We were supposed to have arrived back at Wales a few days later. We were supposed to be back by my birthday and the Pontardawe Festival. We had been out there for three weeks. But when we tried to look for tickets, the flights were fully booked. There was no room for us to fly out of this country. The next flights available were the first week of September, so I would be staying in Nigeria while having my ninth birthday and also missing the festival, and also missing the first days back at school. My brother, Lloyd, had also spent his birthday out there. So living in Nigeria for another three weeks meant another three weeks living with lizards, dragonflies and more nagging from the market traders.
In the village, we met loads of people, Nigerians, English, Americans, Canadians and even Welsh, too. The Kirbys, an English family from Newcastle were a really nice family. They had a son, Lawrence, who was twelve at the time; he had made friends with Cellan. But he had a bad habit of sucking his thumb, but turned his head when he saw my mother pulling an expression on her face as a way of saying not to do it and then stop it. My brother even stopped him from doing it, but instead he’d push Lawrence’s hand away as he was lifting his arm. His parents soon were using the same method after they learnt on how my mother and brother were doing, and after a while he stopped doing this childish act.
Lawrence is older than myself, but he was friendlier with Cellan because they shared the same interest in football, as most Geordies do. But Cellan supported Manchester United and Lawrence supported Newcastle United, this was the only disagreement they had, but never argued or fought over it. Apparently, Lawrence was supposed to go to trials with Newcastle United after leaving Nigeria, however, I am not sure whether he made any progress with it.
Another English family were the Wilsons from Scunthorpe. Roger, a former officer in the Royal Navy, was a tall, hairy man with light brown hair. Gina, who was brought up in India, was also an officer in the Navy, and was a short, blonde haired woman, she had a big interest for game and quiz shows. She won on a couple of occasions, such as ‘Supermarket Sweep’ and ‘Weakest Link’. They had two children, Abigail and Drew, who were both younger than me. But Drew was the worst of the two; everyday he’d say in a squeaky voice and an annoying accent, “Can I come over to your house and play?” He would nag all the time. Maybe it was just me who got irritated, I really cannot remember why. But he’s matured a lot now, apparently. Abigail was quieter, though. My father knew Roger already from the nuclear power plant at Sizewell where they both worked a couple of years before. The family now live in Alltwen, which is next to Pontardawe, where I’m from. They moved there when Roger became one of the managers at a new power plant in Port Talbot.
My father also worked with another guy who lived across the road from us in Nigeria. He also worked in Sizewell B Nuclear Power Plant a few years before. His name was Simon Wood. I didn’t get to know much of him. But he looked very similar to my neighbour who now lives across the road form my home in Pontardawe, but with blonde hair.
My next-door neighbour was Derek Wynne, from Barnsley, which is in South Yorkshire, and was working in South Korea when we last heard from him. He was, and most probably still is, short with white short hair, big glasses and he always wore a t-shirt with shorts and sandals. Rarely he was in something else. He showed us a couple of insects, which aren’t found back home, so we never saw them before. He kept a rhinoceros beetle, a huge, black, shelled creature with horns. I held it once. It felt weird, as its feet were sticky. I had the largest species of beetle crawling up my arm, and even though I never saw them before, I wasn’t feeling bad at all. I knew it wasn’t poisonous or harmless to humans at all, anyway. Lloyd and my mother couldn’t look at it, they never liked insects and arachnids and stuff. But Lloyd, being four at the time, followed my mother’s reactions and wouldn’t touch it.
He also had shown us a praying mantis. This green thing with huge eyes just stood there, motionless. It had its four legs pinned down on the leaf, and its other two put together and raised up to its head. But it was waiting for prey. Derek had found a fly. He held it in front of the mantis. The fly was crawling around his fingers, rubbing its legs together as they sometimes do. The fly was none the wiser that he was at a huge risk by a huge predator standing right next to it, the fly didn’t know its fate. The mantis was camouflaged amongst the leaf and grass. Suddenly, the fly was gone. If you blinked, you missed it. It didn’t fly off, as the mantis was too quick. It was one of the fastest things I’ve even seen.
Derek married a Nigerian called Aguchi. She was tall and had big cheeks bones, which were a common feature amongst Africans. She always wore traditional clothes, though most native people couldn’t afford them. These traditional robes were very colourful, and a number of different patterns were embroided all around. She also wore a lot of beads.
