippi, and her mother was full-blooded Natchez Indian. She had tenaciously scraped and fought to leave her trouble childhood behind her, and through my grandfather, sought to reinvent herself.

My mother was born and raised in Washington, DC, and lived in the “The Gold Coast” region of the city, in a six bedroom, three story, classic looking Federal style home that previously housed the Argentinian Embassy. It was against this historical backdrop, and for these reasons that Nana was aghast when my mother brought my father home. He was not part of the Black Bourgeoisie, nor did he aspire to be; plus he denigrated the very icons of success my mother’s family and others of their class aspired to. He pilloried their heroes to whom they paid homage, such as Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr., preferring the politics and the personages of Marcus Garvey and later Malcolm X. When they decided to marry, it was against the wishes of my grandmother, though later she tacitly supported the ceremony for the sake of appearances.

Their dislike of each other was mutual, and when my father completed his undergraduate degree, he accepted the commission in Florida where he completed the requisite four-year tour of duty. Upon completion, he moved his young family to Columbus, Ohio while he worked on his Masters and Doctorate in Mathematics and Physics at Ohio State University.

We lived in a bucolic subdivision named Westerville. Our pink and white rambler sat across from a verdant pasture where cows grazed lazily along a wooden fence. On our side of the street, tall, cedar polls, tethered one to the next by sagging black telephone cables, ran the length of the street, disappeared into the horizons.

In front of our house were tall juniper bushes, whose purple berries provided an endless source of amusement in, make-believe pies, cakes and sleeping potions. Behind the house were ten acres of land, which my father had lovingly tilled with a motorized hand-tiller.  Although, he didn’t want to be a farmer, he was definitely typical of the saying, “you can take the boy out of the country, but can’t take the country out of the boy.”

It was against this backdrop, that my father began his quest to leave the United States, and with ever-increasing confrontations with the authorities, plus his affiliations with Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers, it was inevitable that he would have eventually been killed.

This was the beginning of our lives as refugees. It is the reason why, though born in the United States, I am an African.  I formed my strongest, most powerful memories in Africa. It is where I spent my formative years, and where I acquired my aptitude for languages, developed my palate, and internalized the cultural nuances of the role of women in an African society. This is one of the primary reasons why I did not develop an attachment to American traditions and customs.

However, at the time, though far more educated about the Continent than most Americans, I was just as susceptible to stereotypes, and my mind immediately conjured images of Africa that I had watched on “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom”.  It was a frightening and dramatic change in lifestyle. My father took my brother with him to prepare the way and to get things settled, while my mother remained to pack our lives, transfer our records, and mentally prepare herself, me and my sister for life in Africa.

I remember when the movers took the last of the steamer trunks from the house, and transported them to a freight forwarding company for shipment to Nigeria. The house was swept clean, the carpets shampooed, the fireplace flute closed, never to be used again. Mom dressed us in our best clothing, and we headed to the Bolton Field Airport for a flight to New York, then London, and after a half of day lay over, on to Lagos.

When we landed at Lagos International Airport, now known as Murtala Muhammed International Airport, I remember how acrid and odoriferous it was. I had never experienced such a press of humanity, the din of different dialects and languages, and what was to me at first, the intriguing clothing of the Muslim men and women.

My father was there with my brother and I could hear my mother release her breath in relief at seeing him again. We made our way through the crowds, where everyone seemed to know where they were going, though there seemed to be no organization, directions, or clearly marked egresses. As we pressed closer to the streets in front of the Airport, the dirt, exhaust, body odors and cooking smells threatened to overwhelm my senses. My father confidently navigated a pathway out of the terminal to a waiting taxi out front.

He merged quickly into traffic, without signaling or slowing, and I remember my heart leaping into my throat. I dared not show my fear because my father did not tolerate displays of weakness, but it was a dizzying proposition to sit in the back of this cab; its hard leather seats cracked from the hot African sun, its seat belts cut or removed.  We slid violently as he rounded corners, tires screeching, while he talked animatedly and laughed with my father who sat to his left.

