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.