I, Eric Ngalle

by Ngalle, Eric;

  You did all you did for your children but you died and returned to your maker empty handed.

  You are crying but for which of your children are you crying for?

  Just pull yourself together.

  Another guy who briefly participated in my torture was Simon, Galina’s boyfriend. I met Galina, a beautiful Russian student from Voronezh, while visiting a friend on a different floor. When I left Peter’s room Galina followed me. It happened so fast. When we got into the lift she hugged and started kissing me, and instead of going to the third floor, we went to the ninth floor and stopped the lift and engaged in coitus. I had no room, just a sleeping space, so Galina and I used the lift until the lift engineer changed the setting without informing us. While we were engaged in coitus on the ninth floor one day, someone called the lift back to the third floor and we were quite literally caught with our pants down. This was conveyed to Simon. This was the perfect time for him to unleash his revenge. Now he punched me a couple of times and joined the chorus that shouted, ‘Kill him and get it over with.’

  I was only spared when Jerome busted into the room and said he’d seen some military cars outside the hostel. Some days later I was told that this was a conspiracy between Aubin, Ifeoma the Great and Jerome to free me from the clutches of death. Thankfully it worked. The illegals scattered into their various rooms but when the police didn’t turn up Ndumbe came up with the idea of cutting up one of his bed sheets to use as a rope to tie me up.

  Ngobese and The Bull went through my small suitcase and found my Cameroonian passport, which was confiscated. I never saw my Cameroonian passport again and I felt stripped of my identity completely. They were looking for my Zimbabwean passport as it would have been worth their while, selling it to the highest bidder. Unfortunately for them I had given my passport to Remy who used it to collect his medication at the local pharmacy. Remy pleaded for these guys to stop the beatings but his pleas, like all others, fell on deaf ears.

  At the end of the beating and torture, my hands were tied behind my back, my legs tied by my ankles and knees. I saw certain parts of my body I had not seen before and I was then rolled underneath Ndumbe’s bed. I heard Miranda whispering to Lanna saying that they would come and kill me while I was asleep. I never slept. Every time Ndumbe or Miranda woke up to use the toilet they would spit at me and kick me. Ndumbe would use the back of his heel and hit me on the head and other parts of my body; he would throw whatever he could fit into his hands in my direction. In the morning, he poured cold water onto my body; I could not move and the ropes were tight but the water soothed my sores temporarily. I was held hostage by this group of Cameroonians and in this position for three days, only surviving by the water and whatever Jerome and Patrick brought me.

  My mouth, jaw and my whole body were in pain. My front canine was broken and, on the spots where the knives had fried my skin, I was developing sores, blisters and ulcers.

  On the third day, whilst Ndumbe and his girlfriend Miranda were frolicking in the shower, Jerome, using a pocketknife, opened the door and helped me escape. Jerome was still drunk, his eyes were red, and he would have killed Ndumbe and Miranda if they had come out of that bathroom, he swore, but Jerome is no killer. We were just good children, good boys gone rogue. We did not leave the hostel; Jerome took me to another room, a couple of doors down from Ndumbe’s. Fortunately the physical violence ceased, but there was still verbal abuse for the remainder of my time at the hostel.

  I must insist, no French Cameroonian took part in this torture, in fact some of them pleaded on my behalf, including one guy we had nicknamed Dr Kumalo. Years later, in 2013, I met Dr Kumalo while working as a bouncer in a bar in Croydon High Street. First, he bumped into me deliberately but did not stop and carried on up the stairs to use the gentlemen’s facilities. He turned and briefly we made eye contact; his face looked familiar but I could not remember where I had first seen him. Kumalo was smartly dressed with a brown shirt with the top button opened and a gold cross.

  I thought, ‘No, this can’t be possible.’ But as I walked around doing my usual checks, I heard this voice ask, ‘Are you Erico?’

  The last time someone called me Erico was in Babushkinskaya. I shouted, ‘Dr Kumalo.’

  He retorted, ‘Erico.’ We embraced and jumped around, my gosh.

