My name is Comfort Adesuwa Ekimona Ero. I was born in Nigeria. I grew up in a little village. I have very fond memories of my stay in that village because I stayed there till age 9.My father sent me to the city to continue my education. He realized my skill in storytelling and said “Maybe this girl should go to the school run by foreigners here”. The fond memories I have are of everyone living in the same household. My father was a chief and he had a large compound. You moved from one side to the other to see uncles and aunties, cousins. I loved that, that we were all living together. What I do today is tapped from that part of life. I didn’t realize how that impacted my life. Now I really appreciate the stories my father, my mother, my grandparents and all those aunties told.They have really impacted my life.
My father influenced me a lot. He sent me to school when it was highly unpopular to send girls to school. I have a book titled “My Father the Chief”, which I published in Nigeria when my father had died.I am very grateful to him today because he went through lot of sacrifice. Money was very rare and he sent us to a missionary school where you had to pay a lot. He did so much to help. He was very very good to us.
Eventually, I went to school, to university. There was a military coup d’etat. It was a strange occurrence to us.Things changed a lot. Life became unbearable. The students were always on the street to fight for illiterate people. And they killed many of them and they formed a song that said “kill as many students as you can but we will continue.” They closed down schools. We had to be planting things behind our house to eat. You plant, make eggs, sell this and that. Teachers were not teaching. Schools were closed most of the time. I just decided it was time to move. I could not raise 6 children in that situation
One of my daughters had a scholarshipin Victoria. She was here when that problem started in Nigeria. She finished her diploma and had admission waiting for her but the university was closed. She had to find something else and she went to UVic. She made the move and we came here in 1996, me and 5 of my children. .
When I came to Canada, my first impression was “Thank God we have freedom.” There was no military. I don’t suspect anybody coming to say what are you teaching. But there were things that shocked me like the warmth of the weather was not there. It was the end of September and it was already cold in terms of Africa by then. And the warmth of the people was not there.
Secondly, I thought you just applied for a job and got it just like that.The most challenging thing was getting a job. I joined a job finding club for a month. The first job I got was taking care of a daycare in a gym. Meanwhile, the job finding club said if you have a certificate from your country for teaching, put it together and contact the BC College of Teachers and I did all that. Eventually they gave me a license. I called the school district but they said there was no space even for substitute teachers. I was very depressed.
Eventually, somebody from the Inter-Cultural Association of Victoria called and said “We heard you are a good storyteller. There is class for seniors.Can you do storytelling for them?” They said you can do a proposal to work with seniors here two times a week. I loved working with seniors, they very trusting, very nice and listening – like children. That was my first community work in Victoria working with seniors and helping them with English. Some said they were past teaching so I I pushed all my curriculum papers aside and we used stories, danced and had field trip to malls.That is how we learned. They loved it.
We moved in 2000 to Vancouver. Again I started working as a volunteer in the Multicultural Family Centre. I came to volunteer with the women’s group. The women come every Saturday with children who need to be taught. I started teaching them on the side. Then a position came up for three days so I got a job to work with children.That was the best, most fulfilling thing I did because I saw the needs of those children was so high coupled with the fact that their parents could not help them with their homework. We formed a homework club for those children. Eventually we moved it to Burnaby where most of them lived.
I also tried to help them with their cultural values so they are happy the way they are and can fit into the normal school system. That job gave me a nice sense of fulfillment. It was a job but I didn’t really do it as a job. About 40% of that was volunteer. I worked there till midnight and on weekends. It was very fulfilling.
My dream for the African Canadian community and for any other community will be that they should try to build capacity to help themselves. If you have strength to do that you can do it. In whatever I do, I try to model what I would like the community to be like. I placed a lot of emphasis on my children’s education. The 6 of them have graduated. From what I see and hear in my community, I know that is very effective. Many people insist on their children going to school. They will grow into people who can take charge.
The biggest challenges facing our community are lack of education and lack of services relevant to them, that they understand. If you are setting up counseling services, Africans are not used to go to counseling with strangers, to tell them their private issues. They are not used to that. They are used to trusting you first then they can talk to you. So I think before services are made for Africans, they need to see Africans themselves. African workers should have an input into what they need.
The message I would like to send Canadians as an immigrant is try to understand people. Like that quote during the last campaign “don’t judge someone by the look of their skin but by the strength of their character.” You don’t know how people are.There are a lot of challenges of racism and discrimination.
To Canadians, I say thank you for giving asylum and safe haven to people who are otherwise persecuted in their home country. At the same time, there should be a total welcoming spirit with disregard to how that person looks. It is better to really study the strength of character and the skills, the experience that person has. Everybody is endowed with something. One may discover that the person we are looking down on is not like that. We should give an opportunity to Africans to thrive as well. Look at Obama now. If he had been thrown aside, he may not have reached that level. It is good to give opportunity to people.
Since I joined the Masabo Cultural Company, we did storytelling in hundreds of schools all across Canada but mainly in BC. The acceptance of storytelling was great with the children, across all lands, across all barriers, across everything. When I first came, someone told me your accent so heavy, children won’t understand. But those first kids in Victoria loved the stories. They gave me the license to tell. If I had listened to a friend or the people saying your accent is this or that, I wouldn’t be where I am today. So storytelling is a powerful tool to crush all those barriers. It is enjoyed by adults, children, anybody, provided you tell it well, you involve them, oh great! That’s another fulfillment for me, the storytelling and the theatre we do on the side.
For me, multiculturalism means many cultures living together in one bubble but still maintaining its individualism within that bubble.Within your own tiny little bubbles the great circle, you can still cross and feel comfortable. That’s what I call multiculturalism and we live that in Canada and like Canada for that, for allowing people to be who they are and trying to melt them into one culture. They allow you to be who you are and that gives you a measure of confidence
Some special memories that I have with multiculturalism here is the way I dress. I count it as a special thing for me, the way I dress, especially in the summer. I like wearing African attire doing my stories and doing my theatre and giving talks, people accept it. So there is a message for people out there. Some of my people ask why I still do that. Canadians themselves, this country was built by immigrants, except First Nations people. We brought what we had from home. What I’m wearing could be the culture of tomorrow. The stories I tell could become part of Canadian stories tomorrow. Whatever we are doing will now become part of multiculturalism.