Chapter 5: The month of October/1

I was feeling a bit uncomfortable as I lay on my bed later that night. I have already made up my mind about the strategy, which I am going to use to invite Adelaide to the party and also to get her to start thinking about me; I have decided that I am going to buy her a bunch of roses and then send it to her with the invitation card and a love poem written in Russian. I will send her a poem by Alexander Sergeivitch Pushkin that i had stumbled on with its translation and which describes exactly the way she made me feel the moment i set eyes on her for the very first time. Yes i know that she will not be able to understand the poem just yet, but the mystery of its meaning and her excitement from trying to find it out will keep me in her mind for a long time. And then by the time of the party in 2weeks time, perhaps she will have found out what the words mean and there I will tell her that this poem expresses exactly what I feel for her.

I should really be happy thinking about how far I have come since those days when my cousins in the village had tried to teach me about their so called “raps”, but instead I as i lay on my bed i was feeling uncomfortable; my roommate, Ade, was making some strange noise across the room; he was speaking in tongues.

Ade was knelt beside his bed in his usual night time ritual of praying but today he is a little louder than usual and he is also crying. Usually by the time I come in to sleep after spending some time talking in Ugo's room, he would have been done with these rituals. However, a few days ago he got a letter from home, which said that his beloved mother had just suffered a serious stroke and since then he has been praying into the early hours of the morning. Just before he started crying i had overheard him trying to “bind the demonic spirits of stroke“. He is still binding them now and he is making quite a lot of noise and I am finding it difficult to sleep

But I feel sorry for Ade so I won’t tell him to keep his voice down. I feel sorry for him because he is an only child and his mother is all he has. His father, a relatively rich man with a Chieftaincy title-from a place called Ogbomosho-had kicked him and his mother out of the home when he was barely a year old; the story is that one of his fathers’ numerous wives had made false accusations against his mother, saying that she had slept around with different men each time the Chief had gone on one of his long business travels and that Ade was a product of such illicit liaisons. And as a result of the questions about his paternity he ended up being brought up alone by his mother who, because she comes from a very poor family, had sold tomatoes in their local market to ensure that he got a good education. She was also a very strong Christian and because of her, Ade became“born again” several years ago and has remained so until he came to Rostov where he‘s been trying to convert the rest of us.

Some of the guys, like Ugo and Eddy, make fun of him saying that he’s deceiving himself and that all he needs is a “good Russo babe to straighten him out”, but he makes me a bit uncomfortable and I find it difficult to put my finger on the exact reason. There‘s that feeling of my having lost the innocence to continue believing in what he believes in; you see, my “kind” step mother is a leader in a Church and as a result of her, I lost my religion. And yet for some inexplicable reasons, i still find myself envying Ade his innocence.

As I watch Ade kneeling there, I notice that he has started crying again. And I wonder how comes God seems to keep silent when we want Him the most; how comes He was silent through out the nights when I had cried out to Him, on a stomach that hadn’t eaten for several days, begging Him to rouse my father from the protracted spell of witchcraft, which had kept him oblivious of the cruelty of his beloved wife towards me; I wondered why God withheld His answer from the tormented child, that I was, who would scream out to Him almost every night and plead for justice?

I have decided to turn towards the wall and cover my head with my duvet so that the sound of his weeping will be muffled; I really can't bear the sound of weeping as it tends to strum unpleasant chords in my soul. I turn my face to the wall and move my head away from the spot of dampness that is forming on my pillow and I am wondering where these warm tears have come from.

The muffled sound of weeping continues to be heard in the room as I wait for sleep to come quickly to swallow me up in its dark embrace. I notice that the warm dampness of my pillow is spreading and I am hoping that God answers his prayers, because he desperately needs it for the sake of his faith.

The Africans/7

We were drinking Vodka in Ugo’s room after we came back from the grocery shop. Volodya had joined us and had brought along some tomatoes and a large piece of sausage, which he called a "Kalbassa". And which he said was to prevent us from getting drunk quicky. He was now sitting across the table from me and trying to teach Ugo and Eddy some Russian swear words.

I was feeling a bit excited and it had nothing to do with the Vodka. I still had my glass of Vodka on the table where i left it after having taken a sip and found the taste to be quite unpleasant. I was feeling excited because of the idea that was playing in my mind; I have made up my mind that I will push myself to do something impressive for the Nigerian Independence Day party since I will be inviting Adelaide to come. I need to do something that will make her have a high impression of me and I have decided I am going to translate the old Nigerian anthem into Russian using the English-Russian dictionary that Sergei Nikolaivitch gave us. I will ask Volodya to help me with the translation and then I will recite it without any prompting at the party.

I know that it seems like a very difficult task, but I can pull this off. You see, books are my friends. It has always been that way since I found a way through them to escape into the beautiful world of make-believe. It is they who have always been there to rescue me when I have nothing else to turn to. They have given me advice on what to do and protect me from a world where otherwise I feel so insecure and lonely…

Everybody except my father knew that my step-mother was a wicked woman. It was a known secret in the yard that she was the one who called the shots in our home from the very start. And people would whisper that she has used witchcraft on my father, which empowered her to run the household the way she deemed fit. And this was usually to my detriment because as far as she was concerned I was an unwelcome presence in the home. And she never failed to let me know that left to her she would give me away as a houseboy in somebody else’s home, if not for the fact that she is a “kind woman”.

She was so "kind" that she would feed me stale food and say that there is no money in the house to buy enough to go round seeing that her own children are still growing and that they are the ones who needs to eat the scarse fresh food. She was "kind" enough not to whip me every single day in spite of my "stupidity". And she had the "kind" knack of changing her definitions of right and wrong;I was always wrong while her children were always right.

And it was during those days of her "kindness" that I discovered the power of story books. I was about 9years old when I fell in love with the Lamb’s tales from Shakespeare and then stumbled on to others; books that were able to transport me to worlds where I was able to drop my sorrows behind and become whatsoever or whomsoever I so wanted to be. And the more my step-mother told me that I was an abandoned child who nobody loves, the more I found salvation in my books. And then I discovered the pride from excelling in my school work and the accompanying look of respect that other students would give me whenever I was called out year after year in front of the whole school to recieve my prize as the best overall student. This was something which nobody, not even my step-mother, could ever take away from me.

Books; they give me meaning and allow me to draw strength when I am low. They enable me to experience power when I feel weak and they give me the tools with which I can hold up my head anywhere, even in the company of those who would otherwise look down on me. Books are magical and the potency of their magic is all so pervading, except for the fact that the magic always seems to dissipate into thin air whenever I am in the presence of my father…

But books are my friends and I will turn once again to the magic within their pages in order to capture the heart of the lovely Adelaide.

“This Russo boy wan finish dis Vodka!” Eddy was complaining as Volodya took his third successive quaff.
Volodya started laughing “You people drink Vodka like Djeshina!” he said “Real men drink Vodka like zis!” he said quaffing yet another glass and then laughing.

“Volodya” I said after convincing myself that this is the way to go."I will need your help to translate something into Russian. I’ll get you the rough draft before the weekend and have you look at it. If that’s okay with you”
“Nyet problema!” he stated.

No problem but i still need to think of a way to invite her to the party, I was thinking as i reached for my glass of Vodka.

The Africans/6

“Ol’ boy check out those babes wey tanda over there!” Eddy announced to Ugo. The excitement in his voice jerked me back to the moment and I as looked in the direction he was indicating, I noticed two young Russian women standing next to a statue of Karl Max that was just a few metres in front of us. They were having a cigarette and from the way they smiled at us, it seemed as if they had been discussing us. We came abreast of where they stood but I continued to walk on and later stopped a few metres ahead of where Ugo and Eddy were now talking with the women.

I have to find a way to proceed with Adelaide. I was thinking. And it seems that the best place to start would be to invite her to our Independence Day party, which was just two weeks away. Yes, I will invite her. And on that day I will dance with her and though we cannot yet communicate with each other in Russian, she will know by the look in my eyes and by the way that I will hold her close to my heart that I love her. Yes, she will know of my feelings for her because love is communicated by other means other than just words…

“We just got ourselves a date for Saturday!” Ugo announced proudly as they came up to where I had been waiting for them. “Now we suppose begin buy booze as I hear say na booze be the trick with these Russian babes!” He stated that they now had to look for alcohol since it was said that the way to score with Russian women is to get them drunk.

We crossed over to the other side of the park where the shops were located and we found the one where, a few days earlier on the day we had arrived, we had witnessed the incident with the drunken man next to the queue for booze. The shop was quite big inside and as we entered we noticed a little queue at one end of the otherwise empty shop.
“You sure say dem dey sell booze for here!” asked Eddy.

An elderly woman who was carrying a bag walked towards us as we stood near the entrance trying to decide where to go. She had just come off the front of the queue which, from the two loaves of dark brown bread that stared back at us from her open bag, was probably a queue for bread.
She gave us a toothless smile as she came up to us and then started to say something in Russian. “We don’t speak Russian” Ugo said smiling back as Eddy and I looked at each other.
She smiled again and then took out one of the loaves of bread and then said something again in Russian. And I’m sure that somewhere in her sentence I heard her say Africa.
“No thanks!” Ugo said “We have bread in the hostel. But thanks anyway!”
She looked disappointed and then, shrugging her shoulders, walked away.

