Arriving Home

Avy Reid’s journey took her from Nigeria to Jerusalem

As told to Rivka Streicher by Avy Reid

Part 1

I was born in Nigeria, from where my father came, and his father before him. We are from the Igbo people, a tribe whose homeland straddles the Niger River. My grandfather was chief of the tribe.

My father was the 21st child (from several wives.) When he came of age, he went to India on a scholarship, to get a bachelor’s degree in business. There he met my mom, who was Anglo-Indian.

In India’s caste system, blacks were the lowest. But my mother wanted to marry my father. He was a man of two worlds; he came from a chief, from a tribe, and he also had a Western education, a degree in business. Her parents, though, were horrified. They spurned my father; they shunned their daughter when she announced that she wanted to tie the knot with him. My mother clung to my father and followed him back to Africa, not quite realizing what she was getting herself into.