Immigration As Trauma

Immigration, it seems, is the new trauma, the new misery-art, featuring….Nigeria (lately). In the last couple of weeks I’ve watched Farmed, a harrowing tale of a Nigerian boy’s journey from relatively good-naturedly racist foster home to Nigeria back to foster home and then into the arms of the local skin-heads first as a pet then as a not quite fully fledged member (as he finds out) and The Last Tree, a less-but-still harrowing tale of a Nigerian boy’s journey from non-racist foster home to Inner City London to Nigeria.

Farmed

The context of both films is the practice of Nigerian parents of sending their children to foster homes while they continue their education, save money and/or look for jobs which will bring in enough money to take care of their families. Farmed, based on actor Adewale Akinnuoye Agbaje’s experiences, takes place before parent-friendly education and work policies. In The Last Tree, I presume the mother just couldn’t afford to have a small child with her, regardless of any family friendly job opportunities which may have existed in the 1980s or 1990s when the film was set.

Actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

Immigration stories have always been popular. I’ve recently re-read CNA’s Americanah, a tale of two immigrants and their separate traumas.  In non-fiction or ‘real life’, we are not too far away from horror stories emanating from Theresa May’s hostile environment and Youtube clips of people telling us that they voted to leave the European Union to keep the Africans out.  Both of these are, in my view, the result of decades of demonisation and criminalisation of immigrants combined with under-investment in public services, including immigration control, and a reliance on scaring the public out of their wits of a UK brimming with immigrants singularly focused on stealing their jobs and stripping their public services to the bone.

Former Prime Minister May – the ‘hostile environment’ for immigrants was formulated when she was Home Secretary

But immigration is trauma. That may sound dramatic but in its own way it is, even when that trauma is not anybody’s fault. Regardless of your race and colour, if you can see your parents whenever you want (in theory; they might be avoiding you) and grew up with your grandparents only a drive away in a house they have lived in for forty years and maybe even got a glimpse of your great-grandparents or just missed them because you were born 3 days too late, you will never completely understand the hopeful trauma that is immigration.

Immigration, in the time period in which Farmed was set, was entrusting your children to strangers while working hard to get them out of there as soon as possible. Yes, white was right but having experienced racism yourself, perhaps you knew that plonking black children in a world that was conditioned to believe that black was inferior and proximity to the West was always an improvement, might not be altogether a wholesome experience.

Immigration is being wrenched from the world you’ve always known to stressed-out parents who treat you like we all sometimes treat our kids – 15% treasure, 85% nuisance.  It is relatives who expect you to suddenly understand their strange customs and parents who scream at you for embarrassing them by  not greeting elders like you are supposed to.  It is grandparents who are openly contemptuous  because you don’t know to jump at their every command and you flinch at traditional customs and foods.

Immigration is not seeing your parents for decades and being unable to visit them when they are ill or even attend their funeral because of financial or immigration-related constraints. Immigration means being fearful, even when you are a citizen or have permanent leave to remain or whatever, of a journey that starts at border control on the way to your country of origin. A fear which has been justified by stories of British citizens of Caribbean origin being conned out of their status documentation and then barred from re-entry in the UK as a matter of government policy.

Immigration is 19-year old me attending a meeting with a head teacher because my 14-year old brother was acting up and my parents were not in this country. It is me carrying the guilt of my brother’s eventual criminality, breakdown and mental health issues because I didn’t know how to be selfless enough to be a proper parent to him.

Immigration may have a hand in why Priti Patel can’t just be a fascist in peace, she has to also be a ‘ third generation immigrant’ (as someone on Twitter put it – although she said she was a ‘daughter of immigrants’. Wouldn’t that make her a ‘second generation immigrant’ or, what’s the word for it again? Oh yes, British) It may be why British Asians have to loudly declare their love for Britain before being allowed to criticize anything about it. Or why Asian men still answer to names Bobby, Bob, Rob, Craig and Chuck, short for Aziz, Awra, Raja, Amar and Razik.

Immigration is me in 2017 trying to understand why my blind mother was being threatened with deportation by one department of the Home Office and  sent her 1978 permanent leave to remain documents by another. Immigration is me dealing with this saga for 2 years and still feeling ashamed when I had to talk about it, even to my husband and mother in law.

