I couldn’t help but notice a rather attractive girl who I later learned was called Natalia. It turned out she was quite taken by me as although she was sat next to Anthony, she had insisted they changed places so she was right next to me. She offered me some of her chicken drumsticks and told me she’d been to America and really loved black Americans. This was my cue. I told her I was an African American and showed her the pictures of Lisa from Boney M. and told her that she was my mother.
She looked at the pictures with intense curiosity and, after a few minutes, she tapped me on the shoulder and as I turned around our lips met in a proper kiss.
The party was in full swing. The bride was showered with gifts, an Armenian band was playing, Anthony and Aaron danced with their shirts unbuttoned, in unison with their family members, vodka flowed and there was merriment galore. Then among the guests I saw the face of Chief Justice Paul and heard him ask the question, ‘Do you know that boy Eric Ngalle Charles? Do you know him?’ I could see hollow faces and their response ricocheting like the voice of a missing mountaineer. I could feel some tears and pretended to sneeze. I appeared to be welcomed around the village and my visit rolled into a stay of several weeks.
‘Who is this?’ It was Natalia’s mother asking her who I was.
‘It’s Eric, my friend,’ replied Natalia. I was invited to their home, a two-storey building with a huge garden growing all kinds of fruit, especially grapefruits and passion fruits. Natalia and I played Adam and Eve, for truly, this was our Eden.
Every day on his way to work, Aaron would drop me at the library, which was owned by Natalia’s family. I was a local celebrity. A tourist attraction. I would tell the children stories about Ndondondume (a mythical beast from Bakweri mythology, who lures his victims with an amazing singing voice before devouring them) and when my Russian was not enough, Natalia translated.
*
I was a master storyteller and my favourite story was about Yomadene, a mythical beast that lives on top of Mount Cameroon. I also loved the story of Epassamoto, a half-stone, half-human who took care of Albino children abandoned to die on top of the mountain—when I was growing up, there were two Albino twins in our village and I was always terrified for their fate. I also loved the mystics of the Ekulelekule or tortoise.
Years later I told my daughter these stories as we looked through the window of our housing association accommodation in Ely, Cardiff, overlooking the city centre; the Millennium stadium, smoke from Brains Brewery and the roof tops of Splott and Broadway. I would tell my daughter all these beautiful stories but she would still be pointing at Eric Carle’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar—it was her favourite book. I guess it was her way of telling me I had completed my metamorphosis now that I had met her. It was as if the spirits of my ancestors had conveyed to her, mysteriously even before she was born, that I was coming all the way from my village in Cameroon via the mountains of Akhun in Sochi Russia, to be her father on a council estate called Ely in a small corner of Wales.
*
We did not have any breathing space, even when we hid behind the library shelves to kiss; there was always one babushka that wanted to ask if I had met Nelson Mandela.
At times, to entertain them, I used to play some African drums. The villagers loved me; Natalia and her parents loved me. I spent most nights at Natalia’s home, although we never slept in the same room. I used to help Aaron’s father cut the grass in the garden, prepared their bunker and kept the winter fruits in jars and all kinds of containers. It was a village, I was a village boy, and I loved it.
Towards the end of my stay I was invited on an excursion. We drove with a few other acquaintances deep into the foothills of Mount Akhun—if Anthony and Aaron had bad plans for me this would be their big chance; the road was very narrow, I could have been pushed over a huge drop and no one would have been any the wiser. You see, I had been living on the kindness of strangers—I had three meals a day, not just any meals, proper cooked meals—but I had started to sense I was beginning to overstay my welcome. The money that I had said was coming was not forthcoming. It reached the point where they would ask me to dial my family in America; I would miss a digit on purpose.
The car finally stopped at the foot of Mount Akhun and we got out. To my relief a picnic was unfolded and we jumped into a welcoming waterfall. At first, I was apprehensive and when, once again, I asked if there were any crocodiles, Anthony burst out laughing. This was a running joke: every time we met, he would remind me about crocodiles in Russia.
Days passed. Despite my fears being unfounded I knew I was not going to receive money from anyone and I could not carry on with that old lie about me waiting for money. On top of this Aaron told me that the immigration officers had stopped him and said that they knew he was harbouring an illegal immigrant and that I had to leave Sochi.
At the same time, I was summoned to Natalia’s house. Natalia had applied for a visa and was accepted to come to the United Kingdom as an au pair but she had locked herself in her room insisting she would only go if her parents ensured I travelled with her. There was no way this was going to happen. We all had to compromise. My passport was photocopied and with Anthony as a witness, Natalia and I were married traditionally in front of her mother and father, brother, nieces and nephews.
To this day I am not sure about the legality of this marriage; it was just done to pacify Natalia. It wasn’t a full-on wedding, as firstly, the authorities would have told the family I was not American, secondly, I was illegal and would not have been allowed to marry Natalia if things were done properly. I miss Natalia very much and I hope one day we meet again. In fact, I cry secret tears for her most nights. Three days later Natalia travelled to the UK.