A middle aged woman sat at one corner of the shop looking at us. Behind her were stacks of empty crates piled hapharzardly next to the wall. She was wearing a long white coat and a cap that reminded me of the clinical coats, which medical students wear for the clinical courses in Nigeria only that the hat that sat on her head looked more like a witches cap than a clinical hat. She was looking at us as we stood near the door. And she wasn’t smiling. But we still decided to walk up to her and make our enquiries about the drinks.
“Good evening” Ugo said.
She looked at her nails and then looked away as if somebody else was trying to get her attention. “Hello!” Ugo greeted again.
She got up from where she was sitting and still pretending that she hadn’t seen or heard us, walked away towards another similarly attired woman who wsa sitting several metres away in front of shelves that were bare of groceries.

“Which kain dismissal be dis?!” Ugo asked turning to both me and Eddy who had been standing just behind him.
As we stood there trying to decide what to do a young man walked towards us. It was Volodya, Seyi’s room mate. Volodya was a very lively 2nd year medical student who was from the neighbouring town of Novocherkassk. Because he spoke some English and wanted to improve on his spoken English he had specifically requested to stay in a room that had English-speaking students. But from the very first day that he heard Seyi speak, he started to complain to whoever cared to listen that the language Nigerians speak and call English certainly did not sound like English.
“You mother f....ers speak Anglisky like you speak African language!” he said “I want to learn to speak American English not Africansky!”
However he got over his initial shock of our "Africansky" and from the second day decided that his job would be to teach Seyi and the rest of us poor "Nig'erisky studenti" how to be proper Russians. So he started off by teaching Seyi how to swear in Russian.
“You haven’t learn Russian if you haven’t learn how to swear. So start with the swear words!” He advised Seyi.

“Hello you Africansky Mother f…ers!” he announced smiling as he came up to us.
“Yo banna vrot! Volodya” Ugo responded with a Russian vulgar expression that Volodya had taught us. Some people looked at us amused at the exchanged of greetings between us and Volodya.
“We want to buy some Vodka but the shop’s completely bare!” Ugo complained.
“I know that you people will become good Russians very quickly! You’ve learnt how to swear now you want to graduate into Vodka!”
“Yes, we want to do some foki-foki with some Russian girls on Saturday and we need as many bottles as we can buy.”
“You mother f…ers! I told you give me nice Africansky girl to do foki-foki with and I find you cheap Russian woman!”
“We’re serious about the Vodka, Volodya. And besides you’ve already said you don’t like most of the Nigerian girls because you’re scared of them!”
“Yes. Most of them are very hard like men. They don't look like djenshini! But anyway, give me money I buy you Vodka. As many as you want”.

Ugo gave him some Roubles and he had gone up to the two women in the white coats who were now chatting away in a corner of the shop. He spoke to them for a while and then handed over the money to one of them. Several minutes later the woman came back with a bag which she had stuffed with newspapers and handed it to Volodya.

“I got you your Vodka, but we must drink one bottle today!” Volodya announced as he handed the bag to Ugo.
“How did you do that?” Eddy asked.
“I have my ways.” He said grinning “But I also do foki-foki with that older one!” he added winking.
“Disgusting!” Ugo responded, but Volodya just grinned and walked away.

The Africans/5

I need Adelaide even if, for now, she is unattainable. This is what I was thinking as I walked home later that day with Ugo and Eddy, as we came out of the Russian language class that we had just finished with Sergei Nikolaivitch. I couldn’t quite understand the strong sense of connectedness that I was starting to feel towards her; she didn't yet know me but it was as if I was developing a feeling of love for her! How can I love someone who already belongs to someone else and who...from the way she always looks composed and classy...I was starting to feel is out of my league? Yet i felt drawn to her; as if there is something about me that destines me to wanting those things that exist beyond my reach and which are able to hurt me.

The guilt started to flood back. The guilt has always been there really; lurking in the shadows, and waiting for that opportunity to present itself when it would remind me that I am less than a man: you see, real men do not become emotionally involved with prostitutes the way I did with Betty.

It happened at the University of Jos. After my registration on that first day...when I had crashed into Funmi near the admission clerks office...I was allocated a room at the Bauchi road hostel. This temporary accommodation was the only available space for most of the new students as the Naraguta hostel complex and the students village were already filled up. And it was located next to a noisy motor park on the very busy Bauchi Road. At the back of this hostel was a densely populated slum area where students visited for their groceries and for some leisure activities.

One Saturday evening, barely a week after I moved in, my room mate had invited me for a drink and pepper soup at one of the beer parlours that can be found on the long stretch of unpaved road running right through the neighbourhood. The beer parlour turned out to be a seedy brothel. And as we entered the large dimly lit hall we had been greeted by the oppressive smell of cigarette smoke and bodily sweat hanging thickly in the air. Loud music blared from the speakers, that hung at the four corners of the large hall and you could see men and women dancing lazily in the centre of the large hall, holding their bottles of beer in their hands as they danced. We sat at one of the few unoccupied tables and my roommate had ordered some beer. And while we waited for our drinks to arrive, two scantily clad women hastily made their way towards our table possibly to get to us before their competitors.

“Una wan f…ck?”The larger of the two women asked, wanting to know if we wanted sex. The one that spoke was plump and was verging on the boarders of being obese. Neither of the women would ever pass as being beautiful as they both stood trying to strike a pose, which i am sure they believed was seductive. I was speechless, never having been confronted with such boldness from women, but my room mate who had been glaring at them both hissed. “Make una commot here, useless ashawo!” he spat out at them asking them to get lost.

Our bottles of beer came and we finished them and then went back to our hostel without really discussing what had happened. It was as if my roommate was used to the whole scene so didn't see anything worth talking about. But the very next day I had gone back alone. And it was there that I made the acquaintance of Betty…the smaller of the two prostitute who had approached us the previous day. Betty was in her late 20’s and had been in the trade since her late teens. And it was she who dis-virgined me and introduced me into manhood, after she had collected her price for the privileges; leaving me also with a lot of guilt and a vow not to ever return to that brothel again.

But I did; again and again. And each time, I would feel even more defeated from the time I sneaked out of my room under the cover of night…with my heart forcefully pounding against my rib cage in beats of anticipatory excitement…hoping that nobody would see me in my moment of weakness and in its inevitable aftermath; an aftermth characterised by a lingering feeling of intense guilt, which would remain until the very next time.

It was always on those days when I had a close encounter with Funmi that I would find myself craving the warmth of Betty’s embrace; on most of our lecture days I would sit at a corner of the hall from where I could relish in the flashes of her smile and in the fleeting caress of the gaze from her lovely brown eyes; rare privileges that she would dish out to me unconsciously but which always left me weighed down by a realisation that those endearing looks and the smiles were not inspired by me. And on those days, after the darkness of night had encroached, I would sneak out in search of recognition in the arms of Betty the prostitute; because It is there alone, that I have come to know what it feels like to be accepted as a man. And it is there, in the warmth of that acceptance as I was receiving my fix of flesh, that my guilt was birthed.

I was walking through the park with Ugo and Eddy who were chatting away about “Russian babes“, and I was thinking of how fortunate it is that we can not read each others minds and glimpse at the secrets that we all hide. But it was the image of Adelaide that was the strongest in my mind. Because it felt as if she is the one who holds the key, which will liberate me from the guilt that gnaws slowly away at the fabric of my fragile soul.

The Africans/4

The next morning was a Monday and we were met at the hostel by Sergei Nikolayevich, our new teacher. Sergei Nikolayevich was a bald little man whose size dispelled the myth-which i was starting to believe- that all Russians are huge in size. He had that hair colour, which is common among the Russians and which i was later to understand is sometimes described as the colour "rus"in Russian. He also had those characteristic high cheek bones.

Sergei Nikolaivitch had already introduced himself to us on the day after we arrived when he had turned up at the hostel and later taken our group to buy some of the clothes and boots, which we needed for the fast approaching winter.

As it was not so cold that monday morning, Sergei Nikolayevich had suggested that we walk down to the faculty by way of the the park, which is located next to the hostel and which runs all the way up to Varashilovsky street; the very wide street on which the faculty building is located. He said that the faculty was about 30 minutes-of a reasonably paced walk-away from the hostel, but he had also wanted to use the opportunity to talk to us about the statues and their significance in Soviet history.

As we walked through the park I noticed that the busts of Vladimir Ilych Lenin-the leader of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917- were seen at very regular intervals. There were also some other statues of him standing and pointing with his right hand in front of him; Alexei Sergeivitch said that he had been pointing to the future. He showed statues of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and talked about their contributions to the Communist vision.

He then talked about the ills of Capitalism and how the revolution was the turning point in human history. And then he talked about how all human politico-economic development will eventually evolve into Communism after a transitory Socialist state. “The Vest knows that they are fighting a lost battle." he said "Nothing can stop the Socio-political evolution of mankind into one Communist Vorld…”He announced.

We had just emerged at the top end of the park on to Varashilovsky Street where the rectangular shaped cars were beeping their horns in the traffic jam that was forming on the carriage way leading towards Engels street. There was a bus stop just adjacent to where we had emerged from the park and a crowd was waiting for the trolley that had just pulled in to the stop. As the doors opened, the commuters struggled to push their way into the already crowded bus. After a while the doors tried to close but were obstructed by some passengers that were hanging on to the door and trying not to fall out. The driver tried to close the doors again and then started to shout something at those passengers obstructing the door but they seemed oblivious of what he was trying to do and continued to push their way in. Others passengers inside of the bus later joined the now irrate driver in the shouting, which continued for several minutes until the passengers started to step down. And the doors eventually closed.

"What does baran mean?"I asked Alexei Sergeivitch as I watched the bus pulling out of the stop. One visibly irritated elderly man who had been standing patiently at the bus stop had spat out the word at one of the obstinate commuters who had been refusing to step down from the bus. After he spat out the word, he had then shaken his head in apparent disgust.
"Baran is the Russian word for sheep" said Alexei Sergeivitch as the bus sped away towards the next stop.

