If you got this far reading this book, you have been reading of very dark times in my life, two years and two months spent in Russia, something that has been a burden for most of the time that I have been living in Wales and the UK. It has taken me the best part of nineteen years to be able to write down this very dark memory. I am still purging myself of it. I have had to organise myself in such a way that I know what can trigger what. I avoid these triggers. This story had to be told, especially with the situation in Cameroon right now, people are still falling victim of human trafficking on a grand scale. This book is a warning, many Cameroonians died in Russia, who knows how many are dying in Libya chasing that dream of going to the white mans land, the land of milk and honey.
Chapter 4
After settling in my new lodgings, Froy turned to me and said, Well Eric, for a fee of one hundred dollars a month, I will teach you how to speak Russian and show you around Sochi and introduce you to my friends at our Presbyterian Church. That was my agreement with the Vladimirs. Every day after breakfast and his morning exercises, Froy dedicated two hours of his time towards teaching me the Russian language. Froy was patient and a very good teacher. We finished each lesson with an assignment for which I had plenty of help thanks to Tyotia, a ninety-seven-year-old babushka (babushka means old woman or grandmother), who lived opposite the Vladimirs. I cried when Tyotia died.
One of the first things Froy and I did was to go for a swim in the Black Sea. I made him laugh by asking if there were any crocodiles in the water. He remarked, You are a bushman, arent you? We both laughed.
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When I was a boy, I had tried swimming to no avail; I even tried gymnastics but I failed at that too. I remember once, during one of the villages 20 th May celebrations our National Holiday after a referendum in 1972 to become a unitary country being paired with another boy who was even fatter than I was. We were to do a chained cartwheel; the combination of our blubber shook the ground as we rolled. People shouted and clapped we thought they clapped because we were good, not knowing that as we were rolling, we took out anything and everyone that was in our path. Those were the days. I was even worse at swimming.
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Froy could swim. There were long concrete slabs, which reached far out into the sea, that you could run along and dive off performing all kinds of acrobatics. Some people even swam as far as the boats that could be seen on the horizon.
Slowly but steadily Froy taught me how to swim and how to speak the Russian language. He also introduced me to the Presbyterian faith.
I had used their house telephone to contact my maternal uncles in America. My mother has three brothers in America who are all citizens and one of whom, Uncle Evella, is a doctor and also in line to be the chief of my village. She explained that I was in terrible circumstances and needed around a thousand dollars. Froy was with me when I made this telephone call and heard the promises from my uncles that they would send me some money. The money never came. My uncles reassured my mother that theyd sent me some financial assistance, but this was not the case. Still, I am grateful they told white lies to my mother.
Froy also introduced me to a guy known as Anthony who was a small-time mafia guy. Anthony and his friend Aaron, an Armenian who owned a small garage just outside the city centre, were to be very kind to me. Somehow the immigration officials in Sochi had tracked me down and visited the Vladimirs household. Fortunately Anthony and Aaron came up with the two hundred dollars I owed the hotel and paid a total of two hundred and fifty dollars to retrieve my passport. However, I was told very strongly that I was not a resident of Sochi, I had no reason to be there, and I was illegal. I was only legally allowed to stay in Stavropol but that privilege too was expiring in a matter of months.
Tania, Froys mother, was in her early fifties and unhappy; you could see this by the extra wrinkles that appeared on her face every morning. Her husband spent most of his summer at their dacha (a holiday home). If you met Tania, you would know that she must have been an absolute beauty when she was younger; she was tall, elegant and had those extra-long legs, which suited her career choice: dancer and ballerina.
She invited me several times to see her performing and to watch the Sochi Symphony Orchestra. Tania was unhappy that since my stay in their family home, I had not made any monetary contributions into the family coffers. No one knew how to help me; I didnt know how to help me. Despite all this, Tania took pity on me and treated me like her own child; I was falling in love with the family, the more I did so the more I hated my paternal family. I cursed them.
Then one September evening, Anthony and his friend Aaron, smuggled me out of Griboedova to a small Armenian villagewhere Aaron livedon the lands that gradually stretch up to form Mount Akhun. I had picked up a great deal of the Russian language by this time and Anthony had invited me to a family wedding. The wedding was a feast. The whole table was full of food from top to bottomit reminded me of a scene in Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart where the food was piled so high that only after it had been consumed did visitors realise their family members were on the other side of the table.
I couldnt help but notice a rather attractive girl who I later learned was called Natalia. It turned out she was quite taken by me as although she was sat next to Anthony, she had insisted they changed places so she was right next to me. She offered me some of her chicken drumsticks and told me shed been to America and really loved black Americans. This was my cue. I told her I was an African American and showed her the pictures of Lisa from Boney M. and told her that she was my mother.
She looked at the pictures with intense curiosity and, after a few minutes, she tapped me on the shoulder and as I turned around our lips met in a proper kiss.
The party was in full swing. The bride was showered with gifts, an Armenian band was playing, Anthony and Aaron danced with their shirts unbuttoned, in unison with their family members, vodka flowed and there was merriment galore. Then among the guests I saw the face of Chief Justice Paul and heard him ask the question, Do you know that boy Eric Ngalle Charles? Do you know him? I could see hollow faces and their response ricocheting like the voice of a missing mountaineer. I could feel some tears and pretended to sneeze. I appeared to be welcomed around the village and my visit rolled into a stay of several weeks.
Who is this? It was Natalias mother asking her who I was.
Its Eric, my friend, replied Natalia. I was invited to their home, a two-storey building with a huge garden growing all kinds of fruit, especially grapefruits and passion fruits. Natalia and I played Adam and Eve, for truly, this was our Eden.
Every day on his way to work, Aaron would drop me at the library, which was owned by Natalias family. I was a local celebrity. A tourist attraction. I would tell the children stories about Ndondondume (a mythical beast from Bakweri mythology, who lures his victims with an amazing singing voice before devouring them) and when my Russian was not enough, Natalia translated.
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I was a master storyteller and my favourite story was about Yomadene, a mythical beast that lives on top of Mount Cameroon. I also loved the story of Epassamoto, a half-stone, half-human who took care of Albino children abandoned to die on top of the mountain when I was growing up, there were two Albino twins in our village and I was always terrified for their fate. I also loved the mystics of the Ekulelekule or tortoise.