  After my shift that evening, we sat down together and drank vodka and reminisced. Kumalo was with his girlfriend and we drank until the early hours. Kumalo told me about the many funerals he attended whilst at Pechatniki, those who never made it.

  A couple of days after my escape, the Russian Amon (Russian anti-terror police’s rapid response unit) invaded Pechatniki hostel. They wore masks and carried guns. All the doors in the hostel were knocked down and everyone inside was arrested. Pechatniki hostel made the local news, and the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper described Pechatniki as ‘Hell on Earth’. This news report prompted the university to renovate the third floor of Pechatniki. I have heard rumours that people have said that I was the one who had arranged for the Russian Amon to invade the hostel in the early hours of the morning. I’ll hold my silence on this.

  Chapter 16

  The 1998 winter saw me knocking at death’s door in Pechatniki, once more. Moscow University ensured the heating was on permanently at the hostel. The snow on the fields that surrounded the campus was deeper than some of us were tall, and everything was painted white as far as the eye could see. The temperatures fell as low as minus 55 degrees according to some news channels and, once again, there were reports of babushkas and dedushkas freezing to death after consuming samagon (homemade vodka) and daring to walk their dogs.

  *

  I wanted to go back to the mangrove swamps of Tiko, where we used to catch crabs and mud fish. At times the seas were deceptive: first it was a low tide and then, suddenly, it was high tide. I remember Collins one day getting stuck in the mud as the sea was rising, we pulled him out but the sea swallowed his rain boots.

  I never caught a single fish using a hook whilst in Mundemba, you could see the mbanga fish in vast numbers swimming up and down the river, some of them wiggled their waist as if mocking our hooks, they were urban fish I guess and had learned a trick or two. No matter what the bait, they simply ignored our hooks; even when we used extra-fattened worms, they would simply munch on the sides of the hook until the worms disappeared.

  It wasn’t until I got to New Layout in Tiko that I became an expert fisherman. My sister Elizabeth and her husband Mola Paddy relied on me for their fish supply; the river was not very far behind the house, via the cocoa plantation. I also learned and developed the skill of shooting a coconut off the palm from a distance. I would then break the coconut using a flat stone perfectly deposited on the banks of the small river.

  One day, as I enjoyed my routine of basking in the sunshine, fishing, and enjoying my coconut, I heard a rustling sound—something was rolling on dried leaves. I saw the water moving in an unnatural pattern then I looked by the pile of coconut shells and saw a huge snake wiggling, slowly. It looked haggard; half its body including the head was inside the water whilst the rest of the snake was striding slowly on the coconut shells. I stood and waited until the snake crossed over to the other side of the river; I then gathered my catch for the day and returned home.

  Mola Paddy agreed that I was to never fish in that river again. A couple of weeks later the whole neighbourhood was awakened during the early house of the morning by a very loud shout coming from the direction of the Oben household. We prepared ourselves for the worst news possible. This type of sudden cry only means one thing: there has been a death in the family. Carrying our lamps and torches, we crossed the small rickety bridge, which was on the brink of collapsing, and climbed the small hill to the Oben compound. The sight that greeted us was something straight out of a David Attenborough nature programme. A massive mboma boa constrictor had broken into the family kraal and was in the process of swallowing a goat. The poor goat’s head, its front legs and part
of its belly were half way down the snake’s throat. The snake would have been successful in its mission had it not been for the noisy chickens whom, shocked by what they were witnessing, had formed a chorus and woken up the Oben household and the rest of the neighbourhood.

  Both the goat and the boa met an untimely death. A sharp machete was used and the snake was slit open from its mouth all the way down. The goat just fell out. Later that day, parts of the boa and parts of the goat were sent to us for food, but as far as I know, it is still in the freezer. We never touched it. We do not distinguish snakes from the poisonous or non-poisonous, and the goat had gone halfway into the snake’s throat. It would have been rude to refuse the gift from our neighbours but no one touched them.

