I am on a journey – to integrate myself.

It includes a journey of grieving.

Now I am grieving for my memories.

Where do you get your memories from? Mine are from what’s left in my head, and photographs. My Nigerian diaries, such as they were, fell victim to luggage limitations. As did many other tactile things we could have brought away. What survived were clothes, documents, music, and some books. I guess it was quite a lot, really. And my mum did manage to fit some expensive kitchen equipment in. You know, the sort of things one buys on never-to-be-repeated journeys to Europe, and will not be able to source ‘back home’.

Today I have with me but a handful of things that are from my African childhood. Whatever was I brought away from Nigeria has, by necessity, been whittled away in successive moves.

It’s the life of an expat – or a refugee. The constant juggling of luggage priorities. Money over weight. Weight over money. Money generally wins.

A life of repetitive moving requires that one empty oneself of memories to make room for the huge learning curve around the corner.

Fortunately my father was a keen photographer. My memories would be in worse shape if it wasn’t for the hundreds of photographs that have followed our wanderings.

But I still regret the loss of those diaries.

Oh, and Whiskers. The cat with the gammy leg. Called Lucky at first because I didn’t know of any other name that a cat could be called. Lucky-Whiskers.

I think I started censoring what I wrote in my diaries when I caught my mother sneaking a peek. Poor mum, she was doing it with the best intentions. I was being bullied at school, and wasn’t forthcoming with the details – but my diary had them all. My mum made the bullying stop somehow.

I was quite insensitive to Lucky-Whiskers. He was canny and knew when meat came home from the butcher. My mum would start sharpening her knife, and Whiskers would go ballistic at the thought of meat trimmings for him. I would tease him horribly, running with those trimmings from one door of the house to the other, calling him. And from outside Whiskers would also run from one door to the other, miaowing loudly, demanding that treat. I’d stop when the guilts hit. And give him the meat.

Poor Whiskers. I don’t think I knew how to love pets. He was an outside cat. I can’t recall if we ever, in spite of my family’s fear of germs, got to the point of cuddling. I do remember him curling around my legs purring, so perhaps we did.

That memory impinges on my sense of who I am.

The only writing of mine that has survived the Nigerian years is a highly-plagiarized, full-length children’s book I wrote about five kids, a dog, and their adventures. As were many kids of my age, I was an Enid Blyton fan. I wrote the book as a birthday present for my sister. She has it now, still preserved, bless her! It’s all hand-written, with strips of sticky-tape covering the jacket in an attempt to mimic those shiny laminates that real books were covered with.

Lucky-Whiskers could never have come with us. It was a wonder that we ever had him in the first place. My parents’ maxim was that we couldn’t have pets when we were in Nigeria because, when we left, our pets would have to stay behind. But eventually, kindhearted souls, they succumbed. I can’t recall how Lucky-Whiskers came to be with us. Perhaps a kitten from a neighbour’s cat. He was white with grey patches.

Regarding those diaries. There was stuff in them that would probably make a decent conservative Sri Lankan mother’s hair curl. I convinced myself that some memories in them, like the bullying, were best forgotten. I was after a fresh start.

It’s only now I realize what’s lost.

I did ask if we could take Lucky-Whiskers home. But transporting him would have been well-nigh impossible, requiring huge resources that a poor expat family didn’t possess. Lucky-Whiskers was taken over by a neighbour.

I can’t recall saying goodbye. But I know I did.

This had to happen. I was going home to begin the life that had been interrupted by our Nigerian sojourn. I can’t recall if I cried or not. Perhaps I hadn’t learned to care. Or perhaps, even then, I’d learned some of the uselessness of caring.

I’m glad Lucky-Whiskers was a cat. They look at you with those remote eyes, and you know they’re going to be okay.

There is a single sun-kissed memory I have of the Nigerian goodbye. It happened after we left the school compound where we’d lived for eight-ish years, and drove beside it on the highway. I said to myself, ‘I’ll never see this place again’. I looked long across the sports fields at the school buildings where my classmates were hidden away, preparing for exams.

And told myself I was being melodramatic.

I feel sorry for my parents. We, and the other expats with us, had minimum knowledge of the intricacies of the TCK dance, and very little support in it. I think we acted authentically and to the best that we could out of that limited knowledge.

If only I’d understood then that the Nigerian time was not a mere interruption in life.

If only…

If only I’d kept my diaries.

Memories, you say? Well, I have plenty. But they are mixed up and out of focus.

Besides, they aren’t all for public viewing. Like the one of the verandah bordered by leafy trees where the teachers used to gossip. This was the scene of a childhood misdemeanor, and one of the few times my father punished me in public. Nothing traumatic, you understand, but quite embarrassing. I, of course, still hold to the view that I didn’t deserve it!

Memories are necessary. I have learned from mine. There’s the memory of the man who found I was home alone when my school broke up earlier than my parents’. He came twice and I gave him a cool drink each time. I told my parents about him, and they told me not to let him in. So I crouched and flattened myself under a window when he next came knocking, and prayed my limbs wouldn’t show if he peeked in. He went away and never came again when I was by myself. Did he see me hiding, and realise the game was up?

Ah, memories…

Perhaps we could begin with paper boats. Now there’s a memory that won’t jerk a tear or cause a litigation. It all began with an expatriate teacher who knew the art of origami. She gave me an instruction book with a little pack of papers. I wish I still had it. It showed one how to make a purse, a boat, a box, and several other things that I now can’t recall – all wonderful. My mother suggested that I not waste the precious coloured papers supplied, but use ordinary writing paper from my desk. You must understand that my favourite past-times were already to draw, write… and imagine.

The origami boat was the open kind, like a rowing boat. It was fun to make, but I preferred the paper sailing-ship that my mother taught me to fold, a child’s trick, the kind that could also be modified into a hat. I used to make both types of boats. When the rains came, fitfully but finally in the dry sub-Saharan climate, it caused the sandy lane in front of our house to run with hundreds of tiny streams. When the rainbow appeared, signalling the end of a down-pour, I would run outside and sail my boats.

I had read Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Paper Boats‘, and it fired my imagination. He was from India, which was close enough to home for me. The poem appeared in a book of literature from around the globe, suitable for children. It was meant to be used for an English syllabus somewhere – but for me, it was a book of stories to find pleasure in. In the poem, Tagore captures dreams, especially the kind that a wannabe writer has, in his evocative description of paper boats, filled with flowers, floating far away.

My boats never went far, which disappointed me. If they were sound enough to float, there was the inevitable sand-bank, or if they encountered no obstacle, they would themselves soak up the tiny medium that carried them, and sink. But perhaps Tagore had a real stream filled with currents to float his imaginations in.

I recently encountered paper boats again. Adelaide’s River Torrens is home to a visual arts display called ‘Talking Our Way Home’ by Shaun Kirby. Several glass forms have been erected along the river, representing paper boats made of letters written by South Australian migrants.

The sense of using paper – so fragile and yet versatile – to send a part of oneself floating along somewhere, anywhere, seeking something, perhaps never to land – well, something of that resonates with me. Memories and imagination, floating together somewhere forever.

Note: The ‘paper boat’ in this website’s header is from ‘Talking Our Way Home’ above.

How reliable are memories?

Africa
empty sky
dun earth
plain dwellings
few chairs
broken cars
hot sun
dusty cities
picked pockets

Africa
timeless space
rolling plains
shining faces
cheerful voices
jewel clothes
open arms
fragrant stew
fading memories

© 2008 S D Haydon

Acknowledgment is made of the assistance received as an Adelaide Centre for the Arts TAFE SA student in developing this poem.