For immigration is indeed about shame. Through a set of historical events and political and racial manipulation, Britain has drawn immigrants from all over the world, including the Commonwealth being the countries formerly colonised by Britain. In some of these countries, a lot of people are living in circumstances which most people would find intolerable, from wars and conflicts (contributed to by Britain’s meddling in some cases) to situations of such bleak economic outlook that there is very little hope of any meaningful future for them and their children.

The United Kingdom has a right to control her borders of course. But British people emigrate for far less (I don’t want to measure the weather). People who immigrate to the United Kingdom are doing what anyone else would do in their position. Allow them entry, let them stay or not but there is really no need to make them feel ashamed. So ashamed that some of the victims of the Windrush scandal were almost more nervous about publicising their newly uncertain immigration status than the precarious situation they had been placed in. Immigration is a practical, governance issue not a moral one.

The irony is that a lot of immigrants are still being invited here to fill in skills gap from the NHS to various skilled workers and migrants schemes. Farming Today recently reported that the agricultural industry needs 70,000 migrant workers to pick fruit which is rotting by the tonne in bushes, fields and trees. The current farm workers migrant worker scheme only allows for a fraction of the required numbers. In carefully managed ignorance of this kind of thing, a large number of the British public voted for Brexit.

Immigration is being relieved you are no longer in the ‘old country’ but feeling strangely defensive about any criticism of it, which pales in comparison to your previous criticisms but somehow  seems hollow and dehumanising, lacking in context and complexity.

Immigration is the lack of logic in feeling ashamed of your accent and trying to change it as soon as possible. Your accent is a product of where you grew up. You grew up where you grew up. It is a fact and neither good nor bad. Even if you have no secrets about your life and a spanking new British passport and it is very obvious from your appearance that you are not the Queen’s cousin, eight times removed , you find yourself subconsciously hiding this part of yourself and your heritage from others.

Immigration is stumbling over the question ‘where are you from?’. If you never stumbled over that question, you do not know diluted joy of being an immigrant. Your mind races, in about three seconds, through a series of questions wondering what they are asking, what they really want to know and how you can reassure them, even you are not sure what you are supposed to be reassuring them of. You stumble through your well-rehearsed, but never well-delivered story, of how you were born in this country, went back to Nigeria because of whatever and came back whenever because of ‘instabilities’ until they kindly let you know that they were just asking what city you lived in.

Incidentally, I’m not sure what I think is going to happen if I don’t launch into a long explanation which ends in me firmly asserting my British citizenship. Do I think friends and acquaintances are going to ‘report me to immigration’? And so what if they do? I am a British citizen, aren’t I? The answer to that is that there is something negative about being from another country and living in the UK. You feel you have to explain why you are taking up their ___________

Immigration is coming to terms with all of the above only to relive the trauma when your children become of school age and you wonder whether it’s your kids that no one wants in their school because the more colour a school has the less likely it is to be ‘a good school apparently¹‘ (I’m talking about regional England now not the liberal London Islington elite daring to express an opinion to the daughter of immigrants or whatever nonsense Priti Patel was spouting).

Immigration can of course be much worse. I’ve watched friends unable to work, having no future back in Nigeria and unsure of how much time to invest in the hope that they will become legal citizens. It can be living stripped of status, stateless in a hostile environment. It can be a state of being forced into criminality simply because there is no other way to survive. It can mean existing as an abused person, a slave or a victim of trafficking at the ‘mercy’ of hardened criminals simply because there is no where to go and no one to report anything to.

Immigration can be good trauma. Something that benefits in the future or knocks some sense into your head like finally catching your flaky boyfriend snogging another girl. But seriously, immigration frequently is positive beyond the opportunities available to you in their new country of residence and despite the questions and the negatives, the acceptance and politeness, especially in the UK.

Immigration can mean opening up to new cultures and new ways of life and ridding yourself of classism and other prejudices which was your way of life. For example, before the internet and its unreliable wokeness, many Nigerians were die-hard homophobes who had never met anyone who would admit to being gay and who have shed that prejudice as a result of their new country. Many of them lived in gated communities where they were taught not to think of working class or poor Nigerians as full humans like themselves and have found themselves, reluctantly or otherwise, interacting with Nigerians and people from all walks of life.