  *

  There were no African gods in Russia and we were alone and left to the elements. On my British Airways flight from Sheremetyevo to Heathrow in July 1999 there was an English pamphlet on the aeroplane and this was its description of Russia. I quote: ‘If the daily activities of the people and the skinheads does not kill you, then the horrible weather and extreme cold temperature probably will.’ Propaganda maybe, but it has some elements of truth.

  We moved in with three others into a one-bedroom house in a quiet suburb in Mytishchi, altogether there were five of us including Jerome and I. We only lasted one night. It was a conspiracy by the landlady and her brother to take money from us and then to chase us out of the house. After all, we were illegal; we didn’t have any legs to stand on. After paying four hundred roubles for rent and deposit, the next day the landlady’s brother, or so he said he was, came to our new abode with his friends and chased us out of the neighbourhood. He claimed he was in the Russian mafia, but the wrinkles in his face told a different story. He looked like someone who had spent time digging snow in the winter. He was an alcoholic.

  If Pechatniki was hell on earth, Rigskayaya market was the place where all labour laws went to die. There was no such thing as Bolshevik communes, all for one and one for all stuff. Rather, it was dog eat dog.

  The police/immigration officers had a routine: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were their dedicated days for visiting the market. Like sheep we ran as soon as we saw others running. It was worse in winter as we would climb the fence and wait in the snow until the searches were over. Ninety per cent of those who worked at Rigskayaya market were illegal immigrants, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Cameroonians and Nigerians. Rigskayaya was a melting pot of illegal immigrants. As far as I remember, no one was repatriated upon being arrested by immigration officers but when they returned from spending hours at police stations and different detention centres, one thing was certain: all their money would have been taken from them.

  Rigskayaya market was not your standard market where you bought single items; it was a massive retail distribution centre for bulk purchases. Truck after truck came and went. If you saw a group of people walking suddenly towards one end of the retail centre, it simply meant they had spotted a truck and that the business owner was looking for people to either help unload or load the truck. People like Ifeoma the Great and Jerome were lucky as they had businessmen they worked for. Though they had no contracts, they were guaranteed at least one hundred roubles to take home. I say take home but the police knew all our routes—those who made it home had developed the techniques of a snow leopard. We would crawl under the barbwire fences and get off the train home two stations before Rigskayaya station.

  I was lucky as Remy recommended me to his employer and I was offered a contract, albeit verbally. At first, they paid me eighty roubles but as the Russian rouble was collapsing against the dollar, my earnings were increased to one hundred and twenty and one hundred and fifty roubles a day. I carried my money unevenly across my body: I would hide some under the insole of my shoes, in the many pockets of my trousers and some in my top pocket because police searches normally stopped when money was located. Then it becomes a case of negotiating shtraf (a fine). This was standard and widespread practice.

  Remy and I had a set routine for our employers; in the morning we would wash their cars and, in return, when there was an immigration raid, our employers would hide us in the main offices. It was a fair deal. We had half-hour for lunch, after which we loaded and unloaded truck after truck until around eight o’clock. We had three bosses, all Georgians; two we only saw during immigration raids as we had to go and hide in the office but David, the third boss, oversaw sales, distribution and ensuring that our huge storage always had space. David was always smiling. He was very happy that I spoke Russian, and he would complain to me about the others, how he always had to be with them to monitor and train them continuously.

  David was a family man and loved his wife and son dearly. He spoke about them all the time and carried pictures of them. David had met his wife one fine summer’s day while walking along the promenade in central Moscow. She had dropped her ice cream on her top and David offered her a handkerchief, their eyes met and the rest was history. I tried this handkerchief technique in London’s Green Park one summer’s afternoon. The girl told me to: ‘Feck off and mind my own business.’

  He taught me manual handling and basic first aid, he always made sure I had strong industrial gloves, and he also taught me how to use and drive the pallet trucks. He reminded me of Mola Paddy. Our workplace was specialised in buying and selling in bulk all kinds of detergent. I ran little errands for him including ensuring all letters were posted on time. I washed his car for free and he would bring me homemade Goriatchi Khachapuri, a Georgian delicacy.