Somebody's bag was still hanging out of the bus, whilst the owner struggled unsuccesfully to pull it in by the straps through the closed doors.
"Baran!" the elderly man spat out again.

The faculty building was an old three storeyed baroque brick building sandwiched in-between some other old buildings built in the same style and located next to the busy bus stop. The building looked like something that had weathered many storms and was now falling apart.
“Ve vill be moving to the new site very soon” stated Alexei Sergeivitch.
He then started to explain how the school had stopped expending money to maintain the building since they were planning to relocate to a new bigger and more modern building, which was located next to the hostel. He said that we were likely to be the last batch of students who will use that building.

We entered through the front door and I noticed that there were some cracks on the walls. We stepped on to the wooden stairs and they started to creak as we climbed our way to the second floor, but Sergei Nikolayevitch didn’t look concerned.
“I hope its not about to collapse!” Ugo said.
“No. It alvays creaks like zis” said Sergei Nikolaivitch trying to reassure us.

He took us to our classroom on the second floor. The room was just large enough to sit nine students and a teacher comfortably. There was a large blackboard in front of us on which he had already written the date in English and written it out in Russian words. He informed us that in addition to Russian language we were also going to take a few hours lessons in courses such as the History of the Communist party, Political Economics and Philosophy.

These courses would all be taught in English language for the first three months, after which we would sit for our winter exams. When we come back from a two weeks winter holiday, we would then continue with science-related subjects, which would prepare us for the medical school.
“These subjects vill all be in Russian language”. He stated.
"So what you're saying is that we'll learn Russian language for only three months?!" Eddy asked in disbelief.

"No" Sergei Nikolaivitch answered " You vill continue to learn Russian language for the whole academic year, but the focus for the first 3months vill be to teach you the basics on vich you vill be able to build but after the 3 months I vill stop understanding English!".
"That's not possible!"
"You vill see..."

After the preliminary talks we got down to the serious business of learning the Russian alphabet with the phonics.
During one of the break times, I caught a glimpse of Adelaide in a room several doors away from ours and for the rest of the day I couldn't concentrate on anything else but her sitting there looking ever so radiant; ever so desirable.

"What are you smiling at? Sergei Nikolayevich asked, interrupting my mid day reverie.I didn’t know what to tell him. How could I let him know that my mind was somewhere else; somewhere, a few doors away, locked on to someone that I certainly wasn't supposed to be thinking about?
“I em…”
“You need to pay attention or else you vill miss the basics”

But my mind was still on Adelaide. I wanted to believe that she was available in spite of the fact that in the last few days since we arrived I had seen her about two times in the company of that her male friend from the beryozka.
I knew that if she was involved with someone else then there was no point to continue dreaming about her, but that realization did not take away the fact that I desired her. And there was nothing much I could do about that; my mind knew that I should just let her go, but my heart could not. It was as if my heart was telling me that she is so within my reach and If i let her go, then I will lose her forever…

The Africans/3

We were eating manka and cow leg stew in the 4th medical hostel.

We were still in the same little groups that we had been divided into after the student’s union meeting. The plan was based on the fact that it was a lot more manageable for each of the older students to take the new students in their group to their rooms for a meal of manka. Manka is the affectionate name that is given to a flour-based meal, which is called mannaya and which was the favourite food for most Nigerians in the USSR. The first commers to the USSR from Africa had discovered this food and developed an ingenious method of making it into a semi-solid swallowable meal that reminded them of the West African pounded yam flower.

The locals usually made the manka into porridge for their growing children and did not always express happiness at the way some African students stocked up on it, leading to a recurrent shortage of manka anywhere that there was a student hostel nearby. Of course, there was also a recurrent shortage of a lot of other essential food items in places where there were no student’s hostels…

The president of the Nigerian students union was lecturing us on how we had to be exemplary students and not get into any trouble with the Russians.
“A lot of people get into trouble because of fighting” he was saying. And I thought he was talking about physical fighting. “The fighters are everywhere and some of them are government agents. So you need to stick to your books and not involve yourselves in fighting…”
“Which fighters are you talking about?” I asked a bit confused.
“Fighters are a group of wayward girls who are just interested in having a good time.” He said and then told of how the person who had caught the Nigerian who had been sent to jail was one of the fighters. And he then talked about how it was necessary for some to stay abstinent from sex for the whole duration of their stay in the USSR. "It's possible. I am a living example."

As he talked I noticed that there was an occasional ticking of his head, like somebody who had some neurological problems.“So you must stay away from fighters and be serious with your books. Here the assessments are continuous and your marks at the end of the year are a sum of your cummulative performance for the duration of the course and what you score in end the of course exams”.

The president, it turned out, was one of those people who have always excelled academically. He was the best all-round student for his year and was heading towards graduating with a krasniy diplom, or red degree; something that was used to distinguish the very best students from the rest.
“In this town we keep our heads like this.” He continued, raising up his head and then looking at an imaginary person standing near the door through his nose…”And we will not want you people to abandon your studies and start drinking Vodka. If you focus on your studies you won’t have any problems in this town.”

The president continued on this lecturing mood for the rest of the evening and told us about the do’s and don’ts of living succesfully in Rostov-On-Don the way he had done.

Later that evening most of us had congregated in Ugo’s room which he shared with Eddy. Earlier that day Ugo had been elected as the representative of the Nigerians in the preparatory faculty.
“Most of the Africans in Rostov look like say dem be bush men!” Eddy was saying “All of them look wretched and defeated. But man-me, presido takes the cake!”
“I wonder how dem take elect am?” Ugo asked.
“This must be the work of the gorodsky soviet to tame Naija people for this town” Eddy continued “ but to elect an imbecile na real insult be dat!” he said.
“He’s not an imbecile per se.” I offered “the man is actually a genius. He’s the best student the school has had in the last 5years!” I didn't want to bring up the issue of his head ticking and his abstinence.
“Yeah right! The man’s a complete joke and still looks like an imbecile to me. You no notice the bongo wey hin wear. Common, who dey wear bongo these days. This is the 80’s for Chrissake?” Eddy continued making a reference to the bell-bottom trousers that the president had worn at the meeting stating that people don’t wear such things anymore.
“If the man wan wear bongo na hin problem be dat. But I like Ken and I notice how hin been dey look presido each time wey hin talk about Nigerians being a proud people”. Ade, who had been quiet for most of the evening, added. He was talking about liking Ken and his observations that Ken seemed to always look at the President whenever he talked about Nigerians being proud.
“Are you suggesting that Ken is not proud of the President?” I asked.
“Are you?” Eddy asked.
I kept silent.

The Africans/2

Nigeria’s Independence Day celebration comes up on October 1st and this was slightly more than 2 weeks after I arrived Rostov-On-Don with my batch of 9 students. And on the first weekend after we arrived the Students Union organised an impromptu meeting, which was to formally welcome us to the town and also to inform us of their plans for that year.

During this meeting Ken, the events manager, who was also the Social secretary of the Students Union had encouraged each of us to think about putting together some kind of performance for that day, which should have a very strong cultural flavour.

“We need to do something different that shows that we have a rich culture.” Ken was saying. He was in his penultimate year at the University, where he was studying for a Russian diploma in International journalism, and had come in the year of the demonstration. He appeared to be the only outspoken member of the student leadership.

When he stood up to talk i noticed that he was not as tall as Ugo or Seyi but that he was well-built. He was of a dark skin complexion that had a shine to it, which was different to those of us who had just come out of Nigeria. Maybe it had something to do with the cold weather. He also had a well-trimmed goatee beard and that look of somebody who actually lived abroad; the akata look. The kind of look that a lot of Nigerians dream of achieving once they've managed to come abroad, but which remains so very elusive for so many; a look that was lacking in the rest of the tense looking members of the student union leadership. One of them, who nursed an Afro looked like somebody who forgot to shave that morning. His bell-bottom trousers, which looked a bit tight at the hips, gave him the appearance of somebody who had been specially picked from a village stuck in a Nigeria of the 60's and then dropped into Rostov-On-Don. This fellow introduced himself as the president of the Nigerian students union.
"Ha!" was the only comment Ugo made after he had finished introducing himself earlier on. I didn't quite understand what Ugo had meant by that, but i guessed he must have been thinking the same things that were going through my mind. Was this a joke or something?!

“So I want you guys to come up with ideas for the celebration in the next few days. And then you need to start practicing from like yesterday because we have to show these people that we can deliver a show of a very high standard!” Ken was saying sounding so confident and polished with the president sitting to his right. “We need to show these guys that Nigerians are a proud people…” Ken said.

After the meeting, the executives invited all of us for dinner to the 4th hostel where the bulk of the older Nigerian students lived. Most of the students from the University including Ken couldn’t come with us, since their hostel was located in a different part of town that was a bit far away from the Centre. We then split up into small groups with me ending up with the President and two other new students like myself; one of whom was my room mate Ade.

The 4th hostel, which is one of the hostels of the Medical Institute, is a 9 storied building located with its twin...the 5th hostel...in a little residential close that is just off Lenin's street. And it was here that most of the undergraduate medical students and a few postgraduate doctors lived.

To get there we needed to travel on electric trolleys and then on the autobus. The trolleys are electric buses that are attached to electricity by their own cable systems but unlike the Trams do not run on rail lines, while the autobus is the usual bus that runs on fuel.

