Car in Sandbox Photo by Tim Lang (CC by 2.0) |
At the age of six, I was magical. I
had the power to create and shape anything I wanted in my sandbox. I spent
hours creating and destroying, shaping mud into magical foods and fantastic
animals. In my sandbox, I was like Aladdin flying on a carpet around the world.
With magic thoughts, I visited my grandparents in America. Magic sang from me in my
sandbox. I traveled down a river on a raft, through a jungle with snakes
hanging from the trees. With a blink of the eyes, I was on a camel in the Sahara.
In 1966, our house in Kaduna,
the capital of the Northern Region of Nigeria, was in the suburbs of the city
in the agricultural heartland. There was a large field surrounding our house.
Nearby, cattle grazed on dry, grassy plains, hot and dusty, with snakes
slithering through long grass.
We loved Nigeria.
We had an active social life, clubs and parties, friends of every nationality,
road trips into the country, lazy days spent by the river or at a hotel
swimming pool. We loved our nanny, Martha, who watched my little sister and me
when my mother was out during the day. Ussman, a highly-respected hajj in our community, managed our
household.
At night, before we crawled under our mosquito netting, we
watched termites swarm around the light posts on our street. As some touched
the heat of the bulbs, the lights sizzled, their bodies popped, and they fell
to the ground. Sometimes the hot, charred scent wafted past our noses in the
night. The Nigerians gathered and ate the fat termite bodies. Ussman said they
were a gift from Allah, to feed the people. It was magic.
When I played in my sandbox, I created swarms of termites to
feed my pretend people. My older sister Susie dug streets and built houses on
her side of the sandbox. She honked the horns of her match box cars, revved
engines and sped the cars through her town. She was not happy when my imaginary
termites tried to feed her imaginary people by dropping in big clumps all
around her cars.
Sometimes when we played, we saw dik-dik, small bush deer, watching us from the field next to our
house. Magic shimmered in the air, as if the deer could talk to us.
Every afternoon, Ussman came out on the porch at dusk and
called us in. "Pickin,"
(children) he called, "time to come in now." He worried about the
cobras, adders and scorpions living under our house and porch and in holes in
the ground. Once we were safely inside, large, black cobras, as high as my
shoulders and as dark as the night swayed before the windows, spying on us from
the pitch black night.
My parents loved to entertain. The Irish Catholic priest,
Father Bell, was a frequent guest. At Christmas, he always blessed our house,
expecting a nog in return. If Dad shared his good whiskey, Father Bell blessed
the house no matter what the season was. He was jolly and loved to drink and
dance. We once had him in a conga line, and a woman dancing in line behind him
flopped his cassock up and down with the beat of the music.
"Father Bell, do your blessings really work?" I
asked.
"Aye, child," he said, "they keep you safe
and happy." He was the most magical person I knew.
Playing in my sandbox one spring day in 1966 while Susie was
at school, I heard explosions. I hurried inside as a crowd of angry people ran
down the street, sticks and machetes in hand. Ussman reassured us that he would
not let anything happen to us.
That night, we heard on BBC radio that the Premier of
Nigeria was assassinated, and his home a few blocks from our house was
destroyed. Military leaders of Ibo ethnicity seized power.
There were frequent riots, and school was often disrupted. I
sat in my room, scooting Susie's matchbox cars along the windowsill, wishing my
sandbox could be inside.
At school, air raid practices became the norm for Susie, who
never believed her desk would really save her. Whenever she dove under her
desk, she invariably found herself with her nose butting up to the smelly boy
in front of her. She began to think she would take her chances if there ever
was an air raid.
One night we were robbed as we slept, and the blankets were
stolen from our beds. In a patch of brush across from our house, Dad and
several neighbors and servants armed with poison-tipped spears and bows and
arrows converged on a hiding place and found curtains, weapons, our silverware
set, even a typewriter. The thieves had a spear and some ground nuts in a
little wooden bowl with primitive animal patterns burnished into the surface.