My mother sat with us in the back, carefully maintaining a placid expression, while with her right hand she rigidly grabbed the door, her knuckles taunt with stress, as she extended her left arm across the three of us to keep us from flying forward into the driver’s seat. Although, I had seen right hand driven cars in England, we had not spent enough time there to actually experience being driven in one.  It was a disconcerting feeling on top of his erratic driving.

At that time Lagos was the capital of Nigeria, and the Biafrin Civil Wars had recently ceased, though tensions still ran high. My father directed the driver to take us to the city because he wanted us to have an opportunity to view the beautiful bay and lagoon before heading to Ife. I remember there were many roundabouts and bridges in the city of Lagos which was overwhelming in size and scope.

I had never been in a city as large as Lagos, which looking back, was comparable in size to New York City. It was teaming with life, snarled with traffic, and choked with humanity. I was just beginning to enjoy the tour, when we approached Bar Beach and the traffic came to a standstill. I watched as beggars darted in and out of traffic begging for alms. Almost all had some type of malady, a missing eye, a missing limb, or some other type of disfigurement. My mother asked what was wrong, but my father pointedly ignored her and continued to speak with the driver.

A cacophony of horns blared from all sides, angry at nothing and everything, and ineffective because of the incessancy. Inch by inch traffic edged forward as soldiers with machine guns walked up and down the slow-moving cars. I had never seen soldiers, much less black men with guns. The only black men with guns that I had seen growing up were the Black Panthers and other groups who espoused revolution. I was frightened, but the driver seemed unphased as we continued to inch forward.

Finally, we came upon the most horrific sight, the bullet ridden, bloody bodies of three men who had been tied with rope to wooden oles erected in the sand. Their bodies were slumped on buckled legs; the fronts of their pants were wet, where they had peed, their heads lolled at unnatural angles, and their blood soaked clothing dripped slowly into the sand beneath them. One body had escaped it’s tethers and lay crumpled in the sand, eyes closed as if in repose, were it not for the gaping bullet wounds. I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. It was the first time that I had ever seen dead bodies, though it wouldn’t be the last that trip; it was the immediacy of the scene that left an indelible imprint in my memory, for the execution had occurred just minutes before.

We soon passed this bottleneck, then once again headed into the heart of the metropolis at breakneck speeds. Fast, faster, stop. Fast, faster, fastest, stop, go. It was almost too much for me to absorb, and yet, because it was so alien, it was completely engaging.

The beggars were most fascinating as they competed with goats eating trash and other debris from gutters, mopeds, cars, lorries, and pedestrians. The fact that they were so many beggars was unbelievable, the sheer magnitude of men and women without legs who propelled themselves on dollies or wooden hand ladders, stopping only to extend their tin cups in askance of alms was unfathomable. The depth and breadth of the poverty was hard for me to process, because though poverty existed in America, I never experienced it.  Like many other ills, the country was well equipped at secreting these less desirable realities in rural pockets or ghettos to which most people did not travel.

My mother repeatedly whispered, “don’t stare. Ayanna, don’t stare. It is not polite to stare. It is offensive.”

But I was a child, and try as I might, I found my eyes drawn again and again to contorted bodies afflicted by diseases unheard of in America, except in medical textbooks. Particularly disturbing were the people infected with Elephantiasis, which is caused by a thread like worm carried by mosquitoes.

The first person I saw with the disease was a man sitting on the side of the road begging. I screamed, “mommy!! What’s wrong with his leg?!”

My mother quickly shushed me as she cast a furtive glance at my father, who responded by saying, “shut that girl up!”

I was used to my father’s harsh and sometimes violent temperament, and unlike my sister and brother who cowered, and my mother who mostly tried to protect us and stay out of his way, I always stood up to him. I wasn’t foolish enough to ignore his directive to my mother, but it didn’t stop me from asking her in a hushed tone, “what’s wrong with him?”

My mother replied, “he has Elephantiasis.”

With childlike naïveté I repeated, “so is he going to turn into an elephant?”

“No, sweetie. It’s a disease that mosquitoes carry and give people when they bite them.”

That shut me up because I knew there were a lot of mosquitoes in Africa; and I certainly didn’t want to end up like that man. I spent the next hour silently digesting the ramifications of mosquito bites, as I continued to observe the people and the country that was going to be our new home.

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