  David was heartbroken when he found out his wife was having an affair with a Russian police officer. A few weeks later, David was found hanging in the bathroom. The work place was a very sombre place for some months until they employed a Russian dude who, unfortunately, sacked all of us and brought in his own crew instead. This was the last straw; I started planning my exit from Russia again.

  As the rouble dropped its value against the dollar, every Tom, Dick and Harry wanted to get involved in buying and selling fake dollars. I was invited to Ivanova to translate for a group of Cameroonians. One of them was a Barondo man from Ndian division where I attended primary school. He was in his late fifties. I cannot remember his name. He was very short and wore oversized clothes, and his head was shaped as if his mother had tried closing her legs when giving birth to him. He told me he knew Mola Paddy but this was a lie—he just wanted me to go along and translate for him. My job was a success but the Barondo man and his guys went behind my back and took five thousand dollars from the client. I didn’t know this at the time but this client was someone who had been helping students with immigration authorities in Ivanova.

  I loved Jerome very much, and although I thought my life was over, I didn’t want to take Jerome down with me. For this reason we started drifting apart. It was deliberate on my part. I was okay with the drift; I knew for a fact that I had one last attempt at leaving Russia and that if I wasn’t successful, I was going to kill myself. I had gone to the library in Prospekt Street and in their small English section found a book on suicide. I knew I could go to my friend Aaron’s house in Zagarianin and drink a bottle of his homemade vodka along with huge quantities of ibuprofen, sleep myself into a coma, and pass away with no stress.

  I had not seen a graveyard in Russia but I knew I had to do a zromelelele—to invoke the spirits of my ancestors and at the same time pay tribute to God for looking after me this far. That evening after saying goodbye to Jerome, who did not ask where I was going, I stopped at the small shop not far from the house and bought a large bottle of vodka. I had to consult with the gods; I had to seek their wisdom. I collected a few bird feathers and tied them with a rubber band (traditionally we use leaves and tree bark) and got on the bus at the main road. I stayed on the bus until we got just outside Mytishchi market and I went to Tania’s house, but the neighbours told me they were still on holidays. I crossed the main road, climbed the steps, crossed over Mytishchi Bridge and
sat down on the bench and waited for darkness to come.

  I removed the bird feathers from my pocket and started walking towards the bridge. The train came and cleared the platform of passengers. This was my cue to start my divinations and incantations. I removed the vodka from my pocket and held the feathers in front of my face and spat on them three times. I then waved them around my head, I touched every joint of my body with the feathers, I called out the name of my father, my paternal grandmother, I called out late Aunty Bae—all the good spirits whose names I could remember. I spat on the feathers again, this time I placed a curse on them, I asked for every evil spirit that had inhabited me to be passed onto the feathers. Once I had finished, I turned my back to the tracks and threw the feathers over my head. I never turned around to look as the cold wind blew the feathers away.

  I now entered phase two of the divinations and incantations; I opened the bottle of vodka and with a gentle and subtle voice started chanting an old melodic ritual, a ritual that has been passed down from generations long gone. I called out loud the name of God who resides above all things and asked for peace unto those who no longer reside among us.

  Here I was in Russia standing on a train platform and performing a traditional ritual that was handed down to my people over hundreds of years. I was calling my ancestors, I was walking in their footsteps, I was inviting the gods to come and be merry with me in Russia. As I recited, I poured out the bottle of vodka, drop by drop and sometimes in enormous quantities. To balance the equation one must sip straight from the bottle; this pleases the ancestors. By the time the last of the vodka touched the ground I was drunk. The benevolent spirits of my ancestors and the gods themselves had congregated here under a bridge in Mytishchi, a small district to the northeast of Moscow, on the Yauza River. That evening they had drunk with me and they were merry. They had danced with me, they had accepted my sacrifice, they had cleansed my path. In my heightened state of trance and hallucination, I saw a cluster of bats coming my direction that had human heads. I smiled, the gods were now with me; they were effectively acting on my behalf. I was at peace with myself, reassured. I knew they would not fail me.