Thieves' Bowl |
It turned out our night watchman had failed to pay his
"dues" or protection money to the corrupt police chief who was
running a protection racket. Dad fired the watchman and hired one Tuareg, a fierce nomadic warrior, to guard our house. Although we
hired only one, at night we saw hundreds of small cooking fires in the bush
surrounding our house. When we put our lights out, they hid and waited for
thieves. I felt safer with the Tuaregs
guarding our house, their fires flickering magically into the distant brush.
But I still made Dad check under my bed every night.
Playing in my sandbox, I used sticks as spears and knives.
My make-believe people locked their doors at night. Sometimes they fought
battles and had to have a priest bless their homes.
In July, 1966, there was a second military coup, putting
Colonel Yakubu Gowon in power. There were several riots. Kaduna, as the capitol of the Northern
Region, became embroiled in turmoil. The Muslim Hausa from the north swept
south, slaughtering Christian Ibos from the east. The Ibos retaliated.
Portrayed as a religious war in the international press, it was probably rooted more in nepotism than religion. Thousands of
refugees fled across Nigeria.
Bodies lay in the streets near our home.
Throughout 1966, we heard sporadic gunfire and fighting. Mom
worried about Dad being stranded from us at his USAID job in the city, and he
often was. Ussman began warning us to stay away from certain areas of the city
because there was going to be a spontaneous riot. His predictions were always
right.
Magic thoughts dimmed as I started school. Our Embassy
advised that if there was an air raid, we should dive into the ditches along
the road, essentially open sewers. Mom said she would rather take her chances
with the planes. Life went on.
We lived with riots and gunfire in the night. Our dreams
were full of army men coming into the house while we slept. Susie sometimes
whispered, "If anything happens to our parents, Ussman can walk us north
to Niger.
We will find people to help us there."
"What's going to happen to them?" I asked.
"I don't know," Susie answered, "but we need
to figure out how to get back to the States."
I no longer fantasized about magic. Streams of refugees
passed through our city. My childish prayers and magic would not help anyone. I
stopped pretending.
In 1967, after months of violence, the evacuation orders
came. We said a quick goodbye to Ussman with no time to say goodbye to the
other people we loved. The plane loomed large before us. Dead and injured
bodies littered the tarmac. My magic was also dead.
In our absence, the Embassy sent packers to pack and ship
all our belongings to us. When our things arrived in America months later, everything of
value had been stolen, but the packers had carefully wrapped all the garbage in
our wastebaskets and shipped it to us. Unpacking the box from my room, I smiled
when I noticed a sandy matchbox car cocooned in the trash.
Jenni, I just love the way you wove magic throughout this story. This is such a moving piece and it made me teary eyed. The loss of innocence is a powerful emotion.
ReplyDeleteI still look at old Matchbox cars with fondness, and remember the wonderful days of playing in the dirt making my towns and roads.
-susie
Thanks, Susie. We were lucky that we could leave eventually. I think a lot about the people we left behind and what may have become of them. Dad told me he met Ussman after we had moved to Kinshasa, and Ussman still wanted out of Nigeria, but because of his ethnicity, language barriers, etc., it wouldn't have been safe for him there either.
DeleteI remember the sandbox fondly too. :)
Jenni
I was going to ask about Ussman. Did you ever hear of him after that? Anyway, this is a lovely post. Thank you for sharing your experiences.
DeleteHi Rhonda,
DeleteWe never heard from Ussman again after leaving Kinshasa. I hope he and his family made it. He had a brand new baby when we left.
Thanks for taking the time to read and comment. :)
Jenni, I remember on a European tour when we got to the Austrian border our tour guide warned us that typically any non-white tourists were always removed from the tour bus and questioned. We were alittle nervous and sure enough two armed guards came aboard the bus and walked down the aisle and chose all the non-white passengers - we were all separated and then placed in small rooms and questioned. It was scarey and I felt like I was in trouble - the questioning was terse and in your face - really confrontational. I can't imagine what people go through in a "war-time" situation. We were held for about 30 minutes and then finally allowed to reboard the bus. During that time I didn't know what was happening, where my husband was nor what was being said - you feel very helpless. Needless to say we didn't get the warm and fuzzies entering that particular country, but we did end up meeting some very nice people who made up for that drama. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteKL Mullens
That is frightening. That separation and feeling of helplessness can be overwhelming. It's disheartening that that sort of racial profiling still goes on - in Europe and the US.
