In late August 1997, a Nigerian family started to build a mud house next to the village. They took about a week to build the small, round mud house, which had a thatched roof but no glass in the window and the door was a large piece of tin plate. It looked somewhat cosy. It wasn’t big, but big enough to fit a family of three or four. This family had six members. A week later, though, it was gone. There weren’t any storms or riots to bring it down, but a bulldozer. The local council tore it down because the hovel didn’t have any planning permission. All they did was start the bulldozer up, drove it towards and over the house and left. The family was full of shock and very upset at the sight of their newly built house being reduced to a pile of mud.
On that last day of August, it was my aunt’s birthday, my mother was not happy that she had to spend it in a country like Nigeria. But she got even more upset of an event that happened in the early hours of that morning: the death of Diana. My mother sat there, staring at the television. She began to cry when the CNN newsreader reported something like: “In Paris early this morning, Diana, Princess of Wales has been killed in a car accident.” My mother was never the biggest fan of Royalty, but I could see tears running from her eyes that day. The Americans were especially sympathetic; Diana was hugely popular there. Diana was the Princess of Wales, and we were Welsh. There were Americans living all around us, and they were mourning. They went up to us and said things such as:
“We are very sad that Diana is dead, but we’ll never know how you feel as she was a princess of your country.” I was not fond of Royalty, myself, but even I felt a bit upset because of how she lived her life and being who she was.
When we flew back, it was on the day of her funeral. We were to fly to Lagos airport from a small airfield at Eket and then to Schipol at Amsterdam and then to Cardiff. The part we didn’t like about this six-hour journey was the Eket-Lagos flight. We couldn’t believe how we safely landed. The plane was a small eight or ten-seater. There were five of us and couple of other people. The airfield did not look promising. Potholes and weeds were growing from the tarmac, taxi run and runway. Burnt and wrecked planes were stacked unsafely on the other side of the perimeter fence. The tarmac burnt out feet from the heat. God knows how the rubber tyres kept intact on these aircraft. We had to wait an age because the weighing scales didn’t work properly and someone’s luggage was too heavy.
Eventually, we boarded the ‘death trap plane’ It was the worst plane ever. I had to duck because the doorway was so low. How it could fly, I really didn’t know. There was a bit of turbulence, the plane dipped a few yards, it also swayed. One of the propellers seemed buckled and the whole aircraft was making funny noises when flying. A bit like an old Harley-Davidson starting up and backfiring, but a bit worse. Every ten minutes there was a loud, clicking noise. Everyone on the plane was a bit worried. I think even the pilots were uneven about it. We could even look into the cockpit. I’m not sure if it was meant to look as it did, or half the instruments were missing, but it was very basic and very old. I think a washing machine had more buttons than that, and also had a better chance of making it to the airport.
We cheered as we landed, though we weren’t sure whether to laugh or cry. And we were all wondering about the same things: “How on Earth could that fly?” “How can it be allowed to fly?” and “What was that smell?”
Lagos airport was the same as before: old, crowded, armed security, humid, sticky and broken. We then had to fly back to the Netherlands in this jet aircraft, not in a promising condition, but it was much more reliable that the metallic mess we anxiously sat in earlier. This flight took three hours from the tropical to the floodplains. Then after arriving in the famous Schipol Airport, we stayed for a few hours just exploring the place. Later on, we mounted a KLM Cityhopper heading for Cardiff, which was a flight that lasted nearly two hours. For the first time I saw the shape of South East Britain: the large curve of Anglia and the small tail, which was Kent. That I’ll never forget, because it was the moment that I saw home and civilisation I was used to for the first time after a long couple of months in a country such as Nigeria.
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