Tell me about London

1985

The five-year old sat cross-legged at his mother's feet. He liked to sit there. He loved listening to her stories, especially in candlelight, in the regular absence of electric power. NEPA, they called it then - National Electric Power Authority, though the locals preferred Never Expect Power Always.

Anyway, we stray from our main subject. Little Zibby loved sitting at his mummy's feet. She would tell stories of the tortoise and the hare, of the wicked stepmother and magical rivers, greedy children and wise old men. Her versions of stories passed down from generation to generation. But Zibby liked one story above others. "Tell me about London" he would say. "Mamma, tell me about London".

You see, Zibby's parents had spent 13 years in London before returning to Lagos in the late 70's. His elder brother had been born there, but Zibby missed out on the priviledge of dual nationality by one month. Somehow or other, he grew up with a facination about the city he had never known. He would dream about the snow, about his brother being played with by the facinated white neighbourhood kids, about the child minder whose name he had heard innumerable times, about the little house on Stanlake Road, the huge afros and bell-bottomed trousers. His "memories" of London were comprised of his mother's stories and the extensive collection of pictures sitting in the shelf under the television. As the stories were repeated over several nights and several months and years, he would imagine himself there, a happy dream which filled him with warmth and simple child-like happiness.

Were the seeds for his eventual relocation sowed during those tropical evening story sessions? Perhaps. What Zibby's young head could not have known was that the reality of London differed greatly from the city of his infantile dreams.