by Lynn Schler
Although seamen were quick to identify their foreign wives and children as their families, seamen’s “marriages” abroad stood in stark contrast to the commitments and responsibilities that accompanied their marriages in Nigeria. Seamen claimed that their salaries went in large part to their Nigerian wives, who maintained their households and raised their children while they were away. Many explained that half of their monthly allotment was collected by their wives at the shipping offices in Lagos in their absence, and this money was used to pay for food, rent, and children’s school fees. Seamen did not recognize the same obligations to foreign wives and children. While conjugal ties to women abroad provided seamen with personal and social sustenance, seamen were forthcoming in explaining that they did not provide any support, financial or otherwise, for these families. After retirement, most were lacking in any resources to travel abroad, and the only long-term expectation the seamen seemed to have of these relationships was the exchange of greeting cards and letters around holidays each year.45 From their testimonies, it seems that this was all their families abroad could expect from them in return. One informant disdained these relationships, claiming there was no correlation between the social and financial commitment to a Nigerian wife and a wife abroad:
What happened was that when you go to the clubhouse and you meet a girl and there is sexual intercourse together and she gives birth to a child, but that does not make her a wife. These girls were prostitutes. A lot of these prostitutes and their children lived on government welfare fund, when they say such a child has no father . . . or they say the father of the child is a seaman; because seamen has no time to look for anyone. Most of these children, bore by these women of easy virtue, cannot be brought to Nigeria by these seamen. For instance, there used to be a nightclub in Hamburg, Germany, where we paid to watch nude ladies; the same club is in Bahia, Brazil. Do you call such ladies wives?46
Seamen interviewed saw no contradiction in defining their relationships with women abroad as marriage, largely because they employed a different set of rules for social conduct and responsibilities during their travels outside of Nigeria. Informants’ descriptions of foreign marriages therefore provide important insights into the seamen’s perception of themselves as a migratory and fleeting presence in the social landscapes they visited outside of Nigeria. The notion of “a seaman’s life” was invoked over and over to explain the fluid and ephemeral nature of social and cultural ties that seamen exploited within the context of their sojourns abroad.47 As one informant explained, “I have children over there that I can’t claim because I am a poor man in Nigeria. I can’t ask them to come over here. . . . I have those children in Liverpool. I also have children in Spain. You know seamen and their activities on duty. Seamen, generally, like to go out and make new friends.”48 Men acknowledged that their lifestyle made it impossible to expect or demand too much from their role as fathers on either side of the ocean, because, as one explained, “The seafarer’s job is more of traveling from one country to another and if you have a young boy, probably, you left him and traveled, by the time you return, he may not recognize you as his father because you have been away for more than four to six months.”49
Seamen’s wives in Nigeria had little choice but to accept that their husbands led “a seaman’s way of life.” They acknowledged that this lifestyle included the nurturing of romantic relationships in various ports of call, and seamen’s wives interviewed claimed that they were aware of the wives their husbands had abroad. While they might not have been enthusiastic about these relationships, those interviewed saw it as an inevitable consequence of the seaman’s lifestyle. As one woman explained:
I must surely ask him how his journey went, and he, too, is obligated to tell me. He brings pictures and wrote letters. We can only be jealous that he has girlfriends but we cannot go with them to sea in annoyance and protest. I cannot say he shouldn’t have because for someone who has been on the high sea for months, he needs to get back to life and no matter what you do, a man will always enjoy himself. Once he takes care of me and if he did not bring his girlfriend into the house or if I did not see it myself, then there is no problem.50
Nigerian wives might have resigned themselves to their husbands’ lifestyles because they had little choice. One seaman explained his Nigerian wife’s attitude to his family in Liverpool: “She has no option, except if she wants me to throw her out.”51 Seamen’s wives usually had no contact with these women abroad, but occasionally wives or children from abroad would visit, and Nigerian wives would have to welcome them. One of the wives interviewed claimed that she was expected to host her husband’s Dutch wife while she visited Lagos, and she even assisted in the birth of this woman’s child. In the process, she constructed her own notions of infidelity that allowed her to embrace her husband’s foreign wife:
Seamen generally get different girlfriends in all parts of the world due to the nature of their work. My husband is a classical example in this regard. As a matter of fact, he even brought back home a Dutch lady who got pregnant for him and gave birth to a baby girl called Maria. The woman even stayed with us in this country until she later left back to her country. While the woman was with us, I took good care of her and her baby girl such that when the lady was going back to her country, her baby would not even allow me to leave her to her real mother. It was an experience that shows the true nature of most seamen. As for me when the situation happened, I just accepted my fate because there was nothing I could do to help the situation. Since I knew the working conditions of seamen, I tried as much as possible to cope with my husband’s absence from home for a long period of time. For that period of time, it was a good job to do. I am proud of my husband as a seaman. It was compulsory for a seaman to have a wife. Whether the men like it or not, seamen must have a wife. For those that were not married, infidelity was very common with them.52