As we left the venue of the meeting we walked down towards Engels street to the nearest bus stop. And as we approached, a bus was just pulling in and it looked relatively empty. The president advised that we make a run for it. The driver saw us sprinting towards the waiting bus and as soon as Ade got close enough and was about jumping in, he’d quickly closed the doors and then pulled out of the bus stop. And as he drove away he made a gesture with his hands, which he showed to us. He had stuck his thumb in-between his index and middle finger and pointed it us. Most of the passengers had kept a straight face as the bus pulled away but i noticed one little boy towrads the back laughing and then repaeting the gesture with his fingers, as some of us were bent over still trying to catch our breathes from that very long Olympic-paced sprint...

“What was that all about?” Ade asked still trying to catch his breath. “Didn’t he see us?”“ Of course he saw us. Didn’t you see him waving at us?!” I said.
“He wasn’t waving at us” said the president “that’s one of those gestures Russians make when they want to act funny. Just like we have our waka in Nigeria”
“Did he do that because we’re black?!” asked Ade.
“I don’t think so. Sometimes some of the more foolish drivers behave that way, when they’re having a bad day. And they do it even to their own people”. The good old president said.

By now most of the other groups of Nigerians had arrived at the bus stop. I noticed a few of the natives who stood nearby throw furtive glances at our group as we continued to jabber away very loudly in pigeon English. A young man who had staggered to the bus stop in a drunken wobble belched loudly and then made a face, which suggested that he was disgusted with the taste the belching left in his mouth. He then said something loudly in Russian and stood defiantly in front of the president who peacefully walked away from the man.

“The man said we should shut up!” reported the president from a relatively safe distance.
At that moment a trolley pulled into the bus stop and we all pushed our way in.
"Dis come be like say person dey catch Molue for Lagos" muttered Eddy as he pushed himself into a comfortable position, stating that it all felt like trying to get on to one of those dilapidated tin buses, which are used for mass transit in Lagos and which people simply call Molue.

The drunken man had remained on the bus stop apparently not able to push his way in. And as the trolley slowly pulled out of the stop my eyes briefly locked with that of the man; he raised his right hand and showed me his thumb stuck inbetween his index and middle fingers...

BOOK 2. Chapter 4: The Africans/1

In those days the foreign students in the USSR were encouraged to belong to a Union of students from their respective countries. And though the membership of these unions was considered voluntary, all the students ended up belonging to them. The leadership of these Unions was usually elected by the students themselves to represent them at meetings of the gorodsky soviet or town councils, which concerned their welfare in that town. And the gorodsky soviet, on their part, would represent the wishes of the government to them. In this way the gorodsky soviet was able to have access to...and supervise...the activities of all the foreign students in each city of the USSR.

The members of the Soviet were also voluntary. And they were usually representatives of the workers, peasants and soldiers in each town, all of whom would be Communist Party members and from whom delegates were drawn for the All-Russia Congress of the Soviet government.

In the year that I arrived Rostov-On-Don, the leadership of the Nigerian students Union planned to mark the Nigerian Independence day with a socio-cultural event, which they hoped would become the talk of the town for many months to come. Apparently this was going to be the first time in 3years that new Nigerian students were posted to Rostov and in such a large number! A total of 18 new students had arrived in two batches of 9 each. So there was need to organise a party that was not too flamboyant; which would give the authorities the wrong impression, yet prestigious enough to give the Nigerian population in Rostov a little bit of respect after their image had suffered a serious battering, which later resulted in 3 years of a strained relationship with the gorodsky soviet.

The story has it that the Nigerian students union did something unimaginably wrong; they had organised a peaceful demonstration along Engels street...the main street of the town, which passes through the city centre...carrying placards that were written in Russian and in English and demanding for one of their students to be released from jail.

The official story is that this incarcerated student, the then President of the Union, was a spekulant; somebody who engaged in the buying and selling trade. The story goes that he had gotten so rich from this illegal activity to the point were the authorities started to take a keen interest in him. This lead to his being caught in the act of trying to sell some tovari, products, to an undercover agent. And since this was considered an act of economic sabotage, the punishment was an indefinite spell in a Soviet jail.

But another version, one that the students prefer to believe, is that the authorities were concerned that the Nigerian students Union was becoming too challenging and that the leadership was refusing to listen...something that certainly had to be discouraged, even among foriegners...so somebody had to be made a scapegoat and the best candidate happened to be the very outspoken president. And he got himself framed.

The outcome of all this is that the Nigerian population in Rostov-On-Don was drastically reduced from well over a hundred students to less than 30 by dispersing the leaders of that demonstration to other towns, such as Baku and Tashkent and then making sure that no new students were posted to Rostov until most of the older “corrupted” students had graduated. They also made sure that the subsequent leadership of the Student Unions were properly vetted.

So this was the Rostov in which we had arrived; a city that had not seen any new Nigerian students in the preceding 3years and where the older students were battling to redeem their reputation as law abiding students. This was a city where most of the foreign students, especially the Nigerians, were still under a lot of scrutiny.

Rostov-On-Don/5

The bus stopped in front of an old four storied brick building, built in that baroque-style architecture that seemed to characterise all the buildings in this old Russian city. This one…one of several buildings that constitutes the hostels of the Rostov State Medical University…is located at No 212 Pushkin street next to a very long park.

This was early autumn and the trees and the shrubs seemed to be adorned in an Autumn show of colours ranging from green through golden brown and yellow, with occasional splashes of red in-between. And for as long as the eyes could see there were benches scattered throughout the length of the park, interrupted here and there by dark grey and black statues at regular intervals in the park; I recognised one of the statues to be the bust of Lenin from the bald head and the long goatee beard.

On the other side of the park, and running parallel to it, are located several large retail stores. And from the traffic of people that could be seen going in and out of them one could tell that they were already open for business that morning. In front of one of such retail stores a queue was already forming and you could see people...mostly middle aged men and women...standing patiently, with faces that gave away so little about what was going on in their minds. They were dressed up in dark autumn clothes and were all carrying their large bags or briefcases; modjet be'it bags, Eddy had called them.

At that moment a man staggered out of the store. He wasn't carrying one of those large briefcases, but instead he was clutching several bottles of...what looked like...wine to his chest. He stumbled forwards then regained his balance but dropped one of the bottles, which then splintered into pieces as it crashed to the ground. The people who stood near the entrance of the store immediately scuttered aside to avoid the splintering glasses. And I watched them start to reprimand him but he just shrugged his shoulders and sauntered away.

“So na booze dis people dey wait for!” I heard Ugo, who was sitting in front of me say, commenting on the fact that the queue seemed to have been for alcohol.
As we watched the drama playing out outside, Alexei Sergeivitch had gotten up from his seat in front and stood facing us.
“This is the second hostel” he announced. “And it is where you will be staying for the next one year”.

We all got off the bus and followed Alexei Sergeivitch. The air outside of the bus was very chilly that morning even though the sun had started to climb higher into the sky. The rays of the sun seemed to dance on the tree tops, playing in-between the autumn leaves and casting funny shadows on the wall of that old baroque building. There was something surreal about the way the golden orange rays of the sun cast those funny shadows on the wall, while the people-who had now lost their animation-moved slowly forward and silently in their long queue.

I suddenly had a deja vu experience; I have seen all this before! I thought. I have seen these middle aged people in their dark clothes; the faces and eyes bereft of emotions. The silence. Yes! this was the image of Russia that was always lurking on the threshold of my consciousness. And it suddenly felt as if an old motion picture was playing out around me, where i was just the casual observer.

But this was my reality now; this was Rostov-On Don, a city in the Southern part of Russia which I was going to call home for the next 7 years of my life.

Rostov-On-Don/4

Morning was breaking as we started to get our luggage’s together. The train had pulled in to the main railway station of the city of Rostov-On-Don and people had already started to disembark from the train.
The Portuguese speaking group of students were in front of us as we all made our way onto the corridor and towards the exit. I managed to catch a glimpse of the lovely girl and had overheard somebody call her by the name “Adelaide”.

Adelaide; I had never heard of that name before but the sound of it to my ears was so melodious and befitting of her. It was as befitting as a garment that has been painstakingly chosen and made just for her.

Our group had started to congregate at one corner of the railway hall where we were to wait for Alexei Segeivitch who had gone to sort out the bus that was to take us to our hostels. And as I struggled with my luggage I had purposely brushed passed her in the crowded chaos of that cold hall and she had turned and looked at me. And in that fleeting moment, as the butterflies started flying about in my abdomen, our eyes had connected. But she had looked past me as if I didn’t yet exist in her world.

I was now looking at her standing just several metres away with the rest of her group as she engrossed herself in a conversation with one of the girls. I was hearing them, just above the noise in the hall, chattering away in Portuguese. And then I noticed for the first time that standing not too far away from her was that mixed-race guy; the same guy she had sat next to in that beryozka on our very first night in Moscow. Now this is definitely not good at all. I thought as I watched to see if I could notice anything in their interaction, which would suggest that something was going on between them. But I could see nothing as he was busy talking with somebody else in their group.

I looked around the hall; This one was a lot smaller than that of the Kursky train station in Moscow. And it seemed almost unable to accommodate the swarming crowd that was thronging around as you could see a lot of people standing just in front of the entrance to the hall. The noise here was unbearable; with the sound of people shouting and talking all at the same time, in that language that was sounding so hard to the ears. The population here… though still predominantly Russian…seemed to comprise a lot of nationalities with darker Southern European looks and also a lot with mild Oriental features, like the two girls whom we had met in the canteen the previous evening.

