It’s 2001. I’m 8 years old on a school trip to the London Eye. What I see there see will lead me on a 15 year search for answers.
I’m excited because today my class and I are taking a trip to the London Eye. The giant Ferris wheel had just been built on the bank of London’s River Thames. Overlooking London, it was a monument to mark the dawn of the new Millenium.
Like little ducklings in neon yellow vests, we scurried through London, our teacher leading the way.
The murky waters of the River Thames splash against the banks that lie beneath the Eye. It’s feels so vast and scary. I remember my mums warning of the waters being beautiful if harnessed probably, but also being powerful and even violent sometimes. One of her many anecdotes included one of her best friend, who took her clothes off and dived into Thames to return to her unearthly home. ‘Everything returns to the Thames’
A seagull flys overhead and I hold my travel buddies hand as the line for the Eye begins to inch forward. I think about eating the tuna sandwich in my packed lunch, while overlooking my home town. I can’t wait to tell my brother and sister that I was on the London eye and they weren’t.
We are finally in the pod, making a very slow accent to the top. Inside is as futuristic as it looks on TV. It’s completely made of glass, except for the metal beams that hold it together. The brown of the murky waters begin to turn a green blue hue as it reflects the sky.
Our pod begins the slow ascent to the top. Higher and higher. I’m stuck between feeling in complete awe of the incredibly angle of London, that I have never seen before, and being hyperaware of how dangerously high we are. But I feel safe with my teachers and classmates so the trepidation is now excitement.
As we inch closer to the peak, I spot a few people on the banks. They have on similar fluorescent jackets like us, but theirs have green stripes. They look like people that work in the ambulance.
‘Don’t worry they’re just shooting a movie down there’ shouts my teacher as she beckons us to the other side of the pod.
But I can’t look away, I go back to look at the bank again.
There’s a person lying on the bank, with dark brown skin like my own, but he doesn’t have any legs. He doesn’t have any arms. He doesn’t have a head, just bright orange shorts on. Another teaching assistant now approaches the small group of kids I’m gathered with.
‘Don’t worry, he’s fine. It’s not real, it’s a movie. It’s okay’
My travel buddy whispers to me, ‘that’s a body down for there, they’re saying it’s a movie, but it’s not, it’s real’
In my heart I know it’s not a movie, I know it’s a dead body of black person. But that’s all I know.
It doesn’t turn into a massive news story, and the internet is barely a thing for everyday people in 2001. Any news coverage was engulfed by American stories, as 9/11 happened just 10 days before. As I get older I try and research ‘black man no legs, River Thames, orange short’, but I don’t have any luck. My memory is hazy now, my imagination filling in the missing details. Did it even happen, is it even a genuine memory?
I need to know if what I saw was real. Who was he?
As an adult I return to google. I type in the same set of words; all I can remember nearly 15 years later.
The body in the Thames wasn’t a mans, it was that of a little Nigerian boy. He had been trafficked and dismembered, likely in some kind of ritual or exorcism. The police never found the murders, or his true identity, so they named him Adam.
In September 21st 2001, we were two black kids in London, likely the same age but we had polarising experiences that day.
You deserved life, to see and adulthood and to see childhood.
