I, Eric Ngalle

by Ngalle, Eric;

  ‘So, where’s your destination?’ she asked.

  I answered ‘Bulawayo’ and she looked at her friends and said. ‘We don’t like Mugabe do we girls?’ She carried on talking about their time in Germany and how they were going hunting in South Africa.

  I started to feel apprehensive about going to South Africa. After all, it had only been nine years since apartheid had collapsed and the way she was calling me boy, she looked as if she was in deep reminiscence of the good old days. I had read about South Africa and had developed an unconscious bias or maybe a small hatred for white South Africans. She wouldn’t stop talking and said how she had a couple of good-looking boys like me, whom she employed. I thought maybe these were part of the one per cent of whites who owned ninety-nine per cent of South Africa’s wealth. She said her name was Brunilda. I pretended I was dozing off. I yawned and stretched—she got the hint and stopped talking.

  Chapter 19

  The whole village was brought to a standstill one morning when loud cries rang from every household—the day Rudi’s mother died. Aunty Kwashi was the politest, the friendliest and the warmest woman. She would never pass without greeting you, she had the biggest smile and was amongst the very few in the village who called me OC after my father Oscar. The whole village cried and we held vigils and sang melodies and eulogies to Aunty Kwashi. After this, Rudi and I became very close. I used to borrow his shirts and cravats. I spent most of my free time with Rudi and we would go for long walks and enjoyed reading books. Every time we met, we would deconstruct books and dream of lands far away.

  *

  I remembered my last conversation with Rudi; he told me about his relatives who had come to Great Britain. Rudi dreamt of crossing Heathrow International Airport. He dreamt of leaving Cameroon behind and said he would remove his shoes at Heathrow and shake out the dust of Cameroon. I remember us talking about the kings and queens of Great Britain, those ordained by God. I remember the famous lines by Old John of Gaunt, ‘This royal throne of kings, this scepter’d isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden and demi-paradise.’

  I was sat at the departure lounge of Heathrow airport waiting for my flight to Jo Burg and then another flight to Harare in Zimbabwe, where I ran the risk of being arrested and locked up for impersonating Mr Ocimile. I remembered when I was negotiating the purchase of that passport from Vincent he had told me the number of countries this passport could be used for entry to without a visa, and one of them was Great Britain. I sat there and started thinking—maybe I should try and see if I could enter Great Britain as a Zimbabwean. What was the worst thing that could happen? I would be refused entry, I would then go back to the departure lounge and wait for my flight to Johannesburg. One thing was certain—they were not going to return me to Russia.

  As I pondered, as my mind played with indecisiveness, an official came to tell us our flight had been delayed and as he was about to leave, I asked him if it was possible for me to see an immigration officer? Now I did not know about becoming an asylum seeker, let alone a refugee. Asylum seekers and refugees for me were Namibians and South Africans that had fled to Cameroon during the height of apartheid. My mother had hosted around five Namibians, and their stories were harrowing. The official said no problem and took me downstairs to the arrivals desk where I was introduced to Mr Marlow, an immigration officer.

  ‘How can I help you?’ Mr Marlowe asked me. In my thick Cameroonian accent I said, ‘I want to come to the UK for a visit.’

  I handed over my passport to him. Mr Marlowe looked at the passport, then he looked at me, he looked at the passport again then he looked back at me. He then placed the passport under a machine that moved back and forth whilst at the same time flashing a ray of blue light. Mr Marlowe did this repeatedly, then he disappeared into a room and after around ten minutes I could see something like five pairs of eyes looking directly at me through the glass. I was panicking—thinking they must have discovered I was not the person in that passport and summoned the international police to come and arrest me.

  ‘So where have you travelled from?’ Mr Marlowe asked.

  ‘I just came from Russia,’ I said.

  ‘What is your destination?’

  ‘Harare,’ I said.

  ‘So why do you want to stop over in the United Kingdom? Have you got any friends in the United Kingdom?’

  ‘Yes.’ I said.

  ‘Where are your friends?’ Mr Marlowe asked.

  I remembered the Corpthorne Hotel that I saw when the aeroplane was touching down, so I just blurted out, ‘Yes. My friends are in Corpthorne Hotel.’

  Mr Marlowe then requested my suitcase, which he searched thoroughly, before disappearing again with my passport into the small room. Just a few yards away from me I could see families greeting their family members who had arrived from some corner of the earth. I was at Heathrow airport trying to make a daring entry into the United Kingdom. I had been successful in leaving Russia with a Zimbabwean passport, but there was no way I was going to pull this off, not with the sophistication of the United Kingdom’s technology.

  Mr Marlowe returned with more questions.

  ‘Where in Zimbabwe are you from then, Mr Ocimile?’

  ‘Bulawayo,’ I replied.

  We were there for ages before, eventually, Mr Marlowe asked if I had any money. I reached into my man bag and pulled out eight hundred dollars and a few hundred roubles.

  Then Mr Marlowe said, ‘Mr Ocimile, could you please sign your signature on this piece of paper?’