People here looked a lot less affluent than those in Moscow; in Moscow the younger population had worn clothes, which looked like they had come from the Western countries. Here the clothes came across slightly tackier…slightly shabbier…giving an impression of things mass produced in factories where the equipments didn’t quite work. And most of the people seemed to be carrying briefcases.“I wonder why everybody seems to be carrying a briefcase” I said.
“ They call them modjet be'it bags here!” Eddy said. “Modjet be'it are the Russian words for maybe. My brother told me that people carry these sacks around with them everywhere they go, in case they run into one scarce commodity or the other. You see practically everything is rationed here and always in short supply.“ Eddy’s older brother was a student in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov where he was studying Medicine on scholarship. He had arrived the USSR a year earlier.

As we stood there waiting for Alexei Sergeivitch, one young man with a strong smell of stale alcohol on his breath had walked up to us and started whispering something in Russian to Eddy. When he realized that he was a bit taken aback by his uncouth approach and that he didn’t have the faintest idea of what he was on about he had pointed to the jean jacket that Eddy was wearing and tried to whisper something again “You sell me?...I have plenty man'ny?” I heard him say.

At that moment Alexei Sergeivitch started to walk towards us, and as the man saw him coming he hastened away.“I thought they said that buying and selling things are illegal in this country!” I said.
“Hm. Its illegal officially, but that’s the business people do here to survive” Eddy said. “My brother says there’s loads of money to be made buying things from the West and then selling to the Russians.”

One bus was to take all the groups of students that arrived from Moscow on that train to their various hostels. The groups comprised Nigerians, some Portuguese speaking students from Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau and also a few Ghanaians. As we made ourselves comfortable in the bus, I noticed that Adelaide was engrossed in a conversation with her fellow Portuguese speaking students at the back. But she was sitting next to that fat guy with the spectacles. And as I saw them sitting there together, something seemed to start hurting inside of me.

Rostov-On-Don/3

We eventually left the restaurant and got back to our coach without any more untoward incidents. On our way back to our cabin, we passed the cabin that the Portuguese speaking girl shared with another female student and as we passed by I heard her laughing inside her. So I decided that I would stay outside a bit in the corridor, in the hope that she would come out briefly.

Half an hour later I was still waiting in the corridor and looking out into the darkness, outside of the windows, as our train spread towards the Caucasus mountains when she eventually came out alone into the corridor. She had paused and then smiled at me as she looked in my direction. In that instant, as I had tried to respond to her enchanting smile, my dry lips had suddenly frozen on my face and they started to feel all rubbery and funny! I had looked away quickly so that she wouldn't see the confusion that must have been emblazoned on my face at that moment. And I had quickly turned away and hastened back to my cabin in case she said something…
“This wan wey you run come back into the room wetin happen?” Ugo asked, wanting t6o know why I had run back into the cabin.
“Na dat girl!. She been commot for corridor and I no come know wetin to do; I no even fit smile sef.” I said telling him what had just happened.
“ Well, you for at least ask am hin name and then ask am other tings about hin self”. He advised saying that I should have started to ask her about her name and other things about her self.
“She left me feeling confused and I just had to get out of there!”
He laughed. “I bet you’re still a virgin. And make I tell you, my man, babes no dey like men wey slack. So if you go continue like this you no go see dat babe pants!” He said, saying that if I continued behaving in the way I was then I certainly wasn’t going to see her underwear.
“But no be hin pants I wan see”
“Na you sabi”. He said, meaning that what I wanted to do was my business. He then started to lecture me on “what women really want“; and talked about how they want a man who is in control and who is “confident enough to show it“. And that it is such real men who will always get their ways with woman.
“So Kasi, if you wan nyash dat babe, then you go need to begin behave like dat kind man. ”He said, ending his lecture with the admonition that if I wanted to sleep with her, then I needed to start behaving like a real man.
I had wanted to tell him that this was more than just about sleeping with her but realised that we he had just said would have still applied anyway.

Later that night as I lay on my bed in the cabin thinking about the events of the day, I was feeling restless. The sound of that word “abezy’an”, which had punctuated every sentence the fellow in the canteen had made kept on coming back to me, like the echo of a scream reverberating relentlessly in a dark tunnel, while the image of that lovely girl and her laughter struggled to push it to the fringes of my consciousness. And It was her face that was on my mind as I cuddled up under the duvet and succumbed gradually to the pull of sleep

That night my sleep was troubled. At one point I woke up from a nightmare in which I had been chased by a large black monkey along a lonely road flanked by some houses. Some eyes had peered at me from behind their curtains as I ran by. And I recognised that a pair of those eyes were those of the lovely Portuguese-speaking girl.

Rostov-On-Don/2

A few hours earlier Ugo and I had been sitting just a few seats away from two Russian girls in the almost empty canteen of the train. The canteen was located about 4 coaches away from ours and we had been seated for about 10minutes after having placed an order for a two course meal. There was not much to choose from as the only things on the menu was the pelmeni...a Russian dumpling filled with mince meat...and a Russian traditional soup called borsht; a red coloured vegetable soup, which people prefer to eat with bread.

As we waited for the food I could hear the giggles from the two girls, who kept on glancing in our direction. The girls...one a brunette and the other a red head...would have been in their late teens or early twenties and both had a lot of make-up on them, which gave each of them a rather tacky look; underneath the make-up they would have been naturally pretty, with the slightly slanted eyes of people from the Orient and yet with other facial features that suggested that in their veins coursed through the blood of many generations of inter-ethnic mixing.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Ugo said under his breath. He was smiling at the girls and had nodded back to them as they giggled at us.

I looked around the canteen and a young dark haired man, wearing a black leather jacket and sitting at one corner of the canteen, was occasionally puffing away on a thick wrap of tobacco. He was glaring at us with blood shot eyes that peered through the whiff of dirty grey smoke that curled upwards from the tip of his tobacco wrap. And he seemed to get angrier each time the girls giggled at us. A few seats away from him an elderly man, wearing a worn out black suit that had several large medals pinned near the breast pocket was also sitting. And he didn't seem to care about what was going on around him as he continued to eat; he would alternately bite a piece of brown bread that he held in his left hand after each spoonful of soup from a bowl, which was on the table in front of him; the soup must have been borsht because there was nothing else on the menu.

The red head was smiling at Ugo after he winked at her. “Do you speak English?” he asked, raising his voice a bit for the girls to hear him.
“Nyet!” I heard her say, shaking her head.
The dark haired man got up suddenly and sauntered towards the girls. From the slight wobble in his gait it was clear that he was a bit drunk. He stood in front of the girls and started to say something to them angrily in Russian. And the word “abezy’an” seemed to punctuate his every sentence. The girls got up from their table and started to argue with the man but the elderly man with the many medals suddenly barked something in Russian at the drunken fellow.

Whatever it is he had said to the man seemed to snap the fellow out of his drunkenness. Because he stopped arguing with the girls and, looking at Ugo and myself with a lot of contempt in his blood shot eyes, had spat out the word “abezy’an!” and then stormed angrily out of the canteen.

The elderly man had continued to drink his soup and eat his brown bread, while the girls who were now quite subdued had sat back at their table to finish their food. They had hurriedly finished their food without looking in our direction again and then left the canteen as Alexei Sergeivitch was pushing open the door and walking in.

Alexei Sergeivitch had heard of the little incident and had come to take us back to our coach once we had finished eating in order to avoid any further incidents. After finding out our version of what happened he gave us a little lecture of how every society had their own fare share of miscreants who misbehaves under the influence of alcohol. He emphasized the fact that things are a lot worse in the “Capitalist world where the exploited masses unleash their frustrations in acts of aggression”.

After he had exhausted himself talking about the problems in the “decadent West” I asked him the one question that was bothering me;
“So what does the word ‘abezy’an’ mean??
He had paused as If to grope for the exact meaning of the word in English.
“And where did you hear that word?” he eventually asked.
”The drunken guy had kept on saying it whenever he was referring to us.
“Well, he is uninformed and lacks the intelligence to properly express himself.”
“Yes I know, but what does it mean?” I insisted.”
“That’s the Russian word for monkey.” he said eventually.
"Hm…so we looked like monkeys to the guy ehn?!" Ugo had asked and burst out laughing. “No wonder he kept on looking at Kasi whenever he used that word!“ he said.
I winced when he said that. Of course I knew that Ugo was trying to make light of the whole thing, but he didn’t know that by his indirect, possibly unconscious, reference to my appearance, he had spoken to my insecurities…
“There’s nothing funny about being called a monkey!” I muttered.
“Na you sabi. The man is a fool. And fools are supposed to be ignored”. Ugo said as a frown gradually creased his face.
Alexei Sergeivitch had looked very puzzled at Ugo's initial reaction but had started to nod in agreement when he started to talk about the need to ignore fools. Its easier said than done, though. I thought as we sat in silence, still waiting for the food, which we had ordered and that seemed to be taking an eternity to arrive.

Chapter 3: Rostov-On-Don/1

Rostov-On-Don is a city of over a million inhabitants that is located on the banks of the Don River. There is, however, another much older Rostov-with a wealth of pre-revolution artefact's and architecture-that forms one of a group of towns known as the Golden ring; a group of several towns with a lot of history, which are located on the outskirts of Moscow. The Golden ring is one of Russia's Tourist attractions. This other Rostov, though much more smaller in size, has been known as Rostov Veliky or Rostov the great in order to differentiate it from its namesake.

I was posted to the Russian language preparatory school of the Medical Institute in Rostov-On-Don with 8 other Nigerians, which had included the warring pairs of Ugo and Seyi; Musa and Eddy and some others. Grace was retained in Moscow.

