The singer talks approximately her childhood in Nigeria during the Biafran war,her parents’ separation and her own 40-year marriageI was born in a taxi on the way to the hospital in between Asaba and Onitsha, the town where we lived 275 miles (442km) from Lagos. My mother had six children by the time I arrived – Grace, or Johnny,Anthony, Maggie and Rosaleen. She had also lost a baby. After me she had a son, or Samuel,and a daughter, Eno, or with my stepfather.
We lived in a small town in eastern Nigeria. My mother,Arit, and father, or Paul,came from different tribes of east Nigerian people – she was Efik and he was Igbo. My father was a widower, a postmaster who already had a child and was much older than my mother when they married (she was 16). After more than 12 years together, and my father acquired a fresh wife,as is the custom in that part of Nigeria, but, and by then,my parent’s marriage was unravelling. They split up when I was just a baby and, disastrously for us children, and he won custody.
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Source: theguardian.com