As in ‘The Last Tree’, many Nigerians grew up thinking that beating and physically punishing a child was the hallmark of good parenting, one that set them apart from these lax white people and useless ‘West Indians’, who let their children run riot, instead of the parental abuse which we now know that it is. That strategy has come home to roost, like the fabled chickens, as the news reports now feature violent West African young men who were probably brought up in that way. Not only ‘JAH-my-cans’ then. I found Femi’s mother’s behaviour appalling in those scenes , but also familiar, both from my childhood and as a parent and I am distressed by this.

One last word about the films. Femi and especially Enitan embodied the kind of surly, young, seemingly impenetrable older black teenage boy or young man that some people would cross the road to avoid, if only they could figure out how to do it in a way in which the person they are trying to avoid doesn’t notice. Faces that seem angry, invariably darker skinned, expressionless, hooded eyes, hoods (if worn) up, their walk a concentrated, forward-leaning, focused gait, their fists partly clenched. People are scared to look at them for too long or to get in their way in any other manner. They fear that once those boys get angry with you, no amount of reasoning would stop them from carrying out whatever course of action they think is justified. Dehumanising and reductive for starters and I dread to think how many black boys just walking around, thinking about their Tesco shop, are subjected to this kind of stereotyping. In the case of the films, the person doing the stereotyping would have been partially right, particularly in the case of Enitan.

What saves both boys and turns them into smiling, relatable human beings again is their association with Nigeria. In the first film, Enitan’s parents, now barristers in Nigeria, stump up the cash to send him to a special school which turns him from semi-illiterate skin-head to the holder of a masters degree in law and in the second, Femi’s trip back to Nigeria completes his healing.

What happens to the black boys for whom there is no deus ex machina from the motherland? But I digress. The one thing these films do well is show that immigration is a trauma. A necessary, unavoidable trauma, and not all bad, but it is something that, in your own small way, if you are immigrant, you are continually recovering from.

This essay contains parts of an essay which I have partially written called “The Windrush Scandal and A Very Big Problem Called Immigration” which I will hopefully complete and post some day.

1You can in theory spend your time looking for a good school or area before realising it is you, your child and others like is what some people think make a school or area ‘bad’.

Opting Out, Pulling Out And Discussions About The Reluctant Dad

 

Even before the recent exposè by the mother of his first child, Shola Ogudu,  we all suspected that Wizkid had more than a touch of arseholery about his person. His vicious half of the long-standing riff with Davido¹, his use of sexually violent language in reaction to Linda Ikeji’s admittedly stupid and malicious reports about his living arrangements, his failure to show up for concerts without apology and the occasional slip in interviews demonstrated that his arseholery is very much informed by Nigerian-style sexism.

I think we ignored (for the most part) his little pop-ups of nastiness because of his talent, his unstoppable rise and his contributions to bringing ‘Naija to the World’. However the 10-page instagram post, which I have not read in its entirety, seems to reveal that he is or can be a cold, sneering, arrogant, narcissistic (Look at me now! I’m famous! I TOLD you the world – and you! – would bow at my feet one day. HA HA HA HA!’) man who uses his ex-girlfriend’s requests for financial upkeep and emotional support for his son to wield power over her, rarely sees his first son and is oblivious to the hurt it would cause the child to see him fawning over his other children in the circumstances.

Unfortunately, having listened to friends and family, read stories on social media and worked in the past as a court clerk for a family law practice, some of his behaviour is not uncommon. It is  probably many an embittered separated father’s fantasy to be able to tell a despised ex-partner  to sod off on a regular basis.  How many men, people, would love to do that with no apparent  consequences?

Some of it however, like his efforts to prove that his son (4 years old at the time) was not gay are so sociopathic and incredible that all I’ll say is this. If you are a Christian and you believe St Paul’s teaching about the fruits of the spirit and the extended version presented by some pastors, this would be a fruit of the kind of pathological homophobic ‘spirit’ which  exists in Nigeria. I doubt very much that it is any part of God’s plan.

