~15-18/5/2023~ The Story of ‘ The Mum Situation ‘ - Part 3…
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One big step we made during this period is that on the night of Tues 16th me and Pom (stepdad) were able to get the Foreign Office and then subsequently the British High Commission in Nigeria involved. It was all very complicated to get through to the right team and we weren’t even sure they would be able to help. But as of the 17th May they established contact with my mum (just phone contact so far) and she engaged with them (still is, minimally, but no more or less than she did initially, and she hasn’t dismissed it entirely, so that’s something!)- they seemed highly skilled in how they approached the situation - offering practical help (trying to sort out my mum’s pre-malaria treatment as a first step) and that seemed to be bring mum on board enough to engage with them as she feels they are of use to her in terms of achieving her goals of the trip, (or at least it’s meant she’s been able to ‘tolerate’ the contact from them). They said they would carry out regular welfare checks on her as do recognise she is very vulnerable. We’ve been assigned a caseworker - Pom told them the full details of what happened - how out of character it all is, police involvement over here, about her physical health vulnerabilities, the possibility of her being vulnerable to exploitation, and about our concerns for her mental health given what’s happened and her current presentation evidenced in our communications with her. Obviously there’s limits to what information can be shared by either sides due to confidentiality, but just knowing there are another pair of eyes on her, has made such a difference to how we feel as a family.
As time passes, and still passes more, we were swiftly coming to an acceptance that sadly mum would not be coming home anytime soon - as it’s really clear mum has absolutely no inclination to come home or change her plans for the trip, so we’re just willing her to make it to Canada within the next few weeks (and that’s still how it feels now as I write this).

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~15-18/5/2023~ The Story of ‘ The Mum Situation ‘ - Part 2…
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Mum has told me that I’ll be ‘glad to know’ that she’s ‘doing absolutely okay’ with her mental health, but at the same time was talking about being ‘an earth angel’ and being guided by spiritual beings. Communication was still very hard (still is, but maybe we’ve had to reach a level of acceptance around it now - we’ve sort of had no choice but to) - she’s irritated by the contacts she’s been receiving from us, saying she ‘needs peace’, and that she wishes everyone thought she was in Spain as it would have been so much easier - we’ve told her we wish she was in Spain rather than where she is! Her sister (my aunt) hit my mum with a very long brutally honest (but probably needed) message hitting her with the impact on the rest of the family and how my stepdad is a ‘broken man’ - what my mum seemed to take from it is that her sister is a bully, doesn’t love her, has never loved her, is jealous of her as an author, and that she (mum) needs to up her contact with Martin to twice a day and then ‘he’ll be okay’! (Needless to say, he definitely wasn’t!) Mum visited a western shopping mall during this period and sent us pictures - she was even able to have a KFC for lunch there! It was the first time we’d actually seen a photo of her since she left - and it felt sad and jilting in some ways (she was wearing a top I had bought her during a trip to Edinburgh), but at the same time, she looked outwardly remarkably ordinary - like nothing was amiss, without a care in the world, and like she could have been anywhere in the world. It’s all so jarring to receive - because she just doesn’t grasp the situation at all - I think she’s not able to due to illness and her brain not firing in the way it usually does - I’m fairly sure in my mind that this is psychosis - (if anything I’ve become more and more sure of this over time, because it’s the only thing that makes this situation and what’s happened make any sense to me/us).

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~15-18/5/2023~ The Story of The Mum Situation - Part 1…

It seemed like things have settled down somewhat, though still extremely unsettled by any usual standards - the adrenaline was wearing off a bit with there being less need to take immediate action (no more 999 calls since 11/5/2023), but that meant a lot of the feelings started to hit :(
Key things we found out during this period in relation to what mum’s calling her ‘big adventure’ include finding out how she’s financing her trip - she’s withdrawn money from her ‘national savings’, my brother said it is an adequate amount to cover that type of trip - it seems important to mum for people to know that she hasn’t touched a penny of any joint account and doesn’t plan to.
We’ve found a link between the Canadian book business contact and Nigeria! One of the team members is a Nigerian national and has travelled between Canada and Nigeria as part of the business. As far as we can see, the link seems legitimate and not looking particularly sinister. We’re not sure if it was this individual that mum was meeting in Nigeria or someone linked to them as she’s just been referring to them as her ‘friend’ (still is!) and won’t give up any further details.
We found out more about mum’s travel insurance - it’s wholly inadequate for where she’s travelled to, and for someone with her underlying health conditions, but it seems she does at least have something - which is more than we might have thought given that she seems to be feeling rather invincible at the moment! Quite a key issue we’ve identified is that mum has not been taking any pre-malaria tablets, which is a huge risk - we’re working on that! (We still haven’t been able to persuade her - she said we ‘should know’ that mosquitos ‘don’t like her’ and so she ‘doesn’t need’ any pre-malaria protection - we’ve given up trying on that one - so far so good it seems - and maybe it’s just a stroke of luck that she’s never been particularly susceptible to mosquito bites as luck is the best we have in this situation!)