We had been allocated a guide Alexei Sergeivitch. Alexei Sergeivitch was a very tall young man in his early thirties with the slightly high cheek bones and the dirty blond hair that was almost characteristic of the average Russian and most people of Slavic origin.Though he had never travelled outside of the Soviet Union he spoke English with an almost indiscernible Russian accent.

Alexei Segeivitch preferred to be called Alexei Sergeivitch since in Russia calling a person by their first and middle names was a sign of respect. This is unlike in the West where people preferred their surnames preceded by the prefixes Mr. Mrs. Ms and so on.Alexei Sergeivitch said that in most Slavic cultures, a person’s middle name would be the person’s fathers’ name. So in his case, because his father’s first name was Sergei his middle name is Sergeivitch. His sister‘s middle name is Sergeivna…

He was to travel with us up to Rostov and then would hand us over to another person who would then be responsible for coordinating our settling down in the new town. For the trip we were given 3 Roubles each, which would be enough to buy food in the trains canteen.

I was sharing the same cabin with Ugo for the 17 hours trip to Rostov-On-Don. We were becoming very comfortable in each others company even though we were very different; Ugo came across as one of those confident young men who had a lot of exposure to life. It was clear that he was a lot more experienced than me, even though we were almost the same age; I was going to turn 18 in a few months time, while he was already 18 years old. Apart from that, our physical appearances were remarkably different; while he was tall...at well over 6 feet and a lighter shade of brown...I had always been among the smallest and darkest in my class. In fact I had startled all my cousins when I grew to a height of 5’ 8 in the last 2 years. And I liked to tell people that I was still growing. I was also a lot more introspective, while Ugo came across as quite verbal and outgoing.

Our train had departed from the Kursky vokzal in Moscow…the station for trains bound for Southern Russia and the Caucasus mountains…well over 5 hours earlier. Ugo was talking about his life and what he wanted to do;
“Sam been tell me say people don dey make money for dis country now. And me na money I come make first before studies.”Sam had told Ugo that there were increasing opportunities to make money in the USSR. This he said was top on his list of priorities. He then started to talk about why making money was so important to him.
”My popsi been get money well-well and hin come try politics during the Shagari era, but loose everything!”. He said that his dad was once very rich but dabbled into politics during the government of Shehu Shagari where he lost practically all his money. He later told of how his dad had amassed a fortune in the haulage business within just a decade from the civil war and how in those 4 cursed years of politics his family was transformed from people who could afford to go on holidays to any part of the world to people who can barely eat 3 square meals a day.

The Shehu Shagari government was the ill-fated first Civilian government after the Nigerian Civil war that was overthrown in a military coup lead by General Mohammadu Buhari on New Year’s Eve in 1983. During that government, and indeed ever since, wealthy individuals would pump in a lot of money into the rigging of elections in order to secure contracts later. Unfortunately for so many of these money bags, the elections of 1983 were marked by a lot of electoral fraud which prompted the military to take over the government. Money bags, like Ugo’s father, lost out and ended up bankrupt.

“My dad wey everybody been de respect before, come turn into person wey nobody dey wan acknowledge for village meetings, as hin no get money again…” Ugo said. Apparently his dad was once a much respected person in the community until he went bankrupt. And now nobody acknowledges his presence in any of their community meetings.
“But making money in this country is illegal” I offered
“I don’t know about it being illegal, but making money everywhere is risky! The important thing is knowing how to go about it and I am going to learn”. There was a lot of passion in his voice as he talked about making money.
“And again dem say without money for dis country you no go fit chase the fine babes wey full am” he said with a twinkle in his eyes making a reference to the fact that you could only chase the beautiful girls in this country if you had money. "Me no be Afriko babes i come chase for dis country O, so people like you wey dey fall in love with dem no go get competition!". He was making a reference to the fact that he knew of how besotted i was with the Portuguese speaking African girl and stated that he wasn't interested in African girls, so people like me would not have a lot of competition.

But I wasn't quite sure about the competition thing.

Moscow/6

“I beg make una stop dis una Ngbati and tok in English!” Ugo exclaimed to the two guys after we had come back to the room from the beryozka. The guys, Seyi and Ayo, had been talking loudly in Yoruba as if completely oblivious of the fact that we were in the same room with them. So Ugo had told them to stop talking in Yoruba and to speak in English and had used the word “ngbati” an Igbo term for the Yoruba language. “Abi na only una dey for dis room?” he continued asking them if they thought that they were the only people in the room.
“And why must we talk in English to pleasure you?” responded the bigger of the two guys. His name was Seyi, a bespectacled young man who was as tall as Ugo. His complexion, which was not as dark as mine belied the stereotyping of Yoruba’s as very dark people. ”English na ya papa language?” he asked whether English was his fathers language.
“English no be my papa language, but since no be only una dey dis room una for show us some respect” Ugo was arguing that though English wasn’t his fathers language that they should at least be considerate of the fact that they weren’t the only people in the room.
“Listen, I don’t have to talk for you to understand what I am saying. If you have a language, why don’t you go ahead and speak it and stop showing how brainwashed you have become by the Oyibo man!”
“Anyway, I don’t blame you. You're just a village man!" Ugo responded "Because I have a lot of friends from your place, who understand basic social etiquettes, so I won‘t waste my time arguing with the obstinate fool that you are.“
“You’re the fool!” Seyi said hissing and said something in Yoruba. And dismissing Ugo, he carried on with his conversation with Ayo in Yoruba.

Ugo said something to me in Igbo along the lines of this being the kind of things that perpetuate tribalism, but not wanting to be drawn in to the discussion I muttered something in English.

It is so difficult not to start thinking along tribal lines when you are in Nigeria. I was thinking as I lay on my bed later that night. It’s there all around you, no matter how broad minded you try to be. Somebody will almost always provoke you into going on the defensive or alienating you into seeking refuge with your own kind; your tribe. But I didn’t feel comfortable with that because I realised that there is a world beyond the stereotypes that we use to limit ourselves in Nigeria; a world that I wished to escape to and which I had hoped I would start to experience by having travelled on that 9 hours journey to the USSR.

And as I lay there contemplating on the bonds that had just been broken in our room because of the exchange of words between Ugo and Seyi, I wondered whether the friendship that was developing between Ugo and myself was based on our identical ethnic origins or whether it was just an accident that we just happened to be Igbo’s; would we have become friends if he had been Hausa or would he have gravitated more towards Musa, who was the only Hausa person in our group. And who had remained to himself, for the duration of our flight from Lagos?

While I hoped that it was not just because we were from the same tribe and that we would have become friends all the same, given that we lived in the same area in Owerri, I realised that to any outside observer the most obvious conclusion would be that Ugo and I were drawn together because of the tribe thing. I felt uncomfortable about that thought. And wondered if friendships among Nigerians in the USSR and abroad are built predominantly on tribal affiliations. And I hoped that over the next few days, that we did not start forming subgroups based purely on those primordial sentiments.

Fortunately, that did not happen. Instead we ended up with two groups of guys having personal squabbles with each other; Ugo and Seyi continued to have personality clashes that was built on the argument, which they'd had on that first night. While Musa and Eddy...the guy with the goatee who had fallen out with Musa at the airport...continued to have pseudo-political debates that always ended up with both of them hurling insults at each other. The interesting thing was that Musa and Eddy also shared the same room.

Over the next 3 days we had to be screened for different infectious diseases, which we could have arrived with from our third world countries…including a mandatory screening for what the Russians call SPID. None of us was sure what SPID was at the time. But it was clear that it was an incurable viral disease that had come out of Africa.

Those few days flew by like a haze as I found myself preoccupied with thoughts about that beautiful dark brown girl with her long Senegalese braids whom I had seen in that Beryozka on our first night in Moscow. Everything else…the petty tribal arguments, the tests…whizzed by in a surreal blur; like one long grey dream, in which an inconsequential part of me was party to, while the real me lived on in the reality of the image of those lovely eyes engaging briefly with mine; and the sound of that infectious laughter, floating on the edges of the Russian music that played softly in the background. And for the next three days I had searched for her…hoping that I would once again catch a glimpse of her…but it was as if she had disappeared out of my life the same way she had appeared; like a fleeting apparition that is destined to haunt me.

On the third day those of us who had been deemed medically fit, were now ready to move on. Some of the students had to get medical treatment before they could be posted out to their various schools; one of the Nigerian student who came with us was said to have Tuberculosis and would need to be in hospital for several months; two had Malaria and needed to be quarantined for a few days. But nobody in our group was sent back.

We were now ready to be posted out to the cities where we were to travel to for our language preparatory course. Rumours had been circulating about which cities where more friendly to foreign students; It was said that those cities that were more favourably disposed towards Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika were also a lot more progressive and easier for foreigners to live in than in the others. The rumours had it that the worst cities for African students to be were places like Tashkent, Baku, and Rostov-On-Don.

And as I waited for my name to be called so that I could receive the slip that stated what city I was going to, I was very anxious that it wasn’t going to be to any of those 3 cities. And certainly not Baku or Tashkent since Ugo, Eddy and Seyi had already gotten their posting and were unfortunate to be going to Rostov-On-Don. This meant that I would at least have company there if i was unlucky enough to share in their misfortune. I also heard that the lovely Portuguese speaking girl, had also been posted to that city. So while i waited for my posting to come out I started to secretly pray.

And my prayer was answered. On my little slip was written in English the city; Rostov-Na-Donu.

