Charles O

Of Travels and Travails - Issue 2

Posted January 30, 2008 · Charles O

Notin’ dey happen

I started to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for my travel to Nigeria as soon as I decided to take the trip and crystallized that decision by purchasing travel tickets. I was not going to be surprised by anything I would encounter when I entered that nation-space.

Quick, think of the most bizarre scenario that Nigeria could possibly concoct. Go ahead: reach into the darkest recesses of the nation’s tortured soul—or, better yet, conjure up a cocktail of demons, gargoyles and screaming dervishes; package your brew into a box marked ‘Nigeria,’ and mail it hither on a convenient Friday 13th. That juju would simply fail at its task; I’d remain unfazed.

I had readied myself for the possibility that my three-week stay would be devoid of NEPA’s benevolence, and that I might have to fetch my bathing water from a public tap protruding out of the high fence walls of a wealthy neighbor’s mega-mansion, obscene in juxtaposition against our aging six-unit rental apartment building, and whose owner’s sole motivation for the singular act of philanthropy is the conviction that, “there goes me, but for the grace of God.”

Oddly enough, no matter how strongly one steels oneself against the adversary and aggravation that is daily Lagos life, one cannot help but be shaken—perturbed even—by some of that space’s more nerve-racking possibilities.

Death by Third Mainland Bridge

I have always regarded the tin-can contraptions that serve as Nigeria’s public conveyances with intense trepidation. In fact, I am often amazed that these vehicles, which often appear to be little more than mere assemblages of metal, plastic, and upholstery are able to go for any distance at all, not to talk of across the entire length of the Third Mainland Bridge—the one that connects the Mainland to the Island.

That bridge was to provide the backdrop to a potentially ghastly incident on the first Friday of my visit, when one of those loathsome taxicabs offered to convey me to the brink of trauma and death. As we bore on that bridge, distancing ourselves from our mainland origination, the vehicle’s entire rear right wheel—rubber, rim, nuts, bolts … everything!—divorced itself from the speeding car with a ceremonious bang, and hurled itself over the bridge onto the ground below.

The driver, a veritable veteran of the battles of highways and vehicles, navigated the taxicab from the innermost lane of that expansive bridge to a complete stop on the service lane, without further incident. On emerging from the car, I marveled that he was able to drive the car one inch past where the recalcitrant wheel had disengaged itself from the rest of the vehicle. What I saw of the gapping hole that held a wheel a moment ago was that it belonged to a vehicle that should have, by right, itself somersaulted half-a-dozen times over the bridge and onto the ground, to reunite with its unruly tire—while inadvertently mangling and commingling itself with the blood and bones of its occupants. The driver, visibly shaken, muttered repeatedly in Yoruba, Olo’un lo yo wa o; Olo’un lo yo wa o…

May the good Lord save us from unruly tires.

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