Meg Offiah has been living here since 1994, but how does she feel about the huge influx of her fellow Nigerians, asks Kathy Sheridan.
It was another era when Meg Offiah had her first child in theDublin's Rotunda Hospital. An African baby was a novelty. Many of the nurses had never seen one before. "They were coming to take photographs of her, I think because African babies have lots of hair,", she says, laughing.
Gozie, the baby, is all grown up now, a bright, polite and cheerful 25-year-old medical student, due to graduate from the College of Surgeons next year. Will she stay in Ireland? Gozie hesitates.
"Ireland is small,", she says carefully, "it is limited." And thus, the next generation makes its choices.
Linus, her father and the man who would become Meg's husband, arrived at Trinity College in 1970 on the urging of the Holy Ghost priests in Nigeria who told him it was the only place to study medicine. Meg followed him in 1976.
"I was 21 when I came here, in a cold, bleak November, and I remember looking out from my house in Donnycarney feeling completely lost. I knew nobody. Back then, there were so few of us, you were actually seen as an ambassador for your country." When they married in Donnycarney Church in 1977, followed by a reception in the Burlington hotel, they invited all the Nigerians in Ireland, including the Aambassador. That made about 200 in total.
But the neighbours were friendly. During the bleak early days, a woman called Margaret met her on the way to Mass and invited her to accompany her. It was the start of a lifelong friendship.
Their first house, in Beaumont, was bought for £12,000 in the mid-1970s. About five years later, when Meg graduated from Trinity with an English and History degree, they sold it for a whopping £28,000 and headed back to Nigeria to settle down, he as a consultant in a Government hospital, she as a teacher.
"But for both of us, it was a great culture shock. Here in Ireland, if you require treatment, you get it. But there they wanted people to pay for everything. People in hospital had to buy such basic things for themselves."
They never settled. They returned to Dublin and, in 1994, paid £72,000 for the comfortable semi-detached house they still live in, in Clare Hall, on the Malahide Road. They have five children now, three daughters - Gozie, (25),Chika (20) and Ifeoma (19), two of them in the College of Surgeons and one studying biochemistry in Trinity, and two sons, John Paul (15), who goes to school at Ard Scoil Ris, ??and Gregory Patrick (10), at primary school at Scoil Mhuire.
Meg has found her perfect work-life balance as a substitute teacher in St John of God's, Artane, and at Our Lady of Mercy, Beaumont while Linus is an A&E physician in St James's Hospital.
She is a strong believer in integration and laughs that Kerry-born Gregory's main preoccupation is whether he will be allowed to play Gaelic football for Dublin or Kerry. "The more integrated they become, the better for them. You don't know where the wind will blow them to."
When the whole family travelled to Nigeria after Linus's mother died in 2000, it was an eye-opener for the boys in particular.
"My poor boy, he looked around Lagos airport and said 'Mum, why are there so many black people here?'. I said, 'because this is Africa, my son'. Africa did not go down very well with the boys. We tried to say 'this is home', but things are a bit upside-down in that country - no infrastructure, bad roads, no water, toilets not flushing. The boys are used to their sports. They prefer Irish food. I try now and again to cook Jollof rice or make egwusi but they love their chips."
She tries to hold on to some Nigerian culture, "but it is quite hard. The girls are gone from you all day. They go to Grafton Street for tea and coffee, not for egwusi soup and yam." She believes there is nothing that they want to hold on to about Nigeria.
For the couple's siver wedding anniversary two years ago (celebrated in the same church and hotel as their wedding), Meg and Linus wore Nigerian dress and clearly would have liked the children to do likewise. But they chose to wear ordinary western clothes. "That's just the way it is. I have no regrets. I love Ireland, we are Irish citizens. It is home and I believe that where you live, you should try to integrate."
And yet, after so many years away, they have held on to things of significance. Despite the odds, the girls - all veterans of Irish summer colleges, by the way - understand perfectly their parents' native language.
They are familiar with Nigerian clothes, food and hymns. "Every Good Friday for the past six or seven years, John Paul [the 15-year-old] and his friend Brian have been organising the Passion for the parish and all seven of us dress in Nigerian attire and sing Nigerian hymns in the church. We're a bit like the Von Trapps. People come with camcorders and cameras. Last Good Friday, the church was packed and the congregation gave a standing ovation. It's what we call community life."
Only once or twice has their colour been a trigger for hostility in Ireland. "In 28 years, it has only happened to me once." She was parking her car at the ILAC centre and a man looked into her face and murmured "monkey".
"I wasn't sure he said that but he said it again, and then 'Monkey, go back to your country'. I was really shocked. I felt very bad." Gozie has had only a minor incident: "But I do know of Indians and Arabs in college, living near the IFSC, who had to change houses because people were coming up to the door, throwing stones and that sort of thing."
Meg has no compunction about describing the movement of her countrymen and women into Ireland in the mid-1990s as a "mass entry".
"They must have found a lot of loopholes in the law. An RTÉ programme showed how they seemed able to obtain valid visas through London, land in Belfast and get taxis to export them down. You just saw them taking advantage. And all the time we pay 42 per cent tax and PRSI - and paid even more in the 1980s. Now you see them get free accommodation and medical cards. They know their children will get citizenship and that in 18 years' time, they will have free education and all the amenities. That all pains me because we are tax-payers too."
Despite the poor state of Nigeria, she has little sympathy for those who find their way here, reasoning that they can hardly be poor if they have the €500 o fly from Lagos to London and the taxi fares.
"If you're running from persecution, you won't have that money." Many speak perfect English, she says; some are graduates. "Why don't they apply for visas? What is right is right."
What about those who are fleeing from danger, such as female circumcision? "My three sisters and I were circumcised. It was no big deal. It was a well-known and accepted tradition up 'till the 1960s, though it has stopped now. My mother paid for it, it was the culture. She would have said that it was about self-control, to prevent promiscuity through excessive pleasure."
And did it work? "It does not reduce pleasure," she says emphatically, with a hearty laugh. "Look, I have five children." Nonetheless, she did not subject her own girls to it. "It is no longer the practice. If any new families arriving here ask about it, I would advise them that there is no need, no point to it."
She will vote yes in the citizenship referendum. "I came here like many others, looking for greener pastures. There is nothing wrong with that, on condition you do it properly. But people just come to exploit the system. I don't think voters should be confused, once it is well spentspelt out and people know exactly what they are voting for. We are not stupid."