Moscow/5

I had always been shy and insecure, especially around women, for so many reasons:

The Obieze family compound is located in the Ovom area of Aba and houses 4 generations of the family. My great grandfather, a wealthy yam farmer, married 6 very fertile wives from whom he produced more than 60 Obieze’s; and that’s just counting those from my age and above. We could have been a lot more than that if not for my cousins and uncles who had been killed during the Biafra war…
A lot of the extended family had moved out of the compound and made their homes in other parts of the country and as a result some of their houses had been put up for rent. One of such houses, a 4 bedroom bungalow, was usually rented by girls from the neighbouring Ovom girls’ high school, who by their presence had turned our compound into a place of pilgrimage for a lot of the young men that lived in neighbouring compounds.

Most times, on weekends my nuclear family would travel back to the village on weekends from Owerri…a town that was about 90minutes drive away from Aba…and my cousins would regale me with stories of their escapades with the girls. They would then encourage me to try to have my way with them; apparently most of them where cheap and some of my younger cousins had gotten themselves dis-virgined by them. But I could never find the courage to approach any of them. “You need to learn the raps” Emeka, one of my closest cousins would say “once you learn the raps, everything falls in place”. And he would try to tutor me on the “raps”, but somehow the words didn’t quite click with me.

One day he had arranged one of the girls for me and had asked me to wait in a room while he got her for me. “Kasi, she likes you because you look different, with those your dark Yoruba features and she’s willing. I’ve done all the work for you…” he said winking. But I had escaped through the back window immediately he left me in the room to go and bring the girl! I simply didn’t know what to do or say!

I later decided to start reading up on a lot of romance novels to improve on my raps. And read all the Mills and Boon and Harold Robbins that I could lay my hands on, to the point where I became an authority on raps. I even started to compose love poems for some of my cousins to impress their girlfriends, but was never able to use any of them myself. I think one of the problems was the fact that I was darker than most people around me; certainly a lot darker than everybody else in my compound. And this always made me feel insecure around the people I came in contact with. You see in the village everybody was always equating beauty with the colour of ones skin; the lighter ones skin colour, the more handsome one is considered. And as a result of this a lot of people would spend loads of money on very expensive skin-lightening creams.

To make things worse for me, the old women in our compound liked to refer to people by different names, which they had coined based on one physical feature or other attributes that they noticed in any of us. I was called nwoko oji, which means the dark one in Igbo. Some others in the village would call me nwa Yoruba. meaning Yoruba child, if I had done something wrong, I am not sure if the intentions were to consciously make me feel ostracized but it always made me aware of the fact that I am different. And much as I didn’t like this identity, I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell people to stop calling me by names other than the name that my parents had given to me. Because each time they did so, they would re-enforce in me that sense of alienation from everybody else.…

Moscow/4

The building we were taken to was a 4-storeyed brick building located a few minutes walk away from the main hotel. Outside of this building and in some of the corridors you could still see some evidence of work in progress as there were still some scaffolding here and there. But the rooms we were taken to were quite big and surprisingly very neat; each of them could accomodate up to 4 students. And I ended up sharing mine with Ugo and two other Nigerians.

After we finished sorting out our beddings, Ugo had suggested that we go and look for something to eat. None of us had eaten since our last meal on the Aeroflot airlines almost 24hours earlier!“Hunger wan kill man pickin!” Ugo had stated, expressing how hungry he was. “I sure say if we go back to the main building somebody go fit tell us where the nearest shops dey” He reckoned that somebody should be able to tell us where we could go and buy something to eat at the main hotel building.

“But what about money?” I asked. I hadn’t arrived with any money on me from Nigeria. My stepmother said that by giving me extra money that my dad would be encouraging me to lead an “extravagant” lifestyle once i arrived Russia. According to her, the scholarship offered to me was supposed to be a full one, which was meant to take care of tuition, feeding and necessary miscellenous expenditures. Anything extra would amount to "spoiling" me, she said.

“Sam been give me some Roubles at the airport” Ugo said in response to my question. Apparently Sam had given him some Roubles before they parted at the airport, “ and I fit always change some dollars if the money no do” .

The other two guys had some money of their own to spend and had decided to come along with us to look for something to eat. So we had all strolled over to the main hotel building where we met a stern looking stout elderly woman wearing a scarf and a long worn out brown coat. She was standing at the entrance of the hotel foyer and could speak a bit of broken English.
"Only place near to buy food is beryozka" she had said. There was one such Beryozka located inside the hotel. These beryozka or “hard currency” stores were state-run retail stores that sold goods to foreigners in such convertible currencies like the US Dollar, the Pound Sterling, Deutsche mark and the French Franc. The type of goods they sold were goods that had been specially prepared for export out of the Soviet Union and also Western consumable goods, which only the foreign tourists and top communist party members could afford.

We located a beryozka at the far end of the lobby area and as we walked in it i was reminded of the bars i had seen in Western movies. The place looked more like a bar than a retail store. It had some stools built into the side of the counter and there was a large lounge area at one corner of the room that could sit up to 10 people and there was music playing in the background. Behind the counter was shelves of different types of drinks and chocolates, while in one corner some souvenirs were on display. There was a group of about 6 African students already seated at the lounge area and you could hear them chatting away. Their voices were barely audible above the sound of the Russian music that played in the background but their language sounded like Portuguese.
"E be like say na bar we come enter " I told Ugo.
"Make we find out " He said.

We went up to the counter and Ugo bought a can of coke and some biscuits for both of us after confirming from the guy that this was the beryozka. The other two guys, who had come with us, decided to go back to the hostel without buying anything after having complained that the cost of things there was too expensive for them. Ugo and I made ourselves comfortable on the stools near the counter and started to munch our biscuits. Ugo took a sip from his can of coke and then nodded in the direction of the lounge area. “ Check out that babe wey siddon near that fat guy over there!” he said asking me to look at one of the girls who sat next to a rather plump looking mixed-race guy in glasses.

The students there had several cans of beer on their table and were engaged in a very spirited conversation. One of them, the girl he had asked me to “check out” was, without doubt ,beautiful. From where I sat her dark brown skin looked smooth and I could see that though she was slender, the impression of her breasts on her cream-coloured jumper, was such that my eyes were tempted to linger just a little longer at her chest. Her black hair was done up in long, shoulder length, Senegalese braids and there was a sparkle in her eyes as she laughed. She was beautiful. And looking at her I was suddenly reminded of somebody else.

I was reminded of Funmi, a girl whom I had met about a year ago. I had literaly bumped into her on my first day at the university as i had come out of the admission clerks office. She had been rounding the corner in a hurry and we had run into each other with such impact that her bag had gone flying across the corridor, crashing into the adjacent wall. I had apologised to her and as i was handing her bag back to her just before she hurried off again...in a bid to meet up with the admissions clerk...our eyes had engaged for a fleeting moment, leaving my heart beating a lot faster. She had such lovely brown eyes that left me craving to be embraced by them, long after she had disappeared into the admission clerks office. And for the next few weeks, i found myself fantasizing of the possibilities; yet not being able to approach her even though we attended the same lectures daily. Then one day i summoned up the courage and accosted her in the corridor next to one of the canteens at the Naraguta hostel complex. And i ended up stuttering my way through a confession of love! The memory of that day leaves me feeling embarrased; and i am sure i must have left her thinking that i am a blabbering fool. Because she had walked away to join her friends who had been waiting for her at the end of the corridor and i could hear them laughing loudly as they disappeared round a corner.

This was just before the riots engulfed the Federal universities and we had all been sent packing, leaving me no chance to redeem myself. Several months later we were all called back to sit for our exams and given only 2 weeks to prepare for them. During those 2 weeks the whole atmosphere in the campus had been extraordinarily tense as everybody was under a lot of pressure to pass their courses without any carry-overs. However I did meet her a few times though and each time that she had looked in my direction, her lovely brown eyes would look right through me as though i am invisible; a nonentity who does not exist in her world.

The lovely Portuguese speaking girl across the hall was laughing again. I sensed something infectious in that laughter, which was able to mellow down the embarassment that was almost blushing across my face as i remembered Funmi. And for a fleeting moment my eyes had engaged with hers; a fleeting moment which was to seal my destiny...

“She’s beautiful isn’t she!” I said under my breath.

Moscow/3

I noticed a grey haired Russian man in a black leather jacket and stone washed jeans walking towards us as Grace had made her speech about tribalism. And I wondered if the noise our group was making had annoyed somebody into putting in a complaint…
The man said something in Russian as he walked up to our group but we looked at each other, wondering what exactly he was asking. I know I had heard something that sounded like “Nigeria” and “student“, but wasn’t quite sure. Grace who had been standing a bit further away stepped closer to the front and asked him something in Russian.
And he responded. The look on her face at first gave away the fact that she did not quite understand what he had been saying. “Shto?” I heard her say.
“Viy Nig’eritskiy studienti?” the man repeated his question.
“Da” she replied.“But I speak very little Russian” she said “so you need to talk very slowly, or talk in English…”
“Okay, I Oleg. And I come take you to hotel” He said in broken English.

Oleg had turned up almost 2 hours late because the bus he had originally arranged for us had developed some problems at the last minute and as a result he had to make alternative arrangements for another one. After apologising for keeping us waiting, he took us to the waiting bus, which was to take us to the International Students hotel. According to Oleg, we were lucky because the hotel, which was located about 50minutes drive away, was one of the best in Moscow and had been one of those used to accommodate athletes during the Moscow Olympics 6 years earlier.

