125. Piggy re-elected Prime Minister, a road trip to the Niger Delta and a detour on Black Magic: Brother and Sister, Worlds Apart: (7) Christmas 1978

Background : Extract from blog 75, the first in this series:

   In September 1972 I moved with my young family from London to take up a position at Auckland University in New Zealand where I was employed until my retirement thirty years later. At that time my older sister Elizabeth was in Nigeria where she spent most of her working life with the Church Missionary Society. Both of us wrote regular letters home to my parents in Malvern Link, Worcestershire.

   As I indicated in an earlier blog, ("Love, Death and Letters from My Mother's Hut" - blog 30, February 2012), my mother kept our letters. Two siblings could hardly make more diverse career choices and these letters provide, to my mind, an interesting contrast between a thoroughly secular and a thoroughly religious life.

   The protocol that we have followed in editing these letters is to set mine out in the present typeface (Times) and Elizabeth's letters in Courier. Where we have felt compelled to add a present glossary on the events reported, or some reflection on the memories that they trigger, we have done so by shifting to italics.

Flat 4, 30 Tamaki Avenue, Otahuhu, New Zealand, November 12th 1978
     Dear Mum and Dad,

     Many thanks for your letter Dad. It was good to hear that you are doing well with the refurbished legs. I expect you have been watching the All Blacks on the tele. I have been up in the middle of the night to watch the test matches, last week against Ireland when Stuart and Lewis got up too since they were staying here that weekend and last night against Wales which was very nerve-racking and N.Z. were pretty lucky to win.** The next one will be against Scotland at Murrayfield on November 25th so I expect we will be watching that together 12,000 miles apart - I don't give Scotland much chance!

     November 25th is also the night of our general election. The National Party are generally expected to get back in very easily led by Mr. Muldoon, popularly known as Piggy. I met him last week at a function in Auckland where I was speaking and his nickname is very apt - he is small and quite remarkably fat.

The main interest here is in how well the third party, Social Credit, do, and whether after the election there will be some alliance between them and the main opposition party, Labour. There are also a number of electorates where there are TWO National candidates standing, one the official National Party candidate and one the National Alternative candidate - this reflects the generally divisive effect that Mr. Muldoon's policies and personality have had even within his own party. The Values Party, which has all the best policies, is not expected to do well and will be lucky to get 2% of the vote and may dissolve altogether after the election. [See blog 83, 18th December 2013, 'New Zealand Values Party Manifesto for the 1975 General Election'.] November 25th is also the second anniversary of Mary and I getting together so all in all it should be a big night.

     Last weekend was Guy Fawkes and we lit a huge bonfire up on the section which helped to clear up a lot of the bits and pieces of timber, bracken etc that had been lying around. All in all it was an evening the children especially enjoyed and they are asking about building a bonfire for next year.

     Stuart and Sacha had some photographs taken at school so I have sent copies off by seamail together with a copy of a book on Industrial Relations in N.Z. which was published last week and which I am a co-author of. Also photos of Mary and I taken at Lake Tarawera in August and one of the children up on Sugar Mountain. I was going to airmail it all until the post office said it would cost $9! It will probably arrive in January therefore.

     I have just finished marking my last exam papers and now we are getting on with the house-building. The builder has put his pole up and we should get electricity connected soon and the building started in a couple of weeks - all very exciting.

    Lots of love from us both, John and Mary XXX

Vining Centre,Akure,Nigeria,December 10th 1978
   I was expecting Gemma and her friend Shirley to come from Ibadan on Friday but they got a taxi and arrived when I was not prepared – in fact I was out at a Leprosy Committee meeting – the beds were not made and there were papers all over the living room. When I came home they had already unpacked and gone off to the College chapel to take photos of the students and to listen to their music. Our plan is to go to Ikare tomorrow and stay with Myrtle – and then to go to the North, Yelwa - Zaria - Jos, and back to Umuahia to stay with Ann Goodchild from 18-22nd. We hope to be in Bonny for Christmas.

December 17th.
   We are ‘on tour’ Gemma, Shirley and I – and its quite a tour! It goes Akure–Ikare–Yelwa-Zaria-Jos-Umuahia-Port Harcourt-Bonny-Umuahia-Benin-Akure.

   We spent last Mon and Tues with Myrtle in Ikare and saw round her school for handicapped children in the morning. Then we went to Oka and climbed up the hill there. On Wednesday we drove via Kabba and Ilorin to Yelwa where my friend, Richard, has his TT College. He wasn’t there because he had gone to Jos for a Principal’s Conference so that was disappointing but we stayed in his house and went on to Zaria the next day. Jane and Richard Smith gave us a very warm welcome.