The commentary to all the sensation and drama included the typical accusations of Shola trying to trap because he is or was rich (I believe he was a 19 year old struggling musician when she became pregnant but I could be wrong) or that she shouldn’t have had a child if she could not afford to care for the child without his help.

That last little gem was from feminists and sexists alike and ignored the fact that (1) he has an obligation to pay for the upkeep of his child  (2) it is very difficult, even in countries with free education and health care, to raise a child on a single income.  In fact this particular woman has done very well for herself considering her age and qualifications. (3) if married women’s incomes drop when they have children, what do we think happens to single mothers who don’t have Dad to hand the child(ren) to now and again?

I could go on but suffice it to say that a lot of the criticism strays from a sensible caution to women that, in reality, they are likely to bear the brunt of unplanned pregnancies in Nigeria to presupposing that Shola alone is to blame for the pregnancy and is predominantly responsible for the child.  Wizkid, it seems, should permitted to opt or dip in and out as his career demands.  Despite  being left with the care of the child and therefore less time to make any money, she has been labelled by some a gold-digging, manipulating, layabout  who expects Wizkid to pay for her existence.

Other people (the sensible ones) agree that Wizkid is really not trying but moving from the specific to the general, even with the best intentions, it is difficult bringing up a child with someone you are not with, who you may not like, may have had an acrimonious split with and whose motives you do not trust. Heck, what with parents being two completely separate human beings, it is sometimes difficult to co-parent a child when you are married to the person you love (I’ve lost track of whether the right phrase is ‘co-parent’ when the couple is together or whether it is reserved for separated parents?).

In an ideal world, separated partners would just get on with it without any hard feelings or  difficulties in communication. Both parents would have no interest in or feelings for the other which are unconnected to the welfare of child. Some of the debate I have seen does not acknowledge that this sometimes does not happen. I have mad theories!

Firstly there is the issue of feelings. I am not sure when they ended their relationship but their texts to each other seem very emotional, especially the ones from her. It is not clear whether she just wants a more cordial relationship where he doesn’t bark-text orders at her, she feels that pleading with him and trying to appeal to his conscience will make him actually perform his duties and would make her son feel less abandoned or she wants something more. I would be very surprised if it is the third, especially with his other children, and the fact with each new partner, he moves further and further away from his local dating pool. However one cannot underestimate the social, religious and cultural factors that would encourage her to keep trying to revive a relationship with her child’s father.

Wizkid, on the other hand,  claims to be emotionless but seems to be very resentful of her presence, upset with her, even and punishing her for something. You get the feeling that he wants her to just disappear but is simultaneously deriving some kind of perverse pleasure from her distress.

I can’t deny that a part of me wants Shola (it feels presumptuous to call her by her first name but I’m not going ‘Ms. Ogudu’ my way through this piece like some kind of court reporter for the Vanguard Newspaper) to abandon all attempts at friendliness or even cordiality and be more business-like but I can’t say what effect that would have on Wizkid, her or her child.

This is I suspect not unusual. Even with all intentions of being unemotional, you are likely to be affected by someone you have had a close relationship with. You will be hurt when they are being deliberately hurtful and you may even misinterpret them when they are not. You cannot take a pill and make yourself feel nothing.

On the actual co-parenting, even couples that live together have different views on how to raise a child. However, they at least have the opportunity to discuss and dissect each other’s views. They have enough access to each other to understand where the other person is coming from, if they choose to make the effort. When they are not living together it may be more  difficult to understand why the other person is taking the stance that they are. With the potential for argument,  they may not have the time or inclination to sit down with the ex and dissect their views.

Their priorities are different, as well.  If you are living at home with the child, the home, bills, education, clothes etc are staring you in the face; forcing you to take notice. You notice when the heating goes off or the air conditioner is on the blink or when junior is running around in too-short trousers. Things like that are a bit more remote, I would imagine, when you live away from home.

