Truly great story as shared by a Nigerian man,
Ken Davidson pictured with the elderly Nigerian
woman above. Read below:
On a sub zero freezing but bright and sunny
late morning in Toronto, I gained an
Adopted Mum. So there I was patiently
awaiting my turn to go through
immigrations with the Toronto Border force,
and within earshot, I heard a rather fraught
and somewhat distressing conversation
between a stern border force immigration
official...and a wheel chair bound
grandma...near enough same age as my
mum.
She obviously didn't speak much in terms
of English, but I could tell from her pidgin
English that she is Delta State, possibly
Urhobo.
The immigration officer was asking her who
she came to see and how long for...she
couldn't understand a word. The
immigration officer was at this stage
getting rather impatient and started raising
her voice at which point the poor lady
started crying. So being the only Nigerian
around, I stepped up and politely told the
officials that I speak the same language as
the lady. Quite quickly, the lady looked at
me and said my son, and started rapping
Urhobo splattered with pidgin English.
Although I told her I wasn't Urhobo but I
can converse in pidgin quite well. And that
if we cannot make any headway, I'd call a
few close friends that are Urhobo. To cut a
long story short, the immigration officials
were categorical that if they couldn't locate
the relative that invited her, they'd have to
send her back.
The poor lady broke into an Asthma crisis
upon hearing "deport". Apparently her
daughter who has been in Canada for a
decade invited her and before Mama left
Nigeria, she (daughter) gave her all her
contact details. Already in a terribly
distressed state, grandma had misplaced
the details. Speaking pidgin to her, I asked
if she has a cellphone...otherwise called
"handset", that I can look at to get her
daughter's contact details. She promptly
produced her phone...And guess what? The
phone turned out to be one of the very old
style Nokias. As I was scrolling through the
phone and trying to locate Charity, her
daughter's number...as if we didn't have
enough stuffs to deal with, the phone died
on us! I opened it up so that I could swap
the sim card into one of mine...only to
discover it was indeed one of the old style
full size SIMS which obviously couldn't fit
into mine.
By this time, I had spent an additional hour
and a quarter trying to assist...One thing
was paramount in my mind, to do all that
was humanly possible to avoid her being
sent back to the hell hole she just escaped
from. Lol. Still visibly distressed, I got my
phone out and called a close friend who
lives in Nigeria...who is also Urhobo and
speaks the dialect perfectly. Na so the
woman eyes lit up when she heard a
familiar dialect down the line telling her to
calm down that all Is going to be well. That
that man with her is going to sort it all out.
Lol. Whilst all these was going on, I started
going through her hand luggage
meticulously and methodically...and after
about 45 minutes I hit the jackpot and a
presto there it was all crumpled...was
Charity, her daughter's contact details!
Promptly dialled her number...and a rather
apprehensive voice came through...It was
Charity - mama's daughter.
She had apparently been waiting for three
solid hours in the arrival hall worried sick.
Without further ado, we promptly got our
passports processed and made our way
out...into the waiting arms of Charity,
mama's daughter....whom she hadn't seen
in 10 very long years. Tears were flowing
all around...and mama insisted that I
should come for her so that she could pray
for me. Right there in the arrival hall, I knelt
down next to her wheelchair and she
prayed and prayed....without minding the
hordes of Canadians walking past
wondering what the heck Is going on in the
middle of the arrival hall.
To cap it all up, I gave mama a parting gift
and told the daughter who was apparently
gobsmacked, dumbfounded and extremely
emotional...that I have a mum of a similar
age, who also quite often travels wheelchair
bound and in all these I would want to
think that should my mum par adventure
find herself in a similar situation in future, a
similarly kind hearted human being would
step in and intercede.
Although it took at least 2.5 hours out of
what is a hectic schedule for me, I couldn't
possibly have walked away from Grandma.
And of course mamas daughter insisted on
taking a selfie of me with mama before I
dashed off...By a stroke of coincidence, the
friend who i called to calm mama....has a
sister called...yup, you guessed it,
Charity...What an eventful morning!
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