   They live in a 2 storey mud house which is 50 years old. Their baby, Jonathan, is now 7 months and doing very well. We went to a very ‘cold’ concert - mostly rather wishy-washy looking Europeans from the University.  It was like going to a ‘formal’ Church where everyone sits in their own seat and doesn't talk to anybody. Very odd and very un-Nigerian. The choir sang a Mass by Carpintier. The best thing about the whole evening was Gail Scott – a CMS Missionary at Wusasa who sang contralto… beautifully. Gemma and Shirley and I – and also Jane Smith got rather giggly at it all.

   On Sat we left Zaria and took a rough road up to Jos. The road rattled us and the car was not happy. We had to stop at a roadside mechanic who decided that we needed 2 spare parts - a coil - and a contact breaker. He then fixed us and we limped on to Jos. I think that the mechanic was wrong and we only had a loose wire. There certainly was a loose wire when we continued on the road. We had to keep getting out and fixing it. In the end I tied it together with some tape. We reached Jos and then Bukuru where I had written to the Bishops (CMS new folk on the staff of the Theological College at Bukuru). They had booked us into the SUM guest house in Jos. This was very clean and tidy with good food at a reasonable cost. We stayed there Sat and Sun nights. The amazing thing was that Janet Dominy the SUM missionary who was in charge of the Guest House was at Henrietta Barnet with Gemma! So there was a great reunion.

   On Monday morning we set off at 5 a.m. and drove all day to Umuahia. The road near Makurdi was potholed and slow so we took a long time over it. We drove on and on…… It was quite a day.

   We arrived in Umuahia at 8 p.m.- very thankful to be there because it is not good to drive after dark in the East. Also we hadn’t any petrol left in the tank (although 4 gallons in a container). We stayed with Ann and John Goodchild. (Gemma trained as a nurse with Ann.) They have an amazing big baby – Colum, called after Columba really. He looks like a 1 year old but is only 4 months. He has 2 teeth and sits up. He is gorgeous.

   We stayed on Friday night in Port Harcourt. Everything worked out very well. It was the first time that our letters telling of our coming had reached. Everywhere else except Jos we were unexpected.

   On Saturday we took the local boat to Bonny and not the fast flying boat. Our boat took about 3 hours and really was more comfortable than the speed boat.

Bonny (contemporary photo)

   (Bonny is a most interesting island and famous in history. It was a traditional state founded in the 14^th century as the Kingdom of Bonny. The king is called the Amanyanabo. In the C15^th the Portuguese came to Bonny. Some of the old houses were built in Portuguese style. The word they use for friend is ‘amigo’ which I was told is Portuguese.

   Bonny was an important slaving port and later a place for exporting palm oil products. It is now an oil terminal and has a gas liquefaction plant. In 1849 one of the Pepple family, George Pepple who later became the king, was educated in Bexley in England. I think he was the one who got the Times every week, delivered by sailing ship from London.

   He was a Christian and welcomed Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther to come to Bonny after he was consecrated as the first African Bishop in 1864.

   Bishop Crowther founded St Stephen’s Church in Bonny. It was the first church in the Niger Delta and there were 100 in the congregation in 1876. In 1889 it was made the Cathedral of the Niger Delta Diocese and it still is the Cathedral although the Bishopscourt is in Port Harcourt. The original church I was told was imported from England by sailing ship. I remember being amazed at how the clock on the tower looked just like a clock on an English parish church.

   You will see from the letter of Dec 26^th 1978 that we visited a Chief Jumbo. At one end of his main room there was a glass fronted wardrobe with the full regalia of a member of a Masonic Lodge in London. The same chief told us that one of his ancestors had presented an elephant to Queen Victoria. She had asked him its name and he said ‘Jumbo’!! According to him that’s why elephants are called Jumbo.) 

December 26^th 1987

   We had a tremendous welcome when we came off the boat and were taken to the Chief Jack Wilson Pepple compound to drink a glass of wine in celebration of our arrival. After that we were brought back to the Parsonage where we were sleeping. Gabriel and Lucy have looked after us beautifully and fed us royally. It is pretty hot and steamy here - with mosquitoes at night. We have had a fair do as far as services are concerned- 10am and 7pm Carols on Sunday, 10am on Christmas Day and 7am Holy Communion Plus Baptism following today, St Stephen’s Day. Amazing services - all in English and lasting a good long time. On special Sundays like Christmas they have ‘Thanksgivings’ for different things: eg sparing some ones life in an accident or for a daughter returned from USA.

