Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
The road less travelled
It could be said Kate Turkington has seen and done it all. From the war-torn East End of London to raising a family in a remote part of Eastern Nigeria, then building a career as one of SA’s most loved broadcasters. This is an extract from Turkington’s bo
FOUR months later and four months’ pregnant, I was back in Eastern Nigeria living in a wooden house on stilts in a tiny village called Itu that wasn’t even on the map. The only other expatriates were the district officer, Charles, and the missionaries and doctor at the Itu leper colony alongside our house. The Cross River, which was filled with crocodiles and sometimes a floating dead body or two, swirled and meandered by our house. Once there was great excitement when a bad-tempered hippo ran down one of the villagers and bit him almost in half.
The chief and his raggedy entourage ventured forth with an ancient shotgun and killed the animal. When it was towed onto the river bank it was found to have a large abscess on one of its huge yellow teeth. No wonder it had been badtempered. I’ve written at some length about that amazing period of my life in Itu in Doing It with Doris.
What I’ll tell you here, though, is that I gave birth five months later to a beautiful 4kg baby boy at St Luke’s, a remote Medical Missionaries of Mary hospital in Anua, Oyo, about two hours’ drive away from
Itu along rutted roads lined by giant cottonwood trees. When we got back to
Itu, Simon was 10 days old and I used to weigh him on the leper colony scales using pennies as weights.
In those far-off days – Simon was born in 1958 – the Medical Missionaries of Mary had just a handful of qualified doctors and nurses. Today they number some 400 women from 20 countries, who serve in 14 different countries around the world.
When I googled Oyo today, I discovered there’s a hotel and golf resort and an entertainment centre there. It’s almost impossible for me to imagine that the tiny dusty village where those tireless Irish nuns worked and where the legendary Sister-Doctor Nolan delivered Simon could now host such places.
Itu was a strange village. It was the refuge of the Osu, the outcasts, a clan devoted to a god, a people set apart, a taboo forever on the whole family. An Osu couldn’t marry outside of his or her caste and had to live apart from the community. Itu was a haven for many of these outcasts. The villagers looked a bit scary when I first went to live among them. They had long tangled hair, which they were forbidden to cut. When an Osu died he was buried in an area known as the Evil Forest.
This was also the place where twins were buried. Twins were believed to be unnatural and could harbour evil spirits, so were crushed at birth or left to die and then buried in pots in the Evil Forest. I had seen this with my own eyes.
Before returning to Itu, while I was still at St Luke’s after having Simon, I had become friends with Eunice, the first wife of an important Igbo chief who had given birth to very bonny, healthy twin boys. She became moody and withdrawn after the birth and refused to feed her babies.
The nuns and Sister-Doctor Nolan applied all their wiles and medical experience to try to get her to change her mind but to no avail. Ten days later, when Malcolm came to fetch Simon and I, one of the twins had already died and the other one was seriously ailing.
Where we were, you must remember, was in the deepest bush. There were no shops, no amenities outside the hospital, no communication. Sister-Matron Anne went into the local market and bought a boat-shaped feeding bottle and a tin of Klim powdered milk and tried to feed the twins surreptitiously but Eunice would scream and push her away.
Six weeks after Simon was born he developed a high fever. Malcolm was away on tour visiting other trading stations in the region and I was alone in the big empty house, empty except for the thousands of mosquitoes that tortured us relentlessly every evening. Malcolm and I would sit playing Scrabble with our legs tied up in pillowcases to try to prevent them biting.
Although we each took a daily antimalaria Paludrine pill, there were no such things as insect sprays or Peaceful Sleep. My legs still bear faint scars from some of the scabs that developed from those bites.
That night Simon wouldn’t stop crying. He was burning up. I’d had no previous experience of malaria but I guessed that this was it.
I wrapped him in a cold wet sheet, called Patrick, our house steward, alerted the village chief, who insisted he come with us, and drove at top speed in the company truck along corrugated dirt roads in the dark to St Luke’s. It was one of the most terrifying drives of my life and by the time we got to Anua a couple of hours later I was convinced Simon would die and had even mentally planned his little funeral.
The nuns whisked the baby away and with typical Irish know-how gave Patrick, the chief and I a shot of really bad local whisky.
Simon has never looked back and today is one of the strongest and healthiest people I know.