Our bus left the airport premises and drove towards the Leningrad highway or Leningradskoe’ shose’ as it is known in Russian. This is the main highway that leads to the city from Sheremetyevo and as we entered the highway we found ourselves locked into a traffic jam.
“We lucky we not go in opposite way!” said Oleg. Those heading towards the airport were in a worse traffic jam than us. If not for the rather peculiar models of the cars, the beeping of the car horns left me feeling that I was caught up in a traffic jam along the 3rd mainland bridge in Lagos!
“Reminds me of being caught up in a go-slow in Lagos!” Grace said. She was sitting in the seat next to me…
“That’s the second time you’ve done that!” I said.
“Second time I have done what?”
“Read my mind. You just said almost exactly what I was thinking “
“Really, and when was the first time?”
“When those other guys had started the tribal war earlier on and you had asked them to stop being stupid”
“Well, I don’t read peoples minds.”
“Anyways, How comes you understand a bit of Russian?” I asked.
“It’s only a very little bit! But its because my dad studied in Russia and I’ve been practicing the very basics with him from the time I was told about the scholarship.”
“I am impressed!”
“Don’t be. My dad says that everybody ends up speaking the language anyway. And that within a few months we’ll all be quite fluent!”
Me?; becoming fluent in Russian Language? in a few months?! This was hard to believe. It was just that the Russian language sounded so very difficult; Russians even have their own alphabet, which would take like ages to learn!

Our bus eventually pulled into the parking spot of the International students’ hotel. The hotel was a very tall building probably up to 12 floors located in a complex that had several nearby smaller buildings. The entrance to the very tall building, which I guessed was the main building, was swarming with students. They seemed to be spilling out from the foyer into a long queue, which was snaking its way into the car park. The time was now almost 4pm and I realised that it had taken us about 2 hours to negotiate the 50minutes trip from Sheremetyevo airport. As we got out of the bus I noticed that the weather had become slightly warmer than it had been when we arrived over 7 hours ago.

We joined the queue behind a group of students from Ethiopia. The long queue was made up of students, grouped according to their countries of origin with their luggage’s clustering all around them and babbling in a cacophony of languages. As I listened to the chatter I wondered if it had been like this during the last days of Babel, when the people were said to have abandoned the building of the tower because of the confusion in languages. The Ethiopians in front of us were talking in a language, which I was hearing for the first time while just in front of them stood a very large group of students chatting exuberantly in a language I guessed must have been Arabic going by the fact that the students looked like some of the Lebanese people I had seen in Nigeria.

We were all queuing up to get registered at the hotel. Registration would involve confirming that the names that were forwarded to the authorities from the embassies, corresponded with the ones in our passports. And following this clarification, we would then be assigned rooms in the hotel and given food vouchers, with which we could eat in the nearby canteen. We were to remain in Moscow until we are medically cleared following from which we would then be posted on to the different Russian language preparatory schools all over the Soviet Union.

The queue continued to move forward very slowly at a pace that even a snail would not have considered challenging enough. And by the time that it got to our turn, the hotel was already filled up and as such we had to be sent to a nearby hostel-type building, which was at that time undergoing renovation.

Moscow/2

“Do svidania!“ The tall blonde unsmiling air hostess, who stood near the exit of the door, greeted each of us as we walked past her. I heard one of the older students translating to Ugo as they walked up behind me; “ What she said actually means; until we meet again. But that‘s the Russian way of wishing you goodbye“.

As I stepped outside on to the mobile stairway, I was hit by a cold stream of air , making it feel as if ice cold water had just splashed across my face. And I noticed how mist formed around peoples mouths and nostrils as they breathed and talked in the cold, giving an impression that we were all puffing away on invisible cigarettes. I zipped up my jacket and turned up its collar in order to make myself warmer, and started to walk a little faster. Ugo and the other guy, whose name I later found out was Sam, had continued with their conversation as they walked past me and were now walking briskly in front as we all headed towards the waiting airport shuttles.

I caught up with them and heard Sam saying that he came to the USSR 2 years earlier to study Aeronautics Engineering and had been fortunate to be posted to the Latvian city of Riga where there were about 8 other Nigerian Engineering students.
“Riga na betta place, but dem no dey post Medical students come there…” he said extolling the virtues of Riga, saying that it was a good place to be, but that Medical students were not sent there to study. “Generally for the Baltic states you no go feel like say na inside Soviet Union you dey as life there be like you dey for the Scandinavian countries…”. According to Sam, living in the Baltic states was like living in the Scandinavian countries and very different from life in other Soviet cities.

We got on to the first of the two shuttles and were taken to the airport terminal where, on entering the poorly lit receiving hall, we joined one of the two queues. Our queue was the one for foreigners while the other one was for the Soviet nationals. The two noisy queues were slowly snaking up to five glass screened cubicles that constituted the boarder controls. As the queues moved closer I saw that inside of the cubicles sat young looking immigration officials kitted up in what on first glance looked like military uniforms. They appeared to be very meticulous in their duties…or perhaps inexperienced…as they were spending a long time in scrutinising each of the passports that were being pushed through the little windows in the glass screen. After about two hours I was attended to by a stern looking male immigration official. He had looked at my passport with a lot of suspicion and each time he looked from the picture in my passport to me I had tried smiling, but he had completely ignored my smile and waved me through to the customs section. As I passed through the space in-between the two cubicles I was left with the impression that the man didn’t like his job very much and perhaps liked me even less…

Getting through the customs was a lot less of a hassle. From there I had picked up my luggage from the baggage controls and then made my way through to the big lounge area where some other Nigerian students had already started to congregate. In all there were 21 of us who arrived on that flight. And we were to meet with a Russian official who would then coordinate our movements. But nobody was waiting for us in the lounge area.

I looked around the cold poorly lit hall where we were waiting for our guide. The hall was crowded and there was no place to sit down other than the floor as the few seats had already been occupied by other passengers who had arrived a lot earlier than us. Some people sat on their baggage’s, while a rather noisy and chaotic crowd were trying to push through to the different check in counters at the far end of the hall. Every so often you would see passengers who had just come through from the receiving hall pushing their trolley's towards the exit , while those who were not fortunate enough to find trolleys would be seen struggling with various sizes of baggage’s. Watching them I was reminded of the image that had been in my mind before; there is a lot more colour in real life, I thought. And more noise…lots of noise…of people talking in loud voices and others who appeared to be exchanging a lot of expletives! Here people were a lot more animated and a lot more angry.

Outside I could see several cars parked in the drive way. I noticed that all of the cars had the same box-like look, resembling things that had been assembled in so a hurry that very little consideration had been given for comfort. Nearby men, wearing mostly black leather or stone washed jean jackets, looked like they were soliciting for passengers and seemed to be approaching almost everybody who came out of the hall pushing a baggage trolley.

I checked my watch and realised that it was already after midday. We arrived just over 3 hours ago and had been waiting for about 30minutes.
“I sure say una wait no go long pass our own when we arrive two years ago…” Sam, was saying interrupting my thoughts. He was trying to reassure us that our wait may not be as long as theirs had been 2 years earlier. “Dat time, we been stay for dis airport for over 4 hours because the person wey suppose pick us up been drink Vodka com forget the time when our plane suppose arrive!”. Apparently, the person who was supposed to have picked them up at the airport had gotten drunk and forgotten about their time of arrival and ended up coming 4 hours late!

Sam eventually left us after he had given his contact details to Ugo and invited us to drop in anytime we found ourselves in Riga.
“Na wa! dis people wan behave like some Nigerian civil servants. Wetin be to get drunk and forget work?!” one of the students, a rather rotund light skinned fellow with a goatee beard was saying. He was asking how somebody could get drunk while he had work to do and said that this was almost reminiscent of the attitude of some Nigerians working in the civil service.

“Which part of Nigeria be dat one?” A gangling dark youth challenged him, asking him to clarify what part of Nigeria he was talking about. His challenger, Musa, was wearing the kind of hat that was more common to people from Muslim North of Nigeria, “How many Nigerians you don see wey dey get drunk for work? Maybe na for your state dat wan dey happen!” . He said in an accent that suggested that he was of Hausa origins. He was asking the first speaker if he had ever seen any Nigerian getting drunk at work and stated that unless it was in the person’s own state that such things happened.
“Commot for here you village Hausa man…! The rotund guy responded. “…You tink say na nama we come pursue for dis place. When reasonable person dey talk, you wan put your mouth wey you dey take suck nama breast finish!” He asked him if he thought that they had come to Russia to become cattle rearers, making a clear reference to the other persons origins and their negative stereotyping as illiterate cattle rearers who are brought up sucking the breast of cows..
“Nyamiri! Na because of una foolishness and greed wey una lose the Biafra war!” the Hausa guy was now telling the rotund fellow, whom he assumed was Igbo that they had lost the Biafra war because of their greed and foolishness.
“Idiot, na because of your own stupidity wey you no fit see say I no be Igbo man!” the guy was saying he was not Igbo. ”I be Bini man!”

As I watched them I couldn't help feeling ashamed; apart from the fact that they were talking in loud voices that made passers by to throw glances in our direction, I couldn't help wondering why any arguments that involved Nigerians from different ethnic groups always seemed to turn into inter-tribal bickering. I was getting a bit sick of it and had not thought that we would bring our inter-tribal warfare with us to the USSR.
“I beg make una stop dis una stupidity! Una don carry this tribalism ting come all the way to Russia…!” Interposed one of the women who had arrived with us from Nigeria, speaking out loud what I had just been thinking. The speaker, Grace a rather heavy set woman who looked a lot more obese than plump, had kept to herself for most of the journey but must have now felt it her duty, as the oldest looking person in the group, to bring back a bit of sanity. ”Una tink say Oyibo go fit tell the difference between Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa?. Yeye people! Make I tell una, no be Naija we dey now and for here all of us na Africans and na so dem dey see us be dat…“ She said, stating that the white man is not able to tell the difference between the various Nigerian ethnic groups and that as far as they are concerned we are all Africans and that’s how they see us…