   We liked the thanksgiving by the pipe organ committee ‘for preserving the new parts for the organ from fire when the vehicle carrying them from Lagos caught fire’.[After each Thanksgiving is announced everyone in the congregation who wants to ‘support’ gets up and dances to the front of the church and  puts their donation in a large bowl or bin near the altar steps. If there is a couple of hundred people dancing round it can take some time.] 

   I have become the godmother of Gabriel Pepple junior - 2 months old, who was baptised today together with 32 other children. It was quite a baptismal jamboree. In Bonny there is a custom of having groups dancing all through the streets of the town on Christmas Day. [Many people come home for the holidays.] It is a bit like a University Rag Day with everyone involved. All the streets are full of people dancing and drinking and celebrating. An incredible sight. Some of the dancing is done by masqueraders and I guess there is a good deal of traditional juju involved.
   Everyone agreed that it was a Christmas with a difference. Yesterday we went visiting a number of fascinating people. One Chief Jumbo was a timber contractor and exporter and had a saw mill in Fulham! Then we visited Dr Stephen Jumbo who was at King’s College, Cambridge in the 1940’s at the same time as the Kabaka of Uganda. Then we went to see Mrs Dimieri whose husband was previously a Bishop. She showed us a photo of Ledbury Church (where Mary Sumner was married). She told us a very dramatic story about how the army came to their house during the War and they were saved from harm. The night before the Bishop had a dream of a man dressed in white who said ‘Don’t be afraid, I am with you’.

    Dear Grandad and Grandma
    Thank you for the money that you gave me I hope you have a happy Christmas and a happy new year I got lots of good presents are you having a Christmas tree? We are having a Christmas tree Sacha and Stuart and I are going to decorate it do you still practice putting for my birthday I got a ball a whistle and lots of other things I also got 27 dollars I hope you and Grandad have a very merry Xmas and a lot of fun.
    Love from Lewis

     Dear Grandma and Grandad
    I hope you had a very merry Xmas and a happy New Year. I am at Dads house at the moment, it is Xmas Eve. Next year I will be in form 2 I do not know who my teacher will be. On the Saturday coming up we are going to the Big international Circus it is going to be good. We have five weeks of holiday to go then back to school I hope Grandad is getting better lots of
   Love from Stuart 

     Dear Grandad and Grandma,

     I am very excited as it is almost christmas. I suppose you are too. Are you going on holiday this christmas or are you just staying near home? We are at dads flat and are staying near here until christmas eve, then we will just be staying home for the rest of the holidays. Next year I am in form two and so is Stuart. Lewis is in standard three though. My friend will be in form three next year and she will not walk to school with me anymore because she will not be at the college up the road. Though I will still see her she will not be seeing me much . My best friend Megan gave me a face flannel and two sea-horse soaps for my xmas present and my other friend gave me a writing pad. I have already got about 10 christmas cards. Well I hope you have a very merry christmas and a happy new year.

     Lots of Love from

     Sacha

     xxxxx

4/30 Tamaki Ave, Otahuhu, 28th December 1978.

     Dear Mum and Dad, 

     Many thanks for your Christmas letters with all the news. Also for the lovely tea towel which we have stored away until such time as it can grace our new kitchen. The children stayed with us for the week up until Christmas and we had a bit of a party here with them on Christmas Eve when they opened their presents. They have written some letters to you and I will send them separately in due course. They were very thrilled with their presents. We shall look forward to receiving 'This England'. We hope our presents arrived as timely as yours did.

     The house finally got started just two weeks before Christmas and now has stopped again for three weeks since everything has virtually come to a standstill with the traditional Christmas-New Year shutdown in New Zealand. Anyway quite a lot has been done even in two weeks and we have all the poles (23 of them) in place and concreted in. It looks like a great big sailing ship at the moment without any masts, lots of poles sticking up out of the ground, the tallest of them being 30 feet high so you can imagine it it quite dramatic. We were very excited to get started after so much waiting for permits and builders to be available. We are still hoping to have it finished by May but that will depend on a lot of things such as the weather etc. At the moment the weather is glorious and ideal for building but as I said nothing is happening - all rather frustrating.

