White Nigerian Americans from my village! (II)

But he soon realized that the black kids he met in America were different from the ones he left in Nigeria. This was a period when racial segregation was still ruthlessly enforced, when Civil Rights agitations were getting more intense than ever before, and when people feared that America was headed for a catastrophic race […]

But he soon realized that the black kids he met in America were different from the ones he left in Nigeria. This was a period when racial segregation was still ruthlessly enforced, when Civil Rights agitations were getting more intense than ever before, and when people feared that America was headed for a catastrophic race war.

He said would often ignore the racial divisions, which didn’t make any sense to him, and go play with black Americans his age— to the astonishment of his white friends. But he was always greeted with hostility and occasionally physical violence. Black American kids his age never trusted his motives. They couldn’t believe he just wanted to hang out with them because he felt more comfortable in their midst than he did in the midst of white kids.

They didn’t trust him. How could they? How could the black American kids have known that John’s best childhood friends were black, that his parents brought up scores of black children as if they were their own biological kids? How could they appreciate the fact that John’s upbringing made him impervious to something as incidental and as superficial as racial differences?

Unfortunately, John couldn’t quite escape this awkward quandary even as he grew older. As an adult, he was also once called a “racist” when he told some black Americans that he was more African than they were in experiential terms.

The significant thing, though, is that the legacy of the Dunaways continues to live in my hometown. The Baptist Primary School in my hometown (which I attended) was built by them. They built the first secondary school in the community (Baptist Grammar School), which I also attended. In fact, the Baptist Hospital in Okuta—where I was born—was built by the Dunaways. So, in more ways than one, I am a “child” of the Dunaways.

This was even more so for my dad’s kid brother, Malam Ismaila Kperogi, who was almost literally brought up by the Dunaways. They sent him to the same schools they sent their kids. After his high school education, they sent him to the UK for higher education. My uncle says the Dunaways decided against sending him to the United States because they feared that exposure to the searing anti-black racism prevalent in the American society at the time would make him hate Americans.

Yet, in spite of the praiseworthy efforts of the Dunaways and their successors, few people in our community converted to Christianity. To this day, you can count the number of Christian families in Okuta on the tip of your fingers. My grandfather was one of the earliest converts to Christianity because of his friendship with the older Dunaway and his desire to give his children Western education. My dad refused to convert because he was actually brought up by my granddad’s relation who was an Islamic scholar. By 1949 when my granddad converted to Christianity, my dad was already a teenager with fairly well-formed views on religion. My dad’s kid brother, Ismaila, reverted to Islam after returning from the UK. Of my grandfather’s 8 children, 3 are Christians and five are Muslims.

So I grew up in an extended family that was multi-religious—in a community that is otherwise over 90 percent Muslim. At home, we celebrated Muslim and Christian festivals in common and had never had any conflicts arising from religious differences. It is this background that explains my tolerant outlook to religion.

Unfortunately, on March 12 when I called John to inform him that my wife had a baby boy whom we have named Adam in honor of my dad, his wife picked up the phone and told me John had died about two months earlier. I was devastated. I cried like a baby.

John was one of the kindest, pleasantest, most gracious human beings I’ve ever had the pleasure to relate with. He was deeply religious but incredibly tolerant and respectful of other people’s faiths. He also loved Nigeria and Nigerians with the same sincerity that his mom and dad did.

He considered himself Nigerian to his death. If I remember correctly, he had a Nigerian passport. Each time he visited his childhood friends in my hometown every once in a while, he told me how he always joked with law enforcement officers who stopped him for identification. He would often tell them he was a white Nigerian. He said he cherished the shock he often saw on the faces of the officers. With his inimitable mimetic skills, he would affect a Hausa- or Yoruba-inflected English accent to tell me how he talked with Nigerians who doubted his claim to be a Nigerian.

His death is especially painful because he and I often discussed the subject of death. He would tell me that considering my granddad died at 125, I had the longevity gene in me and would probably live as long as my granddad did. (Well, that’s not necessarily true; my dad’s immediate younger brother died in his 60s). He said most people in his family don’t live very long. And he died at the age of 57.

Sometime toward the end of last year John told me that he had been struck by partial stroke but said he was hopeful that he would recover. A few weeks later, he told me the results of several tests at different hospitals came back negative. So my anxieties subsided. But on February 3, this athletic, health-conscious, God-fearing, complaisant man just stopped breathing, according to his daughter. And there went a distinguished, if unsung, white Nigerian American.

 May his soul rest in peace.

Concluded.