Maggie ‘overwhelmed by love’ after swastika daubed on home
“WHAT somebody intended to be a really horrible act has turned into something wonderful.”
Those are the words of Margaret Ogunbanwo, the woman who has called Wales her home for the past 12 years and whose property was vandalised in an alleged racist attack last Saturday.
A 35-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the incident and inquiries are currently ongoing.
Speaking after the incident, Mrs Ogunbanwo said: “I couldn’t believe it, I was stopped in my tracks.”
But, speaking from her home in Gwynedd, Margaret – known as Maggie to those who know and love her – said she had since received more flowers than she had vases in a flood of support from her local community.
“I am overwhelmed is the honest truth,” said 55-year-old Maggie, who has seen her business, Maggie’s Exotic Foods, which makes and sells sauces and spices inspired by her African roots, boom in the past few days.
“I am overwhelmed with the demonstrations of love and people putting their money behind their mouth. I am overwhelmed with orders.”
Maggie admitted she was struggling to keep up with orders, but that it was a very welcome boost for the small business currently suffering from the effects of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
Brought up in Nigeria with a mixed cultural heritage from Cameroon, Maggie launched her food business in the ’90s as a way of recreating some of the culinary dishes she grew up with.
“I started with it in the 1990s and I was having children, it was working and trying to run a business. It was when dotcom was coming in and my husband had a friend who made us a website. I had one before I even knew how to work them,” the mumof-two joked.
Maggie worked in catering and other parts of the food industry before she moved to Penygroes with husband Femi and children Ileri and Toda in 2007.
Her father also moved to the village with the family but died two years later.
“Three weeks being in Wales I started realising there were a lot of farmers markets and I decided to start offering my African food. But to get jobs up here, speaking Welsh is a requirement, so I started Welsh lessons.”
She admitted people were apprehensive to allow her to start selling things at first, they wanted to see what she had to offer, admitting to a lot of people that African food was completely unknown.
“They thought I would be cooking snakes and cockroaches,” she laughed.
But Maggie realised that what she could bring to the people of north Wales with her African cooking was so much more than food, it was experience and education.
“Most of my community will never have the opportunity to visit Africa, so I wanted to bring it to them,” she said.
The property her family live in was an old pub, so they decided to open up the premises into a cafe.
“I thought about it a lot and I decided I would be doing healthy foods. Then I introduced some African food, but people were coming in wanting breakfasts, which I never wanted to do.
“I lost my sister two years after my dad in a horrific plane crash. That was the trigger for me, I thought I could not keep doing this, it was not successful.”
So the cafe closed, but one special aspect which remained was Maggie’s African nights, which were running at full capacity right up until lockdown.
“I realised that some people here would never have the chance to go to Africa, so we started doing these nights when the cafe was still open, serving food from different parts of Africa and we would put up photos around for people.”
On the nights Maggie hosted people in her home, there would be up to 40 guests booked in.
There would sometimes be live music and performances. She would spend the evening cooking, but also mingling with the customers, most of whom became friends.
The evenings became so popular, the last event before lockdown was overbooked.
“People have this perception of Africa that it is poor and uncivilised and it is not the case. I think like everything else if you don’t know or understand something you don’t try it. I brought Africa to people.”
Maggie grew up in Lagos, and said her memories from her childhood were extremely happy.
“I remember running around in shorts and a vest with my brothers; we would play on this big estate. It was a good life. I grew up with privilege, we had people who did our washing and cleaning and cooking.
“And when I came to the UK to live it was completely different.
“I had to change my way of thinking, I became the cook and the cleaner in a way. And I had people looking down on me and I was not used to that.
“In Africa when you get into a community, they accept you immediately. Here you are watched first before you are accepted.”
Following Maggie’s sister’s tragic death, she also decided to write a book, titled 100 Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me.
The book is about growing up, and Maggie wanted to write it for her daughter.
She now plans to use her words to stand up to racism and educate people, adding that her children experienced racism in school.
“Children aren’t born racist, they have learnt that from somewhere, so we need to teach parents, we need to teach children in schools,” she said.
Maggie attended the Black Lives Matter protest in Caernarfon on Sunday where she was invited to give a speech.
Having prepared nothing, she couldn’t remember what she said but was welcomed with a flood of support.
“I got up there and people just started clapping, I was so overwhelmed.”
Speaking about the protests happening around the world in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in America, Maggie said: “I think it is fantastic, it is time we spoke out. The only way to get change is to speak out. For too long things have been like this and we pretend that it is not going on.
“But it doesn’t have to be done violently, and I praise Caernarfon for that.”