First winter

Credit: Clem Onojeghuo

This piece was submitted by an anonymous author

I left Nigeria with my mum and three siblings in 2008, three months after my 17th birthday. We were going to join my dad who lived in London. I was excited because I would no longer see my dad only when he came to visit us in Nigeria or speak to him only when he called on the landline. We’d actually live under the same roof.

My dad had warned us of the icy cold British weather because we were arriving in winter, but I wasn’t really concerned as it was harmattan season in Nigeria. Besides, I’d always liked what I thought was cold weather. Harmattan was my best season: the weather was chilly and dry; there were no rains, and when you washed clothes, it dried in minutes.

Dad came to pick us up at Heathrow Airport. He came with two vans, one of them driven by my uncle. The two vans were just about enough to fit the five of us and our fourteen suitcases. Dad offered us jackets whilst we were still within the warm enclosures of the airport and I remember thinking: “we are not going to need this”.

We wheeled the fourteen suitcases outside. It was only when we stepped out of the airport that I felt, for the first time in my life, the much-talked-about British winter. It was very cold, to the point of discomfort. It even took me a while to register that the sudden feeling of discomfort was actually intense cold. A lot more intense than the harmattan I experienced in Nigeria. Even though everyone wore heavy jackets, you could see that they were uncomfortably cold—hands in pockets, slightly hunched, rapid movements. I covered myself in one of the jackets that dad had brought with him. Although it felt heavy, it made me feel better.

London was very much what I expected. The airport was nice and huge. On the drive home, the roads were so clear and smooth, no potholes like on Abuja and Lokoja roads. It did feel a bit strange looking outside the window at other vehicles and their white occupants. It was a sight I had to get used to. I had never seen a sea of white faces except in the movies. You expect it but it is different when you see it. It hits you very sharply that you are in a new place now.

The first thing I noticed when we got home and opened the door was that there was a staircase just opposite us. Houses in London are smaller than those in Abuja and built in a different style. So, while you might have a large house with a large gate and high fences in Abuja, it is not unusual to have a house with a door facing the street in London. My house was one of those that you just walked into from the street. When we got home from the airport, we did a quick tour of the house. There were four rooms and a lounge, a small kitchen, and one bathroom. My room was on the same floor as the lounge and the kitchen and also served as the guest room. So, I always had to give it up whenever a guest came from Nigeria.

I remember thinking at that time that this was a downgrade perhaps because we just arrived and I was not used to the sizes of UK homes. It was a smaller space compared to what we had in Nigeria. In Nigeria, we had three bathrooms and now we had just one.

The highlight of the evening, however, was the rice and stew that my dad had prepared for us. Till this day, we still talk about the stew prepared on 3rd November 2008. It was the bomb. There was clearly a lot of love and effort put into the making of that stew. The pepper, the salt, everything was perfect.  After dinner, my uncle and I watched Strictly Come Dancing on the television. I must have been so engrossed in it when he said: “look at her just watching like she wants to be on the show”. The joke was on him because I wanted to be on the show; I wanted to dance.

 I found the winter jackets very uncomfortable. In the first few weeks of my arrival, I removed my jackets at the earliest opportunities. In Nigeria, you don’t go out wearing an extra piece of heavy clothing on your outfit. When you do, it is more like a fashion statement: “let me throw this denim on because it looks good”.

I also did not wear boots a lot. I didn’t like them too. I generally wore trainers or flat shoes. This had its consequences. I’d go out and lose sensation in my feet. On getting home, I would stand on a hot water bottle or put my feet on a radiator. I learnt the hard way that this was not a good thing to do as I developed chilblains. 

On my first winter, I prayed for snow; the snow didn’t come. What we got was a splattering of ice which was disappointing. Looking back now, expecting snow was really optimistic but in my defence, I had seen pictures of my dad in snow. That Christmas, as we began our British lives, my parents bought a Christmas tree. It made up, somehow, for the snow which did not come.