When a country experiences a civil war, media reports are mainly
brought to the attention of the outside world by those who can only
report on the surface impressions obtained during a short visit or
from the comfort of a studio thousands of miles away. My
experiences, living and working at the grass roots level, during
and after the crisis in Nigeria in the 1960s has a different
perspective. As a young Scotswoman married to a Nigerian from the
breakaway republic of Biafra we lived as refugees with our young
family, forced to leave our home seven times in the 30 months of
the civil war as the war raged around us. Cut off from the outside
world, in a situation the British High Commissioner in Nigeria had
predicted at the onset, would be over in two weeks, we lived a life
full of experiences which gave me a `qualification in survival' no
university could have imparted. Without electricity, gas, petrol or
phones, and often without money, medicine or safe drinking water we
learned to appreciate the basic necessities of life. I was 18 years
old, living in Dunfermline, Scotland when the man I was to marry
asked me for a dance at the Kinema Ballroom. Two years later my
career plan to qualify as a nurse was over and I was married to Len
Ofoegbu, with a baby daughter and we were on our way to a new and
very different life. Our first home was in the capital, Lagos, and
was a big culture shock to Len and I. The newly independent West
African country was already experiencing political and civil
unrest, leading to violence, massacres, coups, and the inability of
the central government to control the situation. Hundreds of
thousands of Easterners who had settled throughout the whole of the
country now `went home' as they had become the targets of
slaughtering mobs. The secession of the Eastern Region, calling
itself Biafra, followed and a David and Goliath bitter conflict
ensued. The word `kwashiorkor' and pictures of starving children
and adults appeared in the Western press for the first time. I was
one of around a dozen, mainly British, foreign wives of Biafrans
who remained with their husband throughout the civil war. I worked
voluntarily with relief agencies in feeding centres, clinics, an
orphanage and, after Biafra surrendered in January 1970, in a
children's hospital in return for food for my growing family. In
May 1970 we moved back to live in Lagos where we went through more
crises as a family. I became an early member of Nigerwives, an
organisation for foreign wives and partners of Nigerians which
became like an extended family as we gave mutual support and strove
to resolve anomalies in Nigerian laws which put unnecessary
restrictions affecting our particular circumstances. By the 1980s I
accepted that my husband and I had grown so far apart that I could
no longer remain with him. My legal reason to remain in Nigeria was
`to accompany him' and he could withdraw his immigration
responsibility for me at any time. I needed a security which he
could not give me and I left him and Nigeria to begin a new life
and career in Britain in 1985. I was advised when I completed the
original manuscript in the 1970s not have it published as Nigeria
was extremely sensitive about any account which was sympathetic to
the Biafran side of the civil war. In 1986 a much shorter version
of Together in Biafra, titled Blow The Fire, telling the story up
to 1970 was printed by Tana Press in Nigeria. I retain the
copyright. It was published under my married name Leslie Jean
Ofoegbu. It has been cited in academic papers. An example is A
Lingering Nightmare: Achebe, Ofoegbu and Adichie on Biafra,
Francoise Ugochukwu 2011.
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