Derek also showed us a trick, he had pierced a balloon with a pin, but the balloon didn’t blow. My brothers and I stood there amazed, even though I know how it works now, we didn’t understand it then. However, he did something else, too; he pulled out the pin and the balloon stayed intact.
There was also a Canadian family, the surname was French, and I couldn’t remember it. Though their names were Gaston, a tall, blond, French looking guy with a moustache. Dani was a small, plump woman with long, black hair who wore big glasses. Muriel, the eldest daughter, who was then fourteen, she had short blonde hair who wasn’t fat, but neither was she thin. The middle daughter was about eleven, I really cannot remember her name, but she was also plump and more like her mother. The youngest was Cindy, she was a few days younger than me, and was more like the rebellious one and more like a tomboy. Her and Cellan were both very competitive and often competed in burping contests. Normally Cindy would win, but often it was close! She wasn’t like her sisters, she was much slimmer, however not too thin. She had darker skin and shoulder length brown hair. Though the family were from Quebec, their accent was a bit more like French.
The Welsh family were from Anglesey. I can’t remember their surname, but their names were Ann and Clive. We met them next to the swimming pool in the German working village of Fehrestahl. When my brothers and I were splashing about too much in the pool, my mother shouted at us in Welsh and to make us stop, she made an empty threat that she’d stick our heads underwater.
“If you do that I’ll call the NSPCC!” laughed a tall, black haired woman with a big nose. My mother was looking around; she had no idea who said that. Then Ann stood up and started talking to my mother in Welsh. The other people were looking at them in astonishment; they haven’t heard this language before. They looked at them as if fire has just been discovered.
We met a few Nigerians. Our gardeners, Life, who was a short, bald man, about eighteen at the time and he looked a bit like Robert Earnshaw. He was a good gardener; he also looked after the garden for the Wilsons, too. The other gardener, Love, was tall slightly built and had a bit more hair on his head and face, he was probably about twenty-five when we were there. They both did the garden nicely, though I don’t know what became of them after we left.
Our first maid, Pauline, was a bit dim. She was told not to clean my room in the morning because I would still be asleep. I do like my sleep and lie-ins. One day, my mother came out of the kitchen, with CN Breakfast News blaring on the television (it was the only thing that had a good reception); she saw a cable running down the corridor, running past the doors of my brothers’ rooms. She knew it was the hoover, used by Pauline; she was cleaning my room whilst I was sprawled across my bed with my eyes shut. After telling her many times before, she didn’t even bother telling her off, and in an annoyed but polite voice, she said:
“Can you please not clean his room while he’s sleeping? He doesn’t like being woken by such loud noises or anyone coming in like that without him knowing.” Which I don’t, it isn’t nice when you get woken up by a loud vacuum cleaner by your ears.
“Okay, miss, sorry, will not do again.” Next morning she was in there with a duster.
We had a couple of maids after her. We didn’t really want maids, we were not used to having them and we preferred to be a self-sufficient family. But the company requested it as to keep good relations between the workers and the villagers, I guess. Our last maid, Angelina, got my father in quite a lot of trouble. While we were back in Wales without my father, who stayed in Nigeria to work, Angelina stole a Cardiff City football shirt I had (she didn’t take my brothers’ Swansea City shirts, maybe they weren’t good enough!), she also stole my father’s new digital camcorder along with some money. My father reported this to the police, but, somehow, he got fined and put in a Nigerian cell for a while. The conditions at the airport were bad enough, but a jail cell? In Nigeria? There were cockroaches, dragonflies, Nigerian criminals who were six and a half feet tall and have ‘wide load’ on their arms because they had biceps as large as this account. There was a lot of dampness in the cell, and there were a lot of mosquitoes. My mother had to pay a lot of money to get him out of there and fly him back home, as the mosquitoes nearly cost my father his life as he caught malaria.
He was flown back to Wales, as the Nigerian hospitals couldn’t do as much for him. He was very close to dying. My mother was chronic, looking after us three boys and a house while my father lay in hospital. I didn’t really understand what was going on. I knew he was ill, but didn’t realise how much in a bad state he was. My mother said he was lying in a lake of his own sweat. There were bottles of tonic water on the side table, and a load of quinine being pumped into his blood stream. He was in a room, isolated from everyone else. My mother had to see him through a glass window. He did survive the ordeal, but soon afterwards he caught it again. Though this time he had a lot more of a chance of surviving; he said it wasn’t as bad as the first time he had it.
