| Description | An interview with Abdul AHMED, a married man with two sons, two daughters, who is a Student teacher, born in Nevis and now living in Birmingham. Abdul AHMED’s father was a Retired Factory Worker, born in Nevis and his mother a housewife/ nurse born in Curacao. In the interview, he talks about …
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2” I was born in 1952 on the Caribbean Island of Nevis. Nevis is part of the Island Federation of St Kitts and Nevis situated in the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean.
13” Parents never married, father took him from mother and was raised by one of his father’s girl friends.
1.05” Aged 5, sent to live in Antigua with family.
1.27” I was the first…child to fly from our island in an aircraft…this little red thing. The plane was owned by a lady called Mrs Pomeroy who was white…she owned the plantation. She was the only person who actually had this little plane; she was a sweet old dear really…
2.04” Returned when he was seven, and went to school in Newcastle.
2.20” …even then in the…late 50’s…it was like this huge hut, all made of wood, on top of a concrete base…
2.39” Description of the school.
3.45” When I came back from Antigua, I was seven, so that’d be ’59. A year later my father left to come to England and left me on the island…two years after that, so I’d be about 10-ish and I really started playing up…
4.14” Thoughts on his bad behaviour. His father sent for him to go to England.
4.40” Trip to England; story about boat to St Kitts sinking a mile from shore.
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56” Story about running away from school to find his mother.
1.44”…Dad had left, so it’d be about…late 1960, so I just turned up on her doorstep and she just bawled and bawled. It seemed like she cried forever and ever and ever and just held me. And there I stayed…
2.11” His father then sent for him after 3 months.
2.31” Arriving at Heathrow in his best suit, 11 years old and freezing.
2.55” This was July…’65 and it was so cold I could not believe it.
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6” That was July 1963…(corrected date of arrival.)
16”…everything looked grey. I can’t remember any colour…
26” Went to Leicester, went to school. His father had a new family, felt alienated from his new brothers and sisters.
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Attempts to do well for his father, problems with his father.
4.23” Slept on the streets for 3 months.
4.30” …would not go back. That was…about 1967.
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Enrolled in the Army.
1.35” I did 2 years, 11 months and 3 days in the army…wonderful time…I’ve regretted coming out ever since I think. I would repeat that tomorrow morning, it was really good…it stabilised me, it gave me a purpose. I got to meet people of all kinds of different ranges who were like me -alone, but we weren’t alone any more…
2.06” Working together as a unit.
2.26” Based in Wales, returned to Birmingham, story about returning home and bumping into his father on the corner of his road. ‘The child was a man.’
4.54” Interestingly enough…at that point also I realised…just how prejudiced I was…growing up in that street, there was never any issue of black and white…if it was there, I didn’t see it…
6” All children had to do chores, clean the whole street together, then play.
1.54” …we were the only black family in the street…there was Polish, Irish…in the early 60’s people were still coming, you were sending for family members and so on…
2.24” Check with people in street if needed anything fetching from shop, had about 3 teas before you got home.
2.47” The street was the community, the street was your family.
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10” Story about his first smell of curry and ‘racist’ reaction to it.
1.32” I have within me the same stereotypical images of a Black person or of an Asian person or of an Irish person that a white person has.
2.00” Promoted within the army, but refused to go to Northern Ireland, so demoted.
4.05” …But this, no, this is like brother against brother and stuff, I can’t do that. Given my background and stuff…eventually…I bought myself out…
4.28” Readjusting to civil life, went to work for an entertainment company.
4.54” This was 1971…17th October, 1971.
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Working as doorman, promoted to management, helped out friends. Black people beginning to have more cultural input at that time.
3.10” I was with them for 6 years…so we get up to about 1976..’77…and I’ve gone as far within the organisation as I’m gonna go… you can see that the organisation’s reluctant, they don’t have a black manager anywhere, I’m the highest black person within the organisation…I resigned…
4.01” Living in Leicester, married, needed to rethink what going to do.
Found work in Little Hampton, moved, went to night school, then Polytechnic.
