COLOURS OF LIFE
CLAIRE LORINA BASSEY(1935-2020)
WAR TIME BABY
My mother called me her ‘wartime baby’ because a few days after I was born, the Nigerian civil war broke out. I was a constant reminder of the faithfulness of God through her harrowing experience of the war. At some point, my father bundled the family into his Mercedes Benz and sent us off from Port Harcourt to Calabar, our hometown. He soon had to follow suit for fear of being hunted down and killed like some of his friends, whom the Biafrans regarded as enemies. My mother travelled with the seven young girls in her care, four of them her biological children. She always told us how her ‘wartime baby’ and her Jamaican accent saved the travelling party more than once.
JAMAICA CALLING
As the war raged in Nigeria, 9,268 kilometres away in Springfield, Jamaica, Adlin Dickson, sat on her veranda and wept, wondering if she would ever see her daughter again. Herself and my grandfather, Martin Luther Dickson, prayed for us. But Miss
Adlin did more than pray; she baked Jamaican rum and fruit cakes, buried silver bangles in them and shipped the cakes across continents. We wore those precious bangles to church and on other special occasions, when we also pop champagne. Mother and daughter never saw each other again. Before the war ended grandma died, some say, of a broken heart. The memory of my mother weeping as she opened the telegram that bore the news is still with me. She went back to Jamaica for the funeral with baby Iso, whom she called ‘One Son’ in her patois accent.
ISN’T SHE LOVELY
When I was a little girl, I would sit and stare as my mother dressed up to go for parties with my father. I thought she was the prettiest woman in the world. Her dressing table would be lined with different shades of eyeshadow which she used after applying brown Avon powder to her flawless skin. Then she would wear the most elegant evening gown and spray her sweet perfume. My gaze would be cut short when my father appeared at the door, looking dapper in his dinner suit. Hand in hand, they would walk out the front door to their chauffer-driven car and ride off into the night, leaving me to imagine them dining and dancing their hearts out. And if they were not going out for one of those parties, they were hosting them.
GET ON THE DANCE FLOOR
“You lot don’t enjoy your lives. You don’t go dancing!” my mother would exclaim to me when she visited my home. She apparently said the same thing to my siblings. She loved to dance. Dancing had been an important part of her relationship with ‘Mine’ (as she and my father called themselves), from the days of courtship in the ’50s when they were both students, she at Broadgate hospital and he at the University of Hull. They danced through the 47 years of their marriage. And even in her golden years, all you had to do was play Mighty Sparrow or Harry Bella Fonte and mother would hit the dance floor.
TIMELESS STYLE
Even in her 70s, if you bought her an outfit that did not measure up to her high fashion sense, mum would say “Who did you get these old woman clothes for? You won’t catch me wearing these old woman clothes!” If I dressed up to go out and she approved of what I was wearing, it meant I was spot on with my dressing – I think my sisters would say the same thing. And my mother made the most stylish clothes for herself and for us children, completing the look with creative accessories, most of which she made.
ONE TOUGH COOKIE
Even if she was peaceful and kind, mum had a tough side to her. She was no pushover. She did not hesitate to dish out a good spank (when it was deserved), either to her children or any young person under her care. At the wedding of her daughters, while tears rolled down my father’s cheek, my mother sat, dry-eyed, through the ceremony. She narrated to us that once when we were much younger and our father was out of town, thieves visited the neighbourhood. To scare them away mum brought out his gun and fired into the air – they fled!
A WOMAN OF THE PEOPLE
Mum told us that when she arrived in Nigeria in the late ’50s and even decades after, if she went to the market dressed in trousers, children would trail her, beating drums and singing. She would turn a potentially volatile situation to an opportunity to connect with the locals by dancing along with them.
In Port Harcourt, where she lived most of her life, mum made friends easily amongst Nigerians, her fellow West Indians, Nigerwives (foreign women married to Nigerians) and through societies she belonged to like the Ladies Dinning Club and Corona.
She taught us to fit in with kings and commoners alike and not to value any over the other. She taught us how to live beneath our means. She only had kind words for people and even when she grew frail would say “I love you” or “You look beautiful.”
Mother won the heart of her in-laws. Once, in Oban, Iso got chastised for not communicating in the local tongue: “Even your mother who is a foreigner speaks Ejagham”. I don’t recall her being able to say more than a few words, but to them she spoke their language.
THE KEY TO EVERYTHING
A visitor to our home would most likely leave with a gift, nothing expensive but something thoughtful. Mum also took gifts of clothing and food to the old people’s home and orphanage close by. The faces of the residents would light up as her car drove into their premises.
If you go by the generosity of my mother’s children, you would think we were billionaires. But if you knew mum you would understand why we always give and seek to help people. Our mother also taught us to give to even the rich. “Because” she said, “people only take from them.”
ENTERPRISING CLAIRE
Mum turned her creativity into enterprise. In the years she dedicated to homemaking, she also made soft furniture and clothes for sale. She baked excellent wedding cakes and made lovely flower arrangements for people. When our father was appointed a judge, rather than sit pretty, our mother ran a poultry. When he was unconstitutionally sacked for standing up for the independence of the judiciary, she turned one of our houses into a guest house to earn an income for the family. When his name was cleared and he was re-instated and compensated, she was, as always, gainfully ‘employed’. In 1978 she had founded Springfield Nursery School which, today, has primary and secondary sections.
HOME SWEET HOME
My mother laid a godly foundation at home by making us begin each day on our knees around their matrimonial bed, just like she had done growing up.
Visitors to our home were assured of a warm welcome and a warm meal, if they met us at table. They were also treated to a choice of homemade snacks, juices, and salads.
To anyone who was cleaning the house mum would say, “You need to polish the floor till I can see my reflection in it.” She decorated our clean home with fresh flowers from her tasteful garden.
My mother could spread a table fit for a king, on meagre resources. And nothing ever went to waste at home.
To her last days, she never stopped singing and dancing. One of the songs she loved to sing was ‘Home sweet home home sweet home…….’
My mother has gone home to Jesus.
Thank you Lord for such a beautiful life! p/s Mum would have been eighty-six today