Take the example of a (fictional, more amiable) pop star and his ex-girlfriend and child. He may think it is better to invest money in a business opportunity on the basis that it may pay off later making everyone better off. She is aware of domestic needs that have to be taken care of now. He has to take her word for it. He may be distrustful or just not trust her judgment. They never have the chance to have an in-depth conversation about it. It’s difficult. One party often ends up feeling short-changed even though both parties feel they are doing their best. You also have factor in that the non-resident parent may have another home, partner and even children to be concerned with.

Another example is hearing through the airwaves that pop star dad has earned so and so for a concert or other deal.  He may know how much that deal is worth in real terms and how much he gets to take home and how much he has to pay out. All she may know is what everybody knows and what his management wants the world to know in an effort to increase his hype and therefore his value.  I’ll just add that like every other sensible person out there I believe that his child support payments should be commensurate to the paying parent’s wealth; conversely, the courts and I agree that if the paying parent is a low earner, they shouldn’t be driven to destitution by the requirement of an arbitrary level of support.  What I have seen is men who are so indignant that any money paid will pass through the child’s mother’s hands and may be used on some things that indirectly benefit the child like energy bills, rather than things that the child uses directly, that they refuse to work.  It’s a sad, angry world out there.

Then there is the thorny issue of the man who thinks that the woman should have had an abortion and is resentful that she did not. Abortion is not an easy topic for me but I think practically and in terms of the balance of harms, the woman should choose. I also recoil at the idea that a man or even society can demand that women have abortions for any reason. Firstly, having an abortion is an issue fraught with emotional, physical and practical difficulties and secondly, just no!

Forcing a woman to abort  is at least as subjugating as forcing her to carry a pregnancy through. It may not be technically fair but she should choose in this imperfect scenario. And a man ought not to be able to opt out of caring or providing for the child just because he doesn’t agree with her choice because they are both responsible for creating the baby. It’s not as if she gets off scot-free. She is likely to be left with a lion’s share of the care as well actually birthing and nursing the child.

However, I do acknowledge the ill-feeling that a man can have, when this decision is taken out of his control. Yes he should have been more careful with the protection.  They both should have been but the argument that if Wizkid did not want a child with the incumbent permanent relationship with the mother, acceding to her every request in exactly the way she wants him to, he should not have had sex is dangerously close to the one that says Shola should not have had sex or had a child if she was not prepared to be abandoned by him (and a little postscript note, from my memories of sex-ed, ‘pulling out’ is not the contraceptive miracle that some people on social media seem to think it is).

It’s a difficult situation. I myself am in a position where I am financially responsible for someone who I feel made a series of avoidable and unwise decisions that caused the current situation (and I’ve failed to help out with a sibling’s child but that’s another story). I do not think that this is comparable to Wizkid’sand Shola’s situation by any stretch of the imagination. The only similarity is that at some point you have to pull yourself together, do what you can and stop being an arse. I think I spent far too much time being resentful and grumpy about my situation. The other difference is that a child is involved – the only party who is truly devoid of responsibility for the situation – and a reality which cannot be wished away, no matter how badly a parent acts, and which should be the priority.

So, in conclusion, I’m annoying. Just kidding. In conclusion, it is difficult to take care of a child, whether or not you are in a loving relationship with the other parent.  The fact that I can never escape or even take a break from parenthood occasionally fills me with panic.

It is probably more difficult to co-parent when the romantic relationship with the other person has broken down.   I acknowledge that past experiences, hurt and feelings cannot be instantly erased. However, the right thing to do is decide to focus on the well-being of the child. I say this but I can’t imagine how difficult it is for someone to decide to do the right only for the other party to continue acting like a Wizk…I mean, a dolt. Even if that is achieved, it may still be difficult and fraught with miscommunications, differing priorities and hopefully moments of joy and love and definitely memories that cannot be replaced. That’s all really except that Wizkid may still be an arse at time of publication but can choose to have some class and dignity and rise up to the occasion.

1During the said beef, Davido was heard saying things like ‘I heard he doesn’t like me. I don’t know what I ever did to him. I just try to be nice to everyone and concentrate on my music. Well if he doesn’t like me, I don’t like him either. I don’t need him to like me…’ to which Wizkid responded “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Frog Face!’ apparently striking at the heart of Davido’s insecurities.