     I have taken on some extra work over the holiday period doing a project for one of the meat companies (Borthwick-CWS, a merger of the British Co-Operative Wholesale Society and Thomas Borthwick and Sons of Smithfield). This will take me around the North Island for 10 days or so immediately after the New Year (Wellington, New Plymouth, Palmerston North, Masterton) together with Professor Eccles from the London Business School and Professor Bowie from the University of Strathclyde. I finish that on Saturday 12th January and on the Sunday 13th Mary and I are going to the Coromandel for a week of peace and quiet. Then back to work on Monday 22nd with a big conference starting at Auckland University. So we are not going to get much of a break this year and are really looking forward to our week away. Mary has been working in the salon for most of the holiday period so she needs a break too. We spent Christmas Day with her family this year and the children had their Christmas at Sandown Road. This Saturday we are taking them to the Circus at the Epsom Showgrounds.

     Hope you are both keeping well. A Happy New Year and our love, John and Mary.

New Years Day 1979

   Dear Ma and Daddy,

   We are now back in Akure after our travels. We did some shopping in P.H.and then drove to Umuahia where we spent the night with the Goodchild’s again. On Wednesday we left there and travelled to Onitsha in the morning via Owerri where we went to see the Kybirds. They were not in but we drank coffee in their house and read some of their children’s books about Mr Noisy and Mr Chatterbox – very nice books in the series about Mr Man. I am sure Stuart would like them when he is a bit bigger. Gemma got fever that morning so we dosed her with Nivaquin. She felt really rotten. At Iyi Enu Hospital we saw Doctors Ann Phillips and Sue Williams in their consulting rooms and then we went on to the Beavers where we also met the Kybirds. They are a very nice young couple with a baby called Seth and another on the way.

   After a picnic lunch in the Beavers’ house we crossed the Niger and went to see the Bishop of Asaba – who was out - we left a message about Dorothy Dykes visit in February. Then we met Mary Griffin and Thankanma with Grace Webster staying in Asaba so we had a chat with them before continuing on the road to Benin where we stayed the night with Ruth Howard. She had not been able to join us in Bonny partly because of pressure of school work and partly because Irene, a friend of hers was bereaved of her husband very suddenly. He was a Nigerian aged about 40 who suddenly died of a heart attack. Jane Pelly was also in Benin. She is now packing up and getting ready to return home in January. I am not quite sure how it is going to be when she gets home. I thought she was going to live with her mother but now she says that her mother doesn’t want to have her to share the house and she keeps sending her adverts of jobs in places like the Cayman Islands!!

   Gemma really collapsed at Ruth’s and had proper malaria, including nasty nightmares … but she pretty quickly recovered after a day more – and is OK now. We had a puncture on the road from Benin to Akure so we wasted a good deal of time getting the tyre changed and then getting a man to put in a new inner tube.

   It is good to be back - it’s a good deal cooler than Bonny, especially at night. Then Gemma and Shirley enjoy going to swim at the Taylor Woodrow pool. We have had a quiet weekend and done a jigsaw and yesterday we had Sheila and Jane here for a ‘Christmas lunch’- chicken, sausages, cabbage, potatoes, bread sauce and gravy followed by Christmas pudding with ice cream and jelly.
   Sheila and Myrtle very kindly gave me a liquidiser for Christmas so I have been trying it out. Afterward we had some of your chocolates with our coffee – super! I had toffee and mallow. We spent yesterday at Idanre with the Akinbadewa’s. Their road is bad but it was good to see them.

   Gemma has a rash all over and a headache. Shirley felt sick - I am the only one who has been healthy throughout our trip. Maybe we travelled a bit far!
   With much love to you both,
   Elizabeth

   A detour on Black Magic chocolates*

   [The 'toffee and mallow' that Elizabeth refers to is from a box of  Black Magic chocolates - I think it is the one in the shape of a diamond (second up from bottom left) but that may be another favourite, fudge. Dad loved chocolates and every Christmas we would have a box of Black Magic. We all had our favourites but, if memory serves me correctly, Elizabeth and I particularly competed for the fudge, the 'truffle and nougat', and the toffee and mallow. There were two layers in our Christmas boxes and one of us, if we thought we could get away with it, would pinch one of our favourites from the lower layer before the top layer was empty].

Flat 4, 30 Tamaki Avenue, Otahuhu, 9th February 1979.

     Dear Mum and Dad,

     Many thanks for your letters and the photos. The one with Robert taken in December with his grandma and grandad is a real beauty - and you both look very fit and well. It's great to hear that you managed a really good walk on the Malvern Hills. I think you have less grey hairs than I have, Dad - what is the secret (Mary reckons you must be dying your hair!). We read all about your snow but it's quite dramatic to see it lying at the back of 64 and all over the hills, especially when we are at the height of our usual summer drought. Thank you too for the painting of Wells Cathedral - very nostalgic.