Living a seaman’s life was both explanation and justification for seamen’s ability to invent and reinvent their identities and allegiances in a fluid array of settings and encounters. When asked to recount something of his social relationships abroad, one retired seaman responded, “People had nicknames and they were called by that name and not their original names. So, we didn’t really bother about our names.”53 The meetings and social attachments that seamen initiated in volatile and changing social and cultural landscapes reflected a present-based and utilitarian practice of latching on to individuals, groups, and communities that offered extant sustenance and support. Thus, musicians sought out others to play and perform with, Christians allowed missionaries to care for them at every port of call, and all knew where to go to share a drink.54
DEFINING HOME
Seamen ultimately honed an empowered worldview that enabled them to imagine a sense of community and belonging wherever they found themselves. As one seaman poignantly described it, “The fact was that anywhere the ship sailed to, that was where we were.”55 By making strategic use of local alliances on the one hand, and situating themselves somehow outside the political and cultural boundaries of any given local setting on the other, seamen were able to nurture a sense of belonging and proprietorship in many places that were, at least on an official level, unwelcoming. This is particularly evident in seamen’s descriptions of Liverpool as home base. A seaman’s sense of belonging in the city was far removed from official British immigration policies:
Liverpool city is second to Lagos in terms of Nigerian populace. In Liverpool, you don’t feel that you were in a foreign land. After the harsh day’s job, in the evening, you visited any of the clubhouses: Yoruba, Igbo, Sierra Leonean, and Black Star clubhouses. So, we felt at home because we saw our ethnic people, kinsmen, and so on. We were free.56
I prefer England. I prefer England because the people there care so much about the welfare of the other person.57
Liverpool is just like a home. Anything you want there, you can get it. For example, if you want palm wine, you can get it in Liverpool, if you want amala [
local dish made from yams], you can get it. A lot of Nigerians are there.58
England is just my second home. I was in Liverpool.59
That [Liverpool] was our Lagos. We called it “New Lagos.”60
Yes, I visited different clubs in Germany, Holland, England, and Liverpool is in fact a black man’s home. I felt good everywhere because I am an international man.61
Seamen’s descriptions of Liverpool made no mention of the historical, political, and cultural attempts to segregate, exclude, and repatriate black seamen from England to Africa during the colonial and postcolonial eras.62 At the same time, the Nigerian seamen of this study defined Nigeria, and not Liverpool, as home. In explaining this choice, seamen did not make reference to political or social discrimination, but rather presented their choice as both personal and based on practical considerations. In explaining the choice to return to Nigeria, many cited the cold weather as a major factor determining that they could never live in England. One seaman interviewed said, “No, I can’t stay over there. Firstly, I never liked staying over there because I hate cold, I can’t even cope with it, if not for the cold I would have been staying over there a long time ago. After all, seamen dropped down and are staying over there. Even when I was abroad, I only went out when it was extremely important for me to do so, else I was always indoors watching TV. It was not as if I hated Europe, but what would I be doing over there?”63 Another seaman explained, “If you are getting old, you don’t stay longer in that place because of cold, or else you die for nothing. . . . I had to buy a coat, put on double socks, and I took coffee every minute, and there were cigarettes to warm up.”64 He claimed that he ate spicy food from home to keep warm, while another informant recounted that he always ran instead of walking whenever in Liverpool to combat the cold.65 But more than the weather, informants most cited their families back home in Nigeria as the reason to return.66 Seamen claimed they could not abandon their wives, children, and extended families in Nigeria, revealing that their strongest identification with family and community was grounded in Nigeria. Some claimed they could not settle in England because they were obligated to care for their parents back home.67 Seamen’s testimonies revealed that their foreign families did not engender the same kinds of commitments. This could be seen in the following excerpt of an interview: “In England, I had a woman that had a baby for me. She is still in England. The baby is now a big girl and she lives in Liverpool. . . . I brought the baby for a visit to Nigeria and I sent her back to England. The girl was born 1979; she is thirty-one years old now. I am in touch with her very constantly.” When asked why he did not want to live in England, the man replied, “I love Nigeria so much. I have a wife and kids here also. I have a good relationship with my daughter in England but not with her mother.”68
While seamen fashioned their decisions to return to Nigeria on personal considerations, testimonies recalling encounters with racism and other exclusionary practices perhaps reveal a more complicated reality. The seaman’s way of life was clearly not immune to the frequent confrontations with racism and prejudice both on board ships and at ports of call. As seen in chapter 1, acts of discrimination and violence perpetrated by white crew members against black seamen were certainly not uncommon on board ships.69 But just as seamen had little recourse for action against racism offshore, experiences in ports of call were also painful reminders of their status as black working-class men. One seaman recounted his first visit to Scotland: “When we got to the port after the closing hour, four of us went out to join a bus to go and buy something. When we were inside the bus, the little children on the bus kept looking at us strangely, they didn’t sit beside us; maybe that was their first time of seeing a black man and there was a space for them beside us but they refused. I have experienced a lot.”70
