It was my choice, thanks to Enid Blyton, to go to boarding school in Ireland. Having a choice made it easier for me. It saved me, too, from the Biafran war in which my family was for the most of it – I wrote a little bit about the lead up in a post.

No, I guess I didn’t see my mother that often because after finishing boarding school at 17, I met my husband-to-be and ended up in Germany with a baby at 19.

I studied for a year in Ibadan/ Nigeria ( from 17–18) about 130 km from Lagos where my family lived, so only came home very sporadically.

I visited my family in Nigeria a few times with my daughters and she, me in Germany (2/3 times) before she died in a car accident (aged 59).

This is the first time I’ve ever thought about how often I saw my mother.

Oh yes, she escaped from Biafra about 6–9 months towards the end of the war, with my five brothers and sister and lived in Ireland for about a year before returning to my father in Nigeria. I was in boarding school all that time.

We were close though. She was a beautiful soul and suffered quite a bit emotionally when I left home. She never sent another child to boarding school.

Sorry for the epic but you got me going with your question 😊