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~12-15/5/2023~ The Story of ‘ The Mum Situation ‘ - Part 3

Mum had been inactive online for 18 hrs on 14th May - longest she had been offline since she left - of course we were worried - but so many worrying things have happened, it’s hard to know how worried to be about each of these things :/ But mum came back online again on the 15th contacting my stepdad and explained the internet signal had been bad - so okay again for the time being - or as okay as things were, or as okay as they can be in this mad situation!
We’ve all been coping in our own ways as best we can - in slightly different ways we’re all going through the motions of our daily routines, but at the same time it’s like we’re trapped in this alternative reality - like we’re in a haze, a film - it’s helping just to receive small snippets from other people’s daily lives so keep them coming, but also helping to know that people have read bits of what’s been shared, or to know you’re thinking of us all - it all means more than we’re able to say right now through replies to messages etc.
Until the next instalment…

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~12-15/5/2023~ The Story of ‘ The Mum Situation ‘ - Part 2

Mum seemed to be treating the phone call with grandma like their usual Friday phone calls, but that didn’t exactly go to plan - grandma true to form said all the things she had been told not to say, but maybe that was needed! Mum found out in the process that her sister and mother know she’s in Nigeria (grandma seemed to be top of my mum’s hierarchy in terms of who could never know she’s in Nigeria) and she now also knows that the police have searched the bungalow and their caravan - those were huge bombshells for her and it didn’t completely derail her - she didn’t even hang up, she continued the call and still kept contact with us after as we agreed.
It’s like we’ve all been given these little pieces of information by mum and together we are fitting some of it together. We’re also (with hindsight) piecing things together around before she left - even so, there’s no way any of us could have known or even imagined what was coming.
Some people have said things like we hope we have her home very soon and that’s our ultimate dream of course, but it feels so unrealistic so far away from where we’re at now (still does). Our current hopes at the moment seem to be mainly around her staying alive - it’s almost like every day or even hour she has stayed alive in Nigeria - she’s already defied so many odds - maybe she’ll keep on defying the odds for a bit longer. It’s like we’re willing her to make it to Canada - maybe she’ll bring her flight forwards? If she makes it to Canada she’s infinitely safer than she where she is now - we’ve got family there - she’s got family there - it’s a Western country with a western culture - people are more likely notice something’s wrong with her mental health, access to healthcare is pretty equivalent to the UK - we’ll have more power to bring her back…

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~12-15/5/2023~ The Story of ‘ The Mum Situation ‘ - Part 1…

I started writing less frequent update notes as the pace of the events slowed down a little, and most of our time was taken up by contacting close family and friends about it, and speaking directly about what was happening…
The pure basic facts of the situation were unchanged - mum continued (and continues) to be in her armed guarded accommodation in Nigeria. As far as we know mum had only left her accommodation minimally since she arrived, mainly to meet the business contact in Nigeria who is connected to the business contact in Canada (it’s all to do with my mum’s self-published books), and when she has it’s been with armed escort.
It’s become really clear that what’s happened and what she’s done/doing makes complete sense to mum and she feels it should or must make sense to us or anyone who knows about it - even just a little about it. Contact with her is like walking on egg shells or playing an intense game of chess - one wrong move and she’ll cut contact for good and we’ll have lost her completely - and she’s in such a fragile mental state - we don’t know what she’d do :( A great deal of the messages and communications are almost laughable - we’ve said so many times now ‘we have to laugh otherwise we’ll cry again’. Mum seems to want to know that everything is continuing at home as normal without her!?! In addition to that - she seems to want us to ‘be happy for her’, say how proud we are of her and how wonderful she is for doing what she’s doing?!? - we definitely won’t go that far!! But feels like we’re appeasing her a little for now to keep the line of communication open while gently pushing for little pieces of information and giving her some small pieces of the reality of the situation. Mum’s kept to the contact every couple of days agreement - in fact she’s messaged at least 2/3 of us every day - but has to be initiated by her we’ve decided.
Mum has been hit with some hard realities of the situation and so far it hasn’t derailed her - she had a phone call with her mother on Friday 12th (my infamous grandma!)…

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~11/5/2023~ The Story of ‘ The Mum Situation ‘ - Part 3/3…

Mum agreed to contact with me, my brother and stepdad every couple of days - and we’re accepting this as reasonable.
We did still and do still have major concerns about her mental state. And we did still and do still believe she has been groomed in some way, is a victim of exploitation, and is obviously extremely vulnerable! But based on the information we discovered throughout the day, we can understand why she has been allowed entry to Nigeria and that she can no longer be classed as a ‘missing person’ in the police sense of the term (but she was and still is very much MISSING to us).
I don’t think any of us can make sense of any of this - we still can’t - the only thing that seems to make it make any sense is mum being mentally very unwell - the way we’ve had to try to compartmentalise it in our brain is that the mum we know and love didn’t leave and go to Nigeria because the person we know wouldn’t do that - we have to almost think of it as being a different person - it’s the only thing that makes it slightly more bearable - to not see it as a personal abandonment even if it still feels like that at times. It’s been one heck of a lot to process - mind has been in overdrive for weeks - feels like it will take lifetime to process everything that’s happened.
We were still so so worried by the end of the end of the second day, but a lot more reassured than we were earlier in that day that there is no immediate threat to mum’s life as things stand.