In confronting, resisting, and circumventing racism, seamen invoked the notion of the “seaman’s way of life” to circumvent local hierarchies of power. This could be seen in the following account of the same seaman’s visit to South Africa during the era of apartheid: “In South Africa in 1970s there was black toilet and white toilet. . . . Well, we always told them that we don’t live here, we are from ships. I remember at the dock I didn’t look at the notice, the sign on the wall; I just went in to ease myself. A white later came to me and said hey, this is not your toilet, go to black man’s. I told him look at my ship, I didn’t know. And the man heard and he said next time if you want to ease yourself, go to black man’s toilet.” The same seaman even imagined his own models of racialism: “You know Singapore is a country with mixed color. They are just like Pakistani or Indian people. Even a Singapore man is like a black man, it is just the hair that is different.”71
THE TRANSNATIONAL TRADING NETWORKS OF SEAMEN
As seen in the previous chapter, Nigerian seamen could not rely on the Nigerian Union of Seamen to serve as an effective instrument through which they could hope to improve their poor working conditions and compensation. Lacking an effective representative body, seamen had to devise alternative means and strategies to protect and improve their unfavorable conditions of employment. They quickly identified opportunities that could be developed and exploited for earning additional money beyond the context of their official work in seafaring. Within these pockets of autonomy derived from the context of seafaring, seamen initiated a profitable and unofficial trade that maximized benefits for themselves and their families back home in Nigeria. As will be seen below, smuggling can be examined as a measure of seamen’s ingenuity and self-reliance. The flow of goods coordinated by Nigerian seamen across transnational networks provides important insights into the ways in which Africans devised creative strategies for combating their disempowerment in colonial and postcolonial labor regimes. At the same time, the narratives crafted around this unofficial trade provide a unique opportunity for understanding how seamen imagined their power to cross or circumvent the political, economic, and cultural borders that the British colonial regime attempted to secure.
While the lure to become seamen was linked to both imagined and real opportunities for an alternative lifestyle, the actual financial benefits accrued from the work were minimal, and Nigerian seamen used whatever resources they had to engage in independent trade and thus augment their low wages. Forty percent of wages for those employed by Elder Dempster was paid in England in pounds sterling, while the remaining 60 percent was paid in Nigeria. Seamen explained that their wives claimed their allotment in Nigeria, while they used the money they received in England to buy goods for resale.72 Seamen interviewed maintained that everyone exploited the opportunity to trade, as this was the only way to offset the poor salaries. One seaman explained, “I was involved—and I am very happy to tell you that I really did a lot of buying and selling when I was working, and I did that because of our poor wages.”73 Trading was therefore a vital aspect of seamen’s activities, and represented their ability to autonomously improve their financial standing. Money earned from the trade fostered a sense of self-reliance among seamen, and helps to explain why the ineptitude of the union was not more of a cause for unrest. As one man explained, “A lot of us traded on board the ship so as to have more money. And because we were involved in trading activities, we were slow to agitate for an increment in the salary. Even when the union agitated for such, it had no power to push harder. But the proceeds from our trade kept us going.”74 Trading provided a vital supplement to wages that seamen and their families became deeply dependent upon. Seamen and their Nigerian wives claimed that this extra income enabled them to pay their children’s school fees and other household expenses that official wages would not cover.75 One woman explained that the secondhand trade was essential for their survival, as her husband’s salary would barely cover the cost of food.76 Women took an active role in the trade back in Lagos, finding customers for the goods upon their husbands’ arrival. A few of the seamen’s wives even opened up stores where they sold the secondhand goods their husbands brought from abroad.77 One of the seamen
’s wives reported, “On his absence I still continued to sell and he would bring more items. . . . Part of the money was sent to both our parents and the remaining I used to buy goods for my shop. I controlled the money from the shop. I paid for the children school fees from it and he never ask me to give an account because he trusted me.”78
Seamen’s trade involved the importing of secondhand goods from Europe to Africa, as well as the export of some Nigerian products to other ports in Africa and to communities in the African diaspora. In Europe, seamen would buy a wide variety of secondhand goods for resale in Africa, such as electronics, kitchen appliances, refrigerators, freezers, furniture, mattresses, ceramic goods, clothing, tires, and used cars.79 Some of the items were purchased new in England and resold in Nigeria, where there was a strong market for them. One of the seamen’s wives said, “I started trading in the items he brought such as shoes, cloth, wigs from the UK. The wigs were brand-new. I did not have a store, but before he even arrived, people would be demanding for them. And I was able to make money from this. I needed him to go and come back so as to have more goods to sell. There was a time he stayed about one year in India.”80 Seamen would also export Nigerian foodstuffs such as garri, yams, egusi (melon seeds), and elubo (yam flour), as well as palm wine and local beer.81 Some also traded in wooden carvings on special order from customers in Europe or Brazil.82