  I had anticipated this question and had memorised the signature just in case I had such difficulties in Johannesburg or in Harare. Mr Marlowe handed me a pen and I scribbled a replica of the signature that was in my Zimbabwean passport, authenticating me as Mr Ocimile Marjola Thambvani.

  Mr Marlowe then stamped my passport with a six months’ entry visa and said. ‘Mr Ocimile, welcome into the UK. Just remember, you are not allowed to work.’

  He then handed me my passport and showed me through to the arrival lounge. At first, I walked slowly, and then my heart started pounding again. I had gone through two of the most powerful airports on earth; I had gone through immigration authorities in two nuclear powerhouses. I remembered when I threw a stone in the direction of the monitor lizard. Today it wasn’t shaking its head and laughing at me mockingly. Instead, I had the last laugh.

  I went to the money exchange at the airport and exchanged two hundred dollars and I was sure that lady scammed me, for she handed me over something like one hundred pounds. I asked her for some coins, as I wanted to use the telephone.

  Sister Ndinge was excited to hear my voice. She was my mirror; when she died my life was plunged into another extreme.

  I was starving but I had developed a linguistic inferiority complex. I walked towards a café and there were cakes, croissants and sandwiches (I had not heard the word sandwich before) and I waited for the people in front of me to place their orders but I had difficulties understanding their accents. When it was my turn to order, the only words that came out of my mouth were, ‘Can I have a coffee?’

  The girl retorted with, ‘Would you like black or white coffee?’

  I looked at her thinking such questions were only asked in South Africa. My god it was boiling hot and there was no sugar in it. I didn’t know that once you had bought the coffee, there was another section on the corner for sugar and other condiments. I was a proper, what we call in my village, Johnny Just Come. I was a jungle man in Heathrow.

  The coffee tasted horrible. As I walked back towards the main entrance, that was when I saw it, a National Express bus. And not just any National Express Bus—this one had a sign that said Swansea via Cardiff.

  Let me explain to you the significance of this Swansea via Cardiff sign. I was attracted to the imagery of the name Swansea but that was not the name that captured my interest and my imagination. You see in 1990, when the whole of Cameroon and my village still suffered from the PTSD of losing again
st England at the quarter finals of the 1990 World Cup, Mola Francis had just returned to the village from studying abroad.

  I remembered us playing football at the Ajax Maija ma’ Ngowa’s stadium and during the short intervals we would sit around Mola Francis as he told us about his escapades abroad. He studied mathematics at Cardiff University, (Mola Francis is actually now a mathematics teacher at Fitzalan High School in Cardiff) and the things he kept talking about were the beautiful skies of Cardiff and the daffodils of Swansea; he spoke about how great Cardiff University was for academics and research. He spoke at length about how graceful and accommodating the people of Wales were; we dreamed of walking in his shoes. Mola Francis is a brainbox from St Joseph’s College Sasse, and he had won a government scholarship that saw him studying in and eventually settling in Wales. Listening to him talking about Wales meant we created all kinds of utopias in our heads—there was no way there could be a place, a country, a people with such perfection.

  Mola Francis showed us leaflets about studying and living in Wales, he showed us leaflets about the Brecon Beacons, how the landscape of Wales was very similar to that of Buea—there were hills and mountains. He showed us leaflets on different educational institutions of Wales but the fees were so exorbitant that the whole of my family would have had to work for fifty years just to pay for one year of studies.

  Now here I was standing outside Heathrow airport, looking at a bus that had a sign saying Swansea via Cardiff. I looked around me and saw a small group of people smoking cigarettes, there were no police officers with dogs or Kalashnikovs, there were no red-eyed black men and women waiting for their prey, there were no barons, no false promises of a transit. I had arrived in a perfect land, a place where the laws of human existence are upheld. On top of the mountain I could see a pot of gold, all I had to do was to purge myself of the memory of my homeland, to lobotomise the memory of Moscow, to ensure cockroaches no longer played with my hair. I had arrived and yet I felt I was departing.

  I walked towards the bus; the driver was in the driver’s seat, half asleep. I knocked on the door. The driver stirred slowly, he adjusted his glasses, his belly resting comfortably on the steering wheel. He had been eating what I later discovered to be KFC and he folded the brown bag and placed it in a bin bag on the side of his left knee. He sipped from a Diet Coke can and patted himself down. He then bent forward and fumbled with something and the door opened slowly.

  ‘Are you travelling to Cardiff?’ I asked.

  He looked at me as if I had just asked a taboo question.

  ‘Yes mate,’ he said, repeating what the sign on the bus said, ‘I am going to Swansea via Cardiff.’

  Without noticing his sarcasm I continued, ‘Can I have ticket to Cardiff?’ I didn’t know I was expected to say please or thank you.

  ‘Would you like a one-way ticket or a return?’ he asked.

  What’s with all the questions? I thought to myself, not knowing it was standard procedure.

  ‘Can I have a single ticket to Cardiff?’

  The driver then said, ‘Please. That will be twenty-two pounds and I only accept cash.’

  I counted out the money and handed it to the driver; he then issued me a ticket and said,

  ‘Welcome aboard.’