DeleteWe had lots of tense border crossings when I was growing up, so I can definitely empathize.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment.
Jenni, we're so glad you've joined us. I think this is an outstanding piece because you have so successfully written from the point of view of a child. Many writers fail at this endeavor, but you've succeeded brilliantly. Welcome aboard.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Patricia! I am so excited to be part of this talented group of writers.
DeleteWhat a truly awesome blog. It was so interesting to have it written from "your child's" point of view. You were fortunate to live in Nigeria as a young child and have all the good memories as well as the 'scary'ones. I particularly liked the Warrior hired to watch over the house, and how comforting it was for you to see the campfires of your fathers security team.
ReplyDeleteHi Diana. Yes, we were lucky we had 4 good years there before the war broke out. Days spent by the river searching for tadpoles or playing in the pool, lots of friends and parties.
DeleteThe Tuaregs were fierce, and very effective, but for years when I went to bed at night, I had my dad check the closets and under the bed. I was always worried someone was waiting to stab me in my sleep. Seems silly now.
Thanks for reading and commenting!
This is a lovely piece, Jenni. You lived through some intense times at an early age.
ReplyDeleteI've never been in a war zone. The closest I came was a visit to Kermanshah, an Iranian province on the border with Iraq. It was the height of the Iraq War, and a member of the Kurdish family I was staying with offered to take me across the border to Iraqi Kurdistan. I was tempted for about five minutes but then common sense prevailed. I did get a chance to look across the border from high up in the Zagreb Mountains a few days later. The scenery was just wilderness and so peaceful it was hard to imagine that a war was raging not far away.
I'm so pleased that you agreed to join us as a regular contributor. You have a lot of fascinating stories to tell and you know how to tell them well.
Thank you, Heidi! I'm so happy to be here.
DeleteI'm glad you didn't wander over the border during the height of the war. I think the Kurdish area was under control pretty quickly, but I wouldn't want you to risk it! Wars are unpredictable at the best of times.
We're lucky you remember your childhood happenings so vividly! Thanks for bringing them to us.
ReplyDeleteI remember quite a bit, but relied heavily on my parents and my older sister for the details because I was so young when this happened. I have to credit my family for filling in the gaps.
DeleteThanks, Kaye, for commenting!
Yvette Carol wrote:
ReplyDeleteWow, powerful, evocative piece, Jenni. I too adhered to the thread you wove through this tapestry of words, the thread of magic that started out so strong, only to thin beneath the harsh reality of war. Exquisite.
Thank you, Yvette. I remember so well feeling like I was magic when I was six. I had a sea monster puppet, Sigmund the Seasick Sea Monster, that spoke when I pulled a string. One day a Nigerian woman came to our house with a bucket full of bottles on her head. I pulled the string and Sigmund spoke, and she dropped all the bottles and ran screaming from our house, "Juju! Juju!" I asked Ussman what juju was, and he told me it meant magic. I remember feeling pretty darned powerful!
DeleteI'm happy the thread is there all the way through. Thanks for reading it.
OK, wait! This is your FIRST time in a war zone? Are you going to tell about the others in the future? I've never been in a war zone!
ReplyDeleteAh! Very astute reader! ;) Yes. Aside from riots and uprisings against 3rd World dictators and so-called bloodless coups, I went through the first Russian-backed coup in Afghanistan, which was brief, but very violent. Russian & Afghan soldiers, tanks, MiGs, missiles, etc. If I don't share the story here, I may share it on my own blog at some point, Nomad Trails and Tales, http://nomadtrailsandtales.com I have posted a companion piece there to this one, with more details about the war in Nigeria.
DeleteYou don't want to be in a war zone, believe me. :)
I too was moved by your child's voice, the loss of magic in your life. And thoughts of Ussman, and all of those innocents caught up by such violent twists of fate.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Diana. I'm glad it resonated for you. We could leave when things got rough. They could not. I hope some day humans are able to move beyond violence, but I worry that it's built into our DNA.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for reading and commenting.
What an incredible story and a journey from childhood and magic to the awareness of war. Beautifully written.
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading and commenting. And thanks for the compliment. :)
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ReplyDelete