Today’s update from the diary my seven year old self wrote during
the 1977 Festival of Black arts and culture in Lagos, Nigeria.
Tuesday 18th January 1977
We had a visitor today called Mrs Power and the electricity went off for six hours. We went to the National Stadium to see dancing from Ghana. I liked it very much. There was an English lady she danced good. When a man danced on the stage his trousers came down. On the way home we nearly hit the Head of States car.
This is probably one of my favourite entries from the diary.
I love the fact that I report everything so matter of factly and events of several different magnitudes are treated equally.... whilst I am sure a man losing his trousers on stage would have been highly amusing, colliding with the presidents car would have been anything but! It also shows one of the ever present realities of our life in Nigeria, frequent power cuts. Fetching the candles and eating strange meals from whatever was defrosting in the freezer were regular occurrences, as was keeping a supply of water on hand for when we lost the water supply as well. Given that my parents had never been further than Yugoslavia and my mother had only been abroad a handful of times I remain amazed and in awe by how well they coped in such an alien environment. No wonder the liquor cabinet was so well stocked!
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2 comments:
Apparently Mrs Power brought the power cut!
The diaries are fasscinating espcially trying to link the Jane I know to the 7yr old one!!!
I have a diary that we had to write when I was at primary school (actually, I think my mum has it). We had to write news every day - one bit of personal news and one thing that was going on in the world at the time. On my entry for 10th November 1989 I wrote that it was my birthday and I was 11, and for the world news I wrote about this cruise ship that had been hit by another ship and had a hole in it. My teacher wrote in my diary "The Berlin Wall was important today too"! Your matter of factness about the events of the day reminded me of this dairy and the way I was so blase about what I wrote!
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