
Truly amazing story as shared by a Nigerian man, Ken Davidson.
On a subzero 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 dialed 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 gob smacked, 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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