My parents’ upbringing was so very different from ours. My own childhood was very secure and privileged — just about as perfect and precious as it’s possible for a childhood to be. We grew up in Washington, DC. My mum was vice-president of the World Bank then, and my dad is a surgeon. We went to quite an establishment school, and a lot of my friends’ parents were ambassadors or in government. Our house was a very happy place. My parents were strict, and at the time I didn’t agree with everything they did.
My mum is a very powerful woman. She knows how she wants things done, and if you don’t do it her way you’re in trouble. She can be very demanding in what she expects of you — how you behave, how you do at school. She showed us that you should always do the best you can at whatever you do. That’s what she’s done throughout her own life, and that’s how she came to be Nigeria’s finance minister — one of only two women in the world doing that job — and hailed as a great reformer.
My parents have always been very good people, dedicated not just to us but to other people’s children too. My mum’s great passion is for development work. She would take us with her to visit African countries while she was working, so we got a strong sense of what some people have and others don’t have. Nigeria itself has very varying standards of living — you have people for whom it’s not a question of “Can I buy my child a Nintendo?” but “Can I afford to send my child to school?” Because there are not free state secondary schools in Nigeria.
It was in 2003 that President Obasanjo asked my mum to take the job of finance minister — which meant being based in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja. That was a big decision for her, especially as my youngest brother was still at high school in Washington and my dad’s work is there. She asked us to decide whether she should take it. That was really cool.
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We were used to Mum travelling a lot, but having your mother away from home for two weeks at a time is very different from seeing your mum for three days every three months — which is what happened once she went to Nigeria. It was okay for us three older children, because we were away at university. But it has been very tough for my dad and my younger brother, who stayed in Washington. And it was hard for Mum as well. When she first went to Abuja she had no one with whom she could unwind, like she can with her family.
Nigeria is in great need of reforms, so my mum was trying to turn it around and invest in its long-term future, and secure debt relief. This is very, very hard work, because there are so many vested interests. She says: “When people say Nigeria is corrupt, are you going to be the kind of person who, if given the opportunity, will do something about it?” She feels that if you’re not here in this world to do stuff for other people, then why are you here?
It wasn’t until I was at Harvard that I began to want to understand where I come from — because I can’t say I’m a Nigerian and I can’t say I’m an American, and terms like Nigerian-American don’t really mean anything. While I was co-president of the African Students Association at Harvard, we got the former Ugandan child soldier China Keitetsi to come and talk to us. What she said really shocked me. Afterwards we were chatting, and I began to realise how my background could not be more different from hers. I have two parents who are always there to support me. What do you do when you don’t have that? What do you do when you’ve been kidnapped as a young child and your world is that of a child soldier from the age of nine? Who takes over the roles of your parents? So my book is about a horrendously violent childhood, as far from my own as it is possible to be.
I decided to go and stay with Mum in Nigeria and work on my book there. Until I lived with her in Abuja I hadn’t realised the incredible stress she had to endure every day. Her timetable was insane. She went to work at 6am, then didn’t return until 11pm. I wouldn’t wish that job on anybody. Sometimes when she came back from work she could barely make it up the stairs. She’d say: “This is so frustrating — I have to read my files.” I’d try to make her slow down. We’d chat and she’d ask me what I’d done with my day, and she’d be a mum again and start nit-picking: why haven’t I cut my hair? What am I going to do with my life?
My mum was very excited and happy about me getting my book published. As for her own work, she will never feel that she’s achieved all she wants to. So, for now, I think it’s up to us, her family, to try and be as supportive as we can.
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NGOZI: As a little boy, Uzo was very clever, but sustained effort was not his best trait. If you asked him to do something one way, he wanted to do it another way. We’d argue and it would take a monumental effort to convince him to change his mind. We spent a lot of time telling him that to do really well is not about just being clever, but about making that sustained effort. Whenever he did that, he got marvellous grades. My husband and I started to take the children from Washington back home to Nigeria at a very early age. So they grew up familiar with both backgrounds and asking questions about what it was like during the Biafran war. Then, when Uzo was about 18, he said to me: “Mummy, I want to go home to Nigeria, by myself — not on a family trip. I want to feel the place without you hovering around interpreting things for me.” So he went by himself to Nigeria, and that gave him another perspective.
The caring Uzo has been a very interesting discovery for me. First, we discovered that Uzo has a great sense of responsibility towards his younger brothers, who relied on him as their elder brother. Then he came to stay with me in Nigeria, when I’d first taken the job as finance minister. He was very, very supportive. He really worried about me working so hard, and he’d try to get me away from the office, to make sure I ate good food and took my vitamins.
I was very surprised. You don’t expect your 22-year-old to pay attention to those kinds of things, especially a son.
When Uzo was graduating, I was shocked to learn he’d won virtually every prize for literature, writing and English that undergraduates could possibly win. He’d only told us about one or two awards. So we were very, very proud.
And I was proud when I read his book — and shocked too. Uzo gets into the mind of this boy who’s a child soldier in such a graphic way. I know some of the book is an exploration of his roots — it is set in some unspecified African country, but he even writes as Nigerians speak. His story is the horror of the child who’s converted into doing something that is unthinkable and unimaginable — a child solider who brutally kills people.
My husband and I had always thought Uzo would go to medical school and combine his writing with that. But for a while it looked as though Uzo just wanted to be a writer. We were very proud, but torn. We worried: would he continue to have the inspiration to write? Are his books going to sell? How will he support himself? But now he’s decided he will go to medical school after all. As parents, we say: “Medicine is stable; you’ll help people. You can combine writing and medicine.” And that’s what he will do. Selfishly, of course, I have expectations: I want him to be a doctor, I want him to be a writer, I want him to help other people. I say to myself that whatever he comes up with, I must try to trust his instincts. But as a parent, first and foremost, I want Uzo to be happy.