David Etor's first break came after designing and building a kind of "solar oven" in Nigeria A Nigerian man has shared the story of how he rose up out of "abject poverty" as a child, to become one of the leading UK academics in his field.
David Etor, 43, who grew up in Nigeria, only learned to read and write aged 12 and was told as a child that "nothing good will come out of you", but is now a lecturer in electrical and mechanical engineering at the University of Bristol.
He told the BBC how his family was so poor growing up that his mum would pretend to cook food in a kitchen they shared with others, "to protect our integrity" in front of neighbours. Speaking to John Darvall on BBC Radio Bristol about the publication of his first book, Etor described growing up in a "compound" with several other families, all sharing a single kitchen, toilet and bathroom. "It was a very poor neighbourhood.
We were particularly very poor that the poor neighbours would refer to us as poor," he said. "I do remember that there was a time where my mum would boil water. "[She would] go back in and out, lift the lid, stir the water, go back into the room [and] come back as though she was preparing food…
"She would come back in with that pot of water after a couple of hours and it will be as though she's just finished cooking a meal, but it was just water. Etor's first break came whilst doing a kind of national service in Nigeria, when he realised lots of locals were being hospitalised with food poisoning, because they were trying to preserve things by drying them in fields.