'IN MY MOTHER'S WOMB'

She kicked me again with a forceful thrust!  I had grown rather frustrated with this other little person with whom I was sharing the tiny corralled space.  I was wearisome from her constant-mini tantrums.  It seemed there was not enough room for both of us.  It was no great surprise that true to her character trait when the ‘call was sounded’ she heard and responded first, bawling her eyes out in delight, scampering out, taking the first opportunity to exit the womb, grabbing a gush of fresh oxygen and leaving me to spend the next eleven minutes trying to follow in her wake.  After a fitful struggle, I bit my way through my mother’s canal and I joined my twin sister in the outside world.  The snatched recollection of this improbable memory was to define our relationship for more than forty-three eventful years.

This is how deep in my subconscious I recall my first encounter with my twin sister.  She was always there, a familiar presence, one that occupied my every thought.  Now I confirm that since she transitioned into the heavenlies, leaving me to carry on the ‘good work’ my memories have been accentuated and my power of recall exaggerated.  However, deep down I believe in the authenticity of the experiences recounted here.  What is indisputable is that as a twin I had and still have a unique relationship, which non-twins may never fully comprehend.  When presented with the knowledge of my twin’s transition, a common question from some about the nature of our relationship is ‘Where you close?’  I suggest this sums up the limitations of their understanding. 

Our relationship as twins was a complicated and intense one and sometimes as we were growing up it ranged from over-identification and excessive closeness to profound estrangement and conflict.  We had to deal with the significant emotional pain of separation in adolescence but as we matured as adults and got married, we came to love each other more and admire each other more as individuals.

We were born in a South Clapham Hospital, London which used to occupy an imposing but now dilapidated Victorian building opposite the Clapham South tube station in early 1966, and from there we moved with our parents to their home in Wandsworth, a suburb of London.   Both of us were very chubby and big babies, however, my twin sister took upon my father’s resemblance from the darker skin tones to his looks, his lips and his smile, and this accounts for her second name, ‘Feyisara’, ‘we used this one as a covering’ and I was mostly blessed with my mother’s fairer looks. 

“Snow, snow, Mummy why is it so white?”

I was only three years old in 1969 but my inquisitive nature had the better of me, I needed my mother to spell out to us why the white powdery stuff falling from above was so freezing cold.  My twin the more resilient and reserved stared at me wondering what was the matter with all these questions.  We trod carefully along the slushy path on the way through Clapham Commons with my mother pushing the enormous pram, which contained my younger brother’s bounteous frame.  He, ’Debo had big rosy cheeks, its tenderness invited a stroke from many onlookers, he was quite a handful and large for his age, some portend to the six feet three inches in height he later attained.  

In 1968 my father had returned to Nigeria on the successful completion of his doctorate in International Relations which focused on Nigeria’s economic relationship with Britain so it was now just the three of us and we were coping as best as we could.   We continued staying with Mrs. Cox our nanny in Maidstone, Kent to allow my mother time and the space to work.  The arrangement was we were dropped off with Mrs. Cox during the week while my parents went about their business of study and work.  Years later after we returned to Nigeria she dutifully kept in touch by sending toys, comics and books to us.   When my father was around he was on a full Commonwealth scholarship so he did less of ‘working’ and more of studying, it was my mother who supplemented our income with a series of part time jobs.  I imagine one of the conversations my mother had with the prospective white employers to have started like this:

 “You are not Janet Noble are you?”

The burly Caucasian man who was in charge of the office my mother had gone to seek work said with barely disguised disdain.  He had sent my mother an interview letter on the assumption that she was white, and he had no intention of employing an African or any black person.  My mother’s maiden surname was Noble and hence the reference from the gentleman but she did not let her frustrations show.  She went on to enroll in Pitman’s College training as a secretary and busied herself with a few catering classes to improve her job prospects.  

Our temporary sojourn in the United Kingdom had to end, by 1970, the Nigerian Civil War was over and my father who was settled in his job as a lecturer at the University of Lagos, living a bachelor existence with his younger brother Ayoku in the Igbobi College area, now wanted us around him.  The affordable option of travel was by the sea, through the stormy Atlantic Ocean.  It was fully paid for by the very eager University of Lagos.  All our earthly possessions were neatly arranged in trunk boxes and crated up.  We sailed on the Elder Dempster, a passenger and cargo ship.  We boarded in Southampton and it took a journey of over two weeks to reach the ports of Lagos in Apapa.  I remember we constantly fell sea sick, also the nursery I attended with my twin sister on the ship’s deck.   We arrived at the staff quarters of the University of Lagos at C36 where my father had managed to secure.  It was a comfortable grey encrusted terraced house within a row of five; it all seemed different but rather idyllic.  On arrival we were welcomed by Uncles Ayo and ‘Lawale into the realities of Lagos life.

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