Chapter 5
Eventually, I had overstayed my welcome. I did not have any money yet strangers who had their own families to take care of were feeding me. I had become an unnecessary burden. Though Anthony and Aaron never directly told me, I could tell our friendship was strained, their excitement of having a black boy around was fading and fading fast, so they took me to Sochi main bus station and I boarded a bus back to Stavropol. Natalia’s parents filled my bags with all kinds of fruits from their garden. They also gave me their house telephone number and Natalia’s telephone number in York.
When I returned to Stavropol I discovered that Andy and Rico, who had been the first people I had made friends with on my arrival in Russia, had left after deciding to take their chances of making it to Europe via Ukraine, while Small Joe was on his way to Moscow to return to Cameroon; he’d lost his younger brother and his parents had bought him an air ticket and the university issued him with an exit visa. There was also some anger brewing towards me back at the hostel as, not long after my return, Anthony and his friends had been intimidating the students and enquiring as to my whereabouts. He wanted the money he had paid out for my passport and hotel fees. He had already confused Chris for me at one of the bus stops and his friends had pounced on him. On top of hiding from Anthony and his friends, the university authorities had increased their daily visits to the hostel, so I had to be extra careful. And then there was the cold to contend with.
The Russian winter of 1997 was one of the harshest on record and we would hear news stories of dedushkas (grandfathers) dying in the snow after consuming homemade vodka. I went along to a church session one evening, overseen by a self-proclaimed pastor. When he first came to the hostel, he was blacker than a Chadian soldier, however he began using one of those bleaching soaps; his face was as yellow as the sun and covered with pimples but his hands were blacker than roast plantains. He said he had a skin condition but everyone in the hostel knew he was using coco soap.
As we sat in the kitchen waiting for food (there was always food after a church session; God was kind to the illegals) Anthony and his friends walked in and dragged me out onto the balcony. I was suspended over the parapet—by this time I was as skinny as a stick insect. They proceeded to punch me in the ribs while Anthony, who l
ooked rough and smelled of alcohol, shouted, ‘Where’s my money? Give me my money. I will fuck your mother and I’m going to fucking kill you.’
Normally when we made a loud noise the guard downstairs would rush up, but no one came on this occasion; perhaps they had been paid off. After what seemed like a lifetime, the hostel rallied and came up with the two hundred dollars—Anthony and his friends added fifty dollars in interest—and I was dragged back into the kitchen.
A few weeks after this incident, there was another attack, this time it wasn’t by Anthony or his entourage, but the guards downstairs after one of them had been angered by one of the Ibo Nigerians who had shouted, ‘Fuck your mother.’ There was a small confrontation that was soon quelled by the university authorities, however the guards went away and planned their revenge. It was mid-December and the snow was thick. Suddenly we heard loud noises coming from the Nigerian side of the hostel. Two of our number, Saul and Chris, went out to investigate. Chris didn’t return. His head was bashed in with a baseball bat. The guards had broken into the rooms and people were being battered.
Saul shouted, ‘You guys should run, they’ve killed Chris.’ The stairs were blocked and the only safe passage out was via the kitchen. Saul had already jumped into the snow from the third floor, in bare feet, and I quickly followed him, along with a few others who had managed to push the guards out of the way.
We ran onto the main road and flagged a taxi down, climbed in and asked the driver to take us to the nearest police station. He drove to the edge of town and abandoned us. There was no police station; it turned out the taxi was part of the assault team. Saul started crying, it was extremely cold and he was bare footed. It had gone past midnight and the trolley bus had stopped working. We managed to flag another taxi down and, fortunately, this time we were taken to the police station—if only we had studied our university environment, we would have known the police station was just across the road from the university.
The police appeared shocked by how fluent I was in the Russian language. I explained to the officer on duty that there was an attack taking place on the campus and within a few minutes the reception was full of huge police officers in riot gear carrying Kalashnikov rifles. By the time we got to the hostel, the siege had ended and there was blood all over the floor. The police officers had arrested most of the guards and some had been beaten. Chris and Grand Dan had suffered the worse beatings. Saul was carried to an ambulance and taken to hospital.
I offered to be the spokesperson, to represent the students against the university in the following inquest but was told, ‘Eric, you are not a student, you will not be able to represent us.’
I didn’t protest; I had my own plans. Whilst the crisis meeting took place, I went to the university canteen and used the phone. I called the rector pretending I was calling from the Cameroonian Embassy. ‘Good afternoon, can I speak with the rector of the university please? My name is Patrice Ebutu and I am calling from the United Nations. We are deeply angry with what we are hearing from your university; we want action taken against the perpetrators.’
I was told that after this call the rector went into panic mode. The perpetrators held at the police station were charged with assault and their jobs at the university were under threat—being kicked out of the university meant going straight into the army. I made several such calls to the rector during this period but on the last occasion, having taken advantage of an empty canteen to use the telephone, a different voice answered; his secretary. Nina was a softly spoken girl with long, blonde hair and blue eyes, who spoke English with an American accent. All the students fancied her and I was no exception.