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~11/5/2023~ The Story of ‘ The Mum Situation ‘ - Part 2…
But then as I said, me and my brother made a lot of progress with our contact with mum in the afternoon. She did confirm she was in Nigeria, she did seem to be starting to understand on some (very low) level why we’re all so worried and have acted in the way that we have (raising alarms and contacting the police), she let us know her current location in Nigeria - Sussex Police we’re aware of her exact location - we’re satisfied she can no longer be considered a ‘missing person’ - the information mum has given us also checks out with the information from the Nigerian Facebook account and she is there for business purposes. (It turns out the Facebook contact was a genuine person who seemed to be genuinely concerned for mum’s welfare- it’s nice to know amongst all the chaos - there are some decent people in this world 🧡 - we will thank her). Mum did not want us to share her exact location in Nigeria any more widely (just me and brother and the police knew at that point) and we decided it was safe to respect her wishes around that for the time being.
Mum agreed to a video call with my brother early evening - she was in her hotel accommodation - brothership was satisfied she was on her own in the room at the time of the call. Our brother is familiar with travel to Nigeria and the security measures required for white British visitors - she showed him the armed guards within the accommodation and her bottled water supply - she also had details of her armed escort for any taxi travel outside of the accommodation - it all checks out with what he had to have in place when he travelled to Nigeria when he previously worked as cabin crew…
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~11/5/2023~ The Story of ‘ The Mum situation ‘ …
It was an absolute rollercoaster of a 24 hrs! Mum had been in message contact with all three of us separately throughout the day - initially she was still maintaining she was in Barcelona, the contact was very difficult earlier in the day - she was very irritable, and expressed annoyance that I had contacted the police and she was held up by security on her flight the night before - she said she was ‘very unpopular on the flight’!? However me and my brother made progress with contact with her later in the afternoon and the situation was looking considerably better than it had been earlier in the day…
Late on the night mum left my brother managed to track down from my mum’s Facebook friends the one and only contact she had from Nigeria - he established contact with the account briefly during the night and then again throughout the next morning - the information given was very concerning - they did seem to have some knowledge of mum’s whereabouts - said she was meeting a person she met online and it was to do with business matters - they knew roughly where this person was from in Nigeria, but didn’t have a name - based on the information we were given (and with mum continuing to state she was in Barcelona and that she wasn’t meeting anyone, then phone went offline again for 3 hrs) we were very concerned for her immediate safety - I called 999 again and passed on the information from the Facebook account messages to the police - the call handler said they would pass on the information to the officer in charge of the case from the missing persons unit - and make clear we as a family had serious concerns about her immediate safety - they said the officer in charge would phone me back (again, they never did…) - to be honest all the call handlers have been really lovely - she said she could not promise me the officer in charge was even on duty and would phone back straightaway. I think that was the real low of the situation - we were all left fearing for her life :( :( :(
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~10/5/2023~ The story of ‘the mum situation’ part 3…
Later that night my Pom phoned me in a panic saying that the police had been round and searched the property (and the caravan) - found a small amount of clothes gone, but not enough for a 6 month trip, devices and a travel bag gone (we weren’t 100% sure which bag at that point). The police spoke to my Pom and read the messages she had sent him that day - the police assessed that she was thinking rationally (but they don’t know her like we do!), she’s an adult, she can make her own decisions and go away if she wishes. They said that they had held the plane on the tarmac and had located her on it while they were carrying out their enquiries, they would finish their assessment, and would likely be letting her go on the flight! They said to just wait for her to contact us when she arrived at her destination the next morning. We phoned 999 again requesting as her nearest relatives that the police do not allow her to leave the country until she’s had a Mental Health Act assessment. They said they’d pass the information on and to wait for the police to call us back for an update - they didn’t all night. Since found out that my mum would have already been in the sky at the time I called requesting a MHAA. The three of us separately received the same message from mum around 5:30 am the following morning saying she had arrived safely and she’d be in contact soon. Called into the police again to give them this update - again they’d say they’d pass it on to the missing persons unit and they’d call back to update us, but never did. We assumed she had been allowed to travel to Nigeria and had entered the country (which would have required a lot of complex pre-planning!) as it was consistent with the flight times and the period of time her phone was inactive. The police never did phone any of us back again and don’t feel like they ever would - we have a better understanding now as to why they made the decisions they did, though of course that doesn’t mean we think any of it was right - me and my Pom plan to get in touch with the police soon ourselves, if anything for our own sense of closure.
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