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55” It was then that I started to appreciate…some of the difficulties that my Father and others like him had when they first came here because…not only to put in the long hours…but also having to support families back where they came from…
1.46” PostGrad in Business Studies, PostGrad in Marketing, gained place at Surrey University.
3.22” Studied for a year in the United States, Washington. (African American Studies, Postgrad. in Advanced Psychology, PostGrad in Connotative Analysis.)
The barriers to Black males, educational under-achievement.
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Removed his son from his mother, repeated what his Father did.
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5” …when I returned from the States…my mind was heavily set on…what contribution can I make to ensure that black male children didn’t…go through the same sort of problems that I had…
24” Community work, studied to be a teacher, started lecturing.
Started working in Midlands with Numeracy and Literacy.
1.24” I started doing that around…June, ’94 and by February ’95 I’d moved…back up here, ‘cos I’d miss all the family connections really…
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4”…in 1997 I became the Chairperson for the St Kitts & Nevis Association in Birmingham…I really began to have a greater involvement…with St Kitts and Nevis Nationals living in Birmingham.
30” Examples of Association activities.
2.30” …in September 1998 the islands were hit by a hurricane…as the chair I established a disaster committee…
4.47” …1988 was the first time I returned and I’ve been home every year since, in 1998, November…we made up a research time, went down to the islands to conduct research into the social and economic impact of an actual disaster…
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20” Story of going back for the first time and seeing his mother for the first time in 27 years.
57” …Mum invited Dad to the house for dinner and so for the first time, we were the three of us…we sat at the table, had a meal together…I ended up crying like a baby…no matter how big you get…the contact you get with your parents seems to be paramount...my son ended up cuddling me…
2.48” Got divorced, remarried, another child, separated.
Reflections on failed relationships, focus on academia.
4.51” …through my experiences, I became a Moslem…I became a Moslem in October, 1994.
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4” …at that point, everything I thought I was, or wanted to be came together. I was very clear about who I was, what I wanted to do, where I fitted…and that was totally against everything that I was surrounded including immediate family members and wider family members…
34” Some of his family are Seventh Day Adventist, Methodist.
Remarried, a son, part of the wider Moslem Community.
1.45” Being a Moslem, going to the mosque, mixture of people.
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28” …there is a growing trend amongst…African Caribbean males to convert to Islam…
1.36” Retraining to be a Secondary School English teacher.
Wants to help all children, not just black children.
4.32” …it was 11 when I came here and things went wrong for me, it’s probably why I’ve pin-pointed that particular age as the point to start, so that’s basically what I’m doing…
4.46” Last year…October ’99 I had a book published…this book makes the link between a slave plantation on St Kitts and Guys Cliff Country House, Warwick…
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20” Story of the house owned by a family of slave owners.
1.05” English history is not about England. English history is about most of the world…the Birmingham metal industries for example thrived on the slave trade…an awful lot of the struggle…in terms of anti-slavery was very much here in B’ham…the Cadburys for example fought long and hard to end slavery, so we need to see ourselves as Midlanders, as Brummies…with a vested interest in ensuring that Birmingham is…the best city in the world…
3.06” …for me, home is home, isn’t it? Home is Nevis…when I get off the plane… and my feet touch the ground, you feel different…because you know no matter what happens…no one can tell you, ‘Go back where you come from.’
4.04” It’s part of our language I think…of being an immigrant…that ‘home’ is always somewhere else.
4.28” Confusion between different cultures on the different islands.
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31” I am afraid that the needs and aspirations of St Kitts, Nevis nationals are submerged under this term ‘African Caribbean.’
1.08” Would like to see more appropriate categorisation within the Afro Caribbean category, understanding ‘mixed race.’
4.23” Relationship with his pupils. ‘Fascination.’
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Continues to discuss ‘fascination’. Gives examples…children argued that he couldn’t be a Muslim because of the colour of his skin. Ahmed is black and they said, “Muslims are Pakistani”.
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Story about his pupils who didn’t believe he could be a Moslem if he was Black. |