  There was nothing to be seen as we left London, except well-lit streets and darkness. I fell into a deep slumber.

  *

  I saw beautiful and ripe apple trees, I flew past the banana plantation of Molyko in Buea, I saw my sisters rejoicing, they were dancing the Maboka dance, I saw the Small Soppo Development Association Choir singing songs for my homecoming. I saw Fay, a poet, such beauty she adorns, her thick African hair, I saw her smile, the memory of her that ‘suffices me less and less daily.’ And in my flight, I saw my mother. She was doing the zromelelele incantations, thanking our ancestors.

  *

  We arrived in Cardiff at around seven-thirty in the morning and I saw morning revellers making their way home, and bin men with their machines ensuring the streets were clean. The devils had roamed at night and now it was dawn, humans were coming out.

  We stopped inside stand D2 in Cardiff Central Bus Station; I knew we were in Cardiff as there was an announcement.

  ‘We will soon be arriving in Cardiff, please make sure you have all your belongings with you, and please put all your rubbish in the bin bag at the front of the bus.’

  ‘How lovely,’ I thought. I was in a place with order and decorum, with a way of doing things. Maybe Mola Francis was right about the picture he had painted in our youthful minds.

  I was hungry and wanted to eat the same KFC I saw the driver disposing of in his bin bag, but I could not bring myself to ask him about it. I don’t think he liked me very much, as he thought I lacked the etiquette and mannerism necessary for the environment in which I now found myself. I looked around and I could see a small kiosk at the other side of the bus station. When I got there, I bought a packet of crisps, some Twix chocolate and a bottle of Fanta. I ate and waited, still not knowing what to do or where to go.

  Around nine o’clock, I noticed the buses started coming frequently into the station; that was when I saw my first black man—one of my people. I approached him and with my thick Cameroonian accent, I said, ‘Excuse me, do you know a Cameroonian here called Francis?’

  This guy looked at me like I had been smoking some sort of class-A drug. He spoke so fast the only thing I heard was the word Bristol. The guy then walked away and looked back at me shaking his head. I stood in front of the bus station munching on my crisps and sipping my Fanta. I saw another bus that had the word Barry Island written on it. Again I spotted a clean-shaven black guy and again I thought, My people.

  ‘Do you know a Cameroonian called Francis?’ I said.

  This guy paced himself and looked at me before he started speaking in French. He said he was from Rwanda and that during the genocide between the Hutus and the Tutsis, in 1994, the Cameroonian Government had an open border policy to Rwandan refugees. He said although his mother was a casualty of the genocide, half of his family had settled in the southern part of Cameroon.

  His name was Emmanuel Habimana and he took me to his house in Hunters Street in Barry Island. Three days later he took me to the immigration offices in Llanishen where I handed my passport to the officials telling them that I was a Cameroonian and not a Zimbabwean. The immigration officer was shocked when he looked at the passport and then looked back at me before saying, ‘So tell me, Mr Eric Ngalle Charles, how the heck did you get past Heathrow airport?’

  I arrived in Cardiff five months shy of my twenty-first birthday.

  If you got this far reading this book, you have been reading of very dark times in my life, two years and two months spent in Russia, something that has been a burden for most of the time that I have been living in Wales and the UK. It has taken me the best part of nineteen years to be able to write down this very dark memory. I am still purging myself of it. I have had to organise myself in such a way that I know what can trigger what. I avoid these triggers. This story had to be told, especially with the situation in Cameroon right now, people are still falling victim of human trafficking on a grand scale. This book is a warning, many Cameroonians died in Russia, who knows how many are dying in Libya chasing that dream of going to the ‘white man’s land, the land of milk and honey’.

  Afterword

  As I sit on the fifth floor of Cardiff Central Library writing these memoirs, it is now 2017, eighteen years since arriving here in Wales. I received an email notification from the Arts Council of Wales “Dear Mr Charles, you have been awarded a Creative Wales Award… for your research into migration, memory and trauma.” I shouted so loud, the security guard thinking something bad was happening rushed towards me before reminding me that shouting was not allowed. I walked towards the desk at the back and told my friend David who was on duty on that day. As I walked home, crossing the bridge towards Riverside and Grangetown, I thought of that day when I wal
ked into my mother’s kitchen, how she had been crying just before she handed me that letter summoning me to attend the courts in Buea as my dead father’s will was being challenged by his family.

  As I sit back and write, I remember those whom I have hurt along the way and for that, I am truly sorry. Today, here in Wales, I am celebrated as a writer, poet, playwright and actor but never at any time did I think I would live here, in the UK. I had my own plans, and the Gods… they had their own plans too.

  I have been back to Cameroon three times. In 2018 I went back with Ifor ap Glyn, the National Poet of Wales and Mr Mike Jenkins, the Merthyr based poet and writer, with the help of Wales Arts International and together we have built a bridge between Wales and Cameroon, two countries I have grown to love for different reasons, one the country where half of my umbilical cord is buried and the other a country that gave me back my name, my voice, my identity and more importantly a platform.

  For my mother and my siblings, this is the truth as to what happened in Russia; for my father’s family, I loved you, and always will.