A New LifeA car crash and a country in economic chaos forced Dr Eric Layard to create a new life for himself and his children. Margaret Canningreports
Zimbabweans have had tough choices whether to stay or go during Robert Mugabe's 27-year regime, which has seen the one-time bread basket of Africa descend into chaos.
Dr Eric Layard is among an estimated three million people who have left. He came to Northern Ireland with his son Eric and daughter Beverley five years ago, a choice that was harder for him to make than most.
Beverley, and Layard's wife Mary, were seriously injured in a car accident near the family's home in Zimbabwe in 1997. Twelve-year-old Beverley broke her neck. Mary, who died of a chest infection last year, suffered a serious brain injury and was in a coma for eight months.
"The accident started a new phase in my life," says Layard, now a partner in a general practice in Newtonwards, Co Down, with admirable understatement.
Before, the family enjoyed a carefree existence, with the couple combining their jobs as a doctor in a mine hospital and physiotherapist with running a ranch and safari camp.
"After, Mary was a non-functional person. She had locked-in syndrome. She could hear and she could understand but she couldn't do anything about it. She couldn't communicate. The only person she really listened to was me.
"Everything was turned upside down and for six years I looked after them and then I decided to move over here about five years ago, leaving my wife in a nursing home in South Africa [where her family live].
"It was for various reasons: one, the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe and the other was to make a new life somewhere else because it was quite difficult to keep going with all the memories and what happened whereas here I am a brand new entity and people accept me as I am."
He is proud of his children, who have thrived in the North.
Beverley was president of Bangor College. "My daughter's done well. As a quadriplegic she has no movement below her shoulders. She has no useful movement or no movement at all in her arms, so she's really disabled, so it has been good for her in that everything is disabled-friendly and society in general is really geared up for disabled children. She gets a good care package.
"She's very happy. She's great. She's a happy, smiling person. She's bright as a button. She uses her laptop on a voice-activated programme to do her work.
"She has the latest technology in wheelchairs, all supplied free. She really has the best of things. The only thing she struggles with is the cold. Her temperature control's not great so you have to be very careful."
Eric is a keen sportsman, excelling at rugby and cricket.
Layard's new working life in Northern Ireland couldn't be more different from what they left behind.
"Until the 1990s we did quite well but then it started to go downhill, economically and politically.
"I couldn't make a living because while there were a lot of patients who needed you, they couldn't really afford you. There was no state health at all.
"It got to the stage where 1 per cent of the population had good private health and the other 99 per cent just died if they got sick. I had the 1 per cent.
"Inflation was 1,000 or 2,000 per cent [now, it's at least 4,500 per cent]. None of the pensions were index-linked - there was no such thing.
"I had a lot of older people who just needed me desperately and would always be my patients but they couldn't afford me. So you'd end up discounting them - you'd work so hard and at the end of the month you had earned nothing.
"I was not going to be able to afford to retire. Coming here was definitely the right thing to do from an economic point of view."
Life expectancy in Zimbabwe is 37 for men and women.
"There's a new cemetery in Harare and if you go past there anytime in daylight hours, there'll be between five and 20 funerals going on. And they're all young people. It's the tradition in Zimbabwe when there's an anniversary of one month, six months or a year, you put an advertisement in the paper and a photograph of them and if you look at them, they're all young people."
Working in Northern Ireland, Layard marvels at the range of drugs at his disposal to treat patients under the National Health Service and has been funded to study diabetes in his free time.
A colleague testifies to Layard's hard work and determination to make a life for himself over here since the move, by working every available hour and every anti-social shift possible.
He and his family may have a bright future here, living in the seaside resort of Bangor, but Layard doesn't have much hope for Zimbabwe.
"I don't see how things are going to improve. It's not going to change overnight.
"Zimbabwe was a jewel, but now it's just wrecked."
As for the upheaval in his family life in the last decade - "I look back and think there is probably a reason for the accident and everything happening although you don't know why at the time. It's like there's a force telling you to do it and it will work itself out. And as time goes by, it did and it has.
"I think you can't really be caught in the past because if you keep looking backwards then you can't look forwards."
He is determined to help Beverley restore some movement.
"She received pioneering treatment in Mexico involving the implantation of shark cell embryos. Her sensation improved but there was no return of movement."
The treatment stopped when the American dollar became too expensive and the family started planning their move to Northern Ireland. Beverley is looking at some fundraising herself.
The family has visited Zimbabwe since, but only for a holiday "because here is home now".
"It took me a long time to actually feel part [ of it] and to really feel like it is home but it is home now. Getting this job is really the cream on the cake. This will be me for the rest of my working life."