     I was glad to hear the book and photos had arrived safely. We are still hearing about your industrial relations problems. Our main trouble spot is the meat processing industry which accounts for about a half of all the stoppages in NZ although only employs 5 to 10% of the total workforce. These are what are usually called the 'freezing works' where they slaughter all the lambs and beef and then put them into cold store for shipping overseas. During January, as I may have told you, I spent 12 days with one of the big processing companies (Borthwicks) and now I am engaged, together with some of my colleagues at Auckland University, in a large research project which involves, amongst other things, interviewing various people in the four freezing works the company has in NZ. We start next Monday at Waingawa, near Masterton in the Wairarapa and the following week we go to Fielding in the Manawatu, near Palmerston North. The week after that term starts so we will not visit the other two works until later in the year. It is a fascinating project and at the end of it (about August) I hope we will have a better idea of some of the things that can be done to improve industrial relations in NZ's most vital export industry.

     Good to hear that your decorating is going along well. Our house has got underway again after the big lull over the Christmas holiday. They have most of the ground floor in place now so we can begin to get a better idea of what it is going to be like and how big the rooms will be. We had never realised that we had a step down from the dining area to the kitchen and when we saw it thought the builder had made a mistake so we had to go back and look at the drawings and sure enough there was a step - we wonder what other surprises we will get before it is finished! Anyway it is all very exciting and we still think we might be finished in time to move in during May. I shall be spending Saturday putting drainage in behind the retaining walls and hope to get the children over to help - the builder has rigged up a chute to tip the scoria down so they will probably enjoy messing about with that. Last Tuesday was a public holiday, Waitangi Day, and we spent most of it painting three coats of waterproofing on the blockwork underneath the house: it was a black colour and I think more of it ended up on me than on the walls. After we had finished we had a picnic on the hill. It's certainly a refreshing place to be as there is usually a bit of a breeze even when it is very hot down here in Otahuhu.

     Love from us all in NZ, 

     John, Mary and the children.

     

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*A Detour on Black Magic Chocolates

Black Magic were introduced by Rowntrees, the Quaker company based in York, in 1933. The company was founded by Henry Isaac Rowntree in 1862 and run on strictly Quaker principles. By the turn of the century it was a substantial establishment in the city and provided, among other benefits for its workforce, a village with a bank, dentist, library, school rooms, theatre, swimming pool, allotment and sports ground.

Rowntrees, York, by the river Ouse at the end of the nineteenth century

In the 1920s and early 30s the company was struggling to survive. At that time chocolate boxes were hand-made and elaborately decorated and affordable only by the very rich. The most expensive chocolates would retail at the present day equivalent of £250. Black Magic, introduced in 1933, were designed to have a mass market appeal; they were extensively advertised and promoted to make their gift synonymous with courtship.

Rowntrees merged with Mackintosh's in 1989 and, after a battle with Suchard, were taken over by Nestle in 1988. 

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**  This infamous test, in which Grahan Mourie's All Blacks beat Wales 13-12 at Cardiff Arms Park, has gone into NZ rugby history as one of the most controversial. With two minutes to play and Wales leading 12-10, the All Black lock, Andy Haden took a dive from a lineout in the pretence that he had been illegally pushed. The referee awarded a penalty (worth three points) which was converted by Brian McKechnie, NZ's replacement full-back.
     Brian McKechnie was later involved in another controversial incident, this time on 1st February 1981 in a cricket test between NZ and Australia. This was the infamous 'underarm bowling' match in which, with Brian McKechnie facing the bowling and NZ needing six to win off the last ball, the Australian skipper Ian Chappell ordered his brother Trevor to bowl the ball underarm thereby making it impossible to hit for six.
     Both these incidents can be viewed on youtube.
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Previous blogs in this series, Brother and Sister, Worlds Apart:

     (1) 75, 17th November 2013: Dead Ducklings, War Canoes, Steel Works and a Leper Settlement. [Sept/Oct 1972]

     (2) 92, 16th February 2014: Tiddlywinks, Happy Families and Christmas "down the creeks". [Nov/Dec 1972]

     (3) 95, 17th March 2014: Vera Lynn, the Rolling Stones and Scrapping for Petrol and Water in Nigeria. [Dec'72/Feb'73

     (4) 98, 8th April 2014: Brotherly Love. [March 1973]

     (5) 104, 15th July 2014: Englishness Plays Abroad - Harold Pinter and John Mortimer in Lagos, Edward Lear in Auckland. [March/June 1973]

     (6) 116, 29th November 2014: Sister's Wedding and Antelope and Dodo for Supper. [Jan/March 1974]