She started asking me about my role at the United Nations: was I attached to the Human Rights Commission? How long had I been working at the United Nations? She then said, ‘The rector is busy but he won’t be long, he knows you are on the line.’ I was lost in the beauty of her voice and didn’t notice two security officers creep up on me. I turned around and the rector gave me a serious slap. I was dragged outside the front entrance of the hostel and given a good beating. The Russian students were shocked. I couldn’t fight back but I struggled and freed myself from their grip and ran towards the hostel. It turned out that the same shovel-hands Ibo Nigerian, who had stolen my jacket, had learned that I was the one making the telephone calls and had gone and grassed me up to the university authorities.
At this point my reputation was enhanced among the students. I was the most illegal of all. I had not set foot in any Russian language classes yet I spoke the language with such fluency it appeared to be my own. The university heavily compensated Chris and Dan. My one last heroic involvement in this matter was when Dan was again threatened at gunpoint in the reception area. He was being forced by the brother of one of the Russians who had been identified as the mastermind behind the attacks at the hostel to drop the case against his brother.
All the elders amongst the students were there and I had heard what was being said as I approached the noise. I addressed the guy with the gun by saying, ‘Respected gentlemen. Let us not fight as if we were noise makers in a market.’
I had played the language to perfection. I had respected the guy and at the same time used slang that was rare and only used by one who had a mastery of street talk. The guy relaxed, looked at me and placed the gun in his bag before coming over and shaking my hand. He congratulated me on my language skills and enquired how long I had been at the hostel. I arranged a private meeting for the next day between the gentleman and Dan, in which Dan was well compensated and, for my negotiations, I was given one hundred dollars. No case was brought against anyone and we never had any problems again—until the four horsemen of the apocalypse arrived from Moscow telling us about buying and selling fake dollars that is. More on that later.
Hearing my sister’s voice was always such a relief to me. She told me that my mother was well pleased that her brothers in American had sent me two thousand dollars. I laughed. I could not contradict her. She told me about her job, she was now working at the Prime Minister’s office. Ndinge was trained as a skilled marksman, a sharp shooter and worked as a gendarme, a French paramilitary officer, she was so good she worked alongside the Former Prime Minister of Cameroon—who is currently languishing in Kondengui (a notorious prison) accused of corruption.
My sister told me about her two children, Aloga and Iya, and also about how the family in Cameroon had raised one million CFA francs, the equivalent of £1,500, which had been given to my nephew’s father to send to me. The money never came and I am unable to confront him as to what happened to the money, as he died.
I told my sister I had to leave Russia, she promised to do all she could. I asked about my mother’s farm; the last thing I did for my mother before embarking on this journey was to develop a nice yam plantation for her.
*
My mother and I have this strong bond, you see, as I stayed in her stomach for almost twelve months; she keeps reminding me of this. I think she must have got her dates of conception wrong, she even told me that I already had a tooth when I was born. In fact, I hated breast milk and would not stop crying at the hospital, until they brought me mashed potatoes. She might be telling the truth, who knows, but after me, no other child in the village has been named Eric. I remember when my brother had his first son, I begged for him to name the child after me, but he looked at me as if I had developed witchcraft; I was truly a cursed child.
*
It wasn’t because we had never experienced winter before; it was because the winter of 1997 in Russia was just extraordinarily cold and extremely hostile. In my village, during the rainy season, people become very selective when it came to showering; we have a name for it, ‘seba’, you wash those parts of the body that are prone to smell. In Russia, we went for weeks without a shower. Don’t get me wrong, the university ensured the hostel had plenty of heating and hot water, but it was just easier not to shower. It wasn’t all bad though. The extreme winter had brought an o
pening in the job market and several of us got jobs as petrol station attendants. It paid well but there was no employment contract or anything like that; you relied on tips from generous customers who did not want to get out of their warm cars into the freezing cold.
Around this time Big Joe, Chris, who was just about recovered from his head injury, and I formed a small performing arts group; we were managed by a small guy called Maxim. We did around twenty concerts with the highlight being performing in front of the Mayor of Stavropol. Afterwards he invited us backstage but Maxim had told me that he was fond of boys so we made our apologies and exited the building.
We performed in several places including schools, we almost started a riot in one, when the students realised that we were miming the hip pop artist Tupac, and they chased us off stage.
As the concerts were few and far between, Chris and I got a job working as DJs at a nightclub in Prospekt Mira, which was around twenty minutes from Kulakova where our hostel was located. The club was owned by a guy from Georgia called Baku and he paid us a hundred roubles a night; we worked Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Unfortunately, the role was short-lived as far as I was concerned because a fatwa had been issued on me. You see, one night, after finishing my session at the club, I met this beautiful woman, called Nadia, and we spent the night at her house. The affair carried on for a couple of weeks, until I found out that she was married. The husband owned another nightclub so he was never home.
I, Eric Ngalle Page 4
