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G21 AFRICA - ONE DAY: Nigeria writer Steve Ogah recounts in an extended tale, the beginnings of an adventure. The first part of a serialization.
Igolo, BENIN REPUBLIC - MORNING: Now that I am in Benin Republic, I can't tell why I am here. Almost everthing interests me. I want to be part of the activities I see. It is only as the different urges crowd me that I am tempted to ask if I came here out of boredom. But if that is the case, I could have easily killed boredom in Nigeria, at least.
Steve Ogah Lagos, for all its boisterous nature, still has spots of calm and those of excitement. The Bar Beach? It was my first encounter with the sea life of Lagos, Badagry's whispering palms and Beach, Lekki Beach; Alpha and Kuramo Beach, once referred to by a journalist in the Punch as Sodom and Gomorrah. This was due to the level of immorality there. The man's imagination had been so active that he equated a Beach with a Biblical city. Nonetheless, he later won a prize with the piece .
Even if I could not go to Kuramo or any of the Beaches, there are water parks -- I can't tell if the water of the pools have been changed in recent times, though. The Marina, Lagoon front, Apapa jetty, Amusement park, Rowe park, and the Museum. And if I got tired with the parks, I could even still have strolled into one of the surviving vestiges of public film viewing -- the Agege cinema, and watched an old Chinese or Indian film. There is never a lack of colourful but worn-out posters at the faded walls of that cinema house. And I sometimes wonder from where they get the posters, all written in Chinese languages. I have been there before when I saw the announcement written in white chalk on a darkened part of the wall. The writing was bad but I read it still.
The film on the bill was " The Revenge of the Master." when I got in I was disappointed. The viewing hall was nothing but a shack. There was an old Panasonic television on a wooden stool in a dark room that had only one window. This was in a low part of the hall. Wooden benches were arranged from one end of the wall to the other, from the entrance to the head of the room. There was no fan. So several of the guys inside simply pulled off their shirts and used them as swirling hand fans. More painful was the fact that the television was a poor black and white. As I took my seat, I noticed that there was no girl in the crowd. Because I had paid hard-earned money into the pockets of the jagged-faced boy that was at the gate, I was determined to endure the discomfort of the "cinema."
I remember that I promised myself that I wasn't going to return there again when the poor Chinese action film ended. So I wouldn't have gone there. I picked up not one word of what was said in the film.
I would have considered going to a restaurant with satellite television. Mr. Biggs, Tantalizer, Tastee Fried Chicken, where chickens say they do them right; Sweet Sensation, Friends, Choppies, Delicacies, Burger King, Chicken George, Rose way, or Dukes. It was only if I wanted to commit suicide that I could have gone to somewhere that sounds like Golden Gate Chinese Restaurant, Lagoon Restaurant, Le Meridien, Sheraton, Federal Palace, and the cutthroat Club 10.
Since I have not gone to any of these places, I have had to convince myself that something else brought me into this French-speaking country and dusty town of Igolo, a place I am already having communication problems with save for my grasp of Yoruba, and the fortune of encountering a couple of people who can speak a smattering of the English language.
I am now convinced I came here just to garner experiences. I don't know how absurd this sounds but it seems plausible to me. I have always had this sense for adventures, for experiencing. And I have always been told to have a cross-cultural knowledge whenever I can afford it.
Once I listened to a tape entitled "Imagineering", I understood how far people could go to garner experiences. I can't now remember the name of the professor who authored that work on the stables of Simon and Schuster. I learnt that Mr. Haley went and secured a hotel accommodation for sometime in order to be able to write his novel Hotel. Of course, I thought that he could have as well have made a mental flight into a hotel. Still, I was inspired by his novel move.
Maybe it was that tape that drove me here. It inspired me to want to write my own story. too. So I came to Igolo to write about Igolo as a novel. But, to write about this raucous town, I would have to be sufficiently prepared to stay for a long time. I don't have much money with me. And I do not want to stay long!
I feel somewhere in my heart that I am here just to take notes for a poem whose title I do not know yet. I must have been inspired by the advice I gleaned from too many? "how to" books on writing. I could have easily come because I was sick of being accused of being holed up in Lagos and not experiencing other peoples' cultures. Accused that I only write from imagination and not reality, over and over, by friends and foes. I must have come here to take notes and learn a word or two of French, eat local food, drink local beer, violate innocent girls, wear native fabrics and walk the streets, eager to tell with my eyes: "See? I am mixing well."
Travel. That is what must have brought me here. I know I have always been a traveler, searcher, and an unrepentant seeker of fun and women.
I remember all too clearly how my childhood friend, Jatau, once stole his father's new Mercedes Benz 200 and drove to my place. He appeared at our gate in Yaba, music blaring from the woofer speakers. As he drove up Adekunle Street, he was aware the preying eyes were on him but he didn't bother. He liked it, especially if they were female eyes. This, of course, meant that he might catch some for a nightstand.? And if his father's friends saw him, he didn't care. He could always deny any charge his father brought at him. This confidence was what made him drive into my street with maddening speed, screeching loudly, music loud, horn honking to rhyme with the thumping beat of the rap song he had been playing. It had been Tupac's "Ghetto Gospel."
I looked through the parted blinds of the sitting room window. Once I noticed it was Jatau, I ran to my room, picked a shirt from a heap on the rumpled bed, and dashed down. I jumped two, three, four steps, so in a hurry to cover the twelve steep steps. And I covered the distance in what can go down as a record personal best. I was pleased because I was sure it was the family's record my younger brother could never cancel.
When I got to the gate, I was still struggling with the shirt. I wore it inside out in my madness. It didn't matter to me that almost the whole of Adekunle Street was feasting on us. I hopped into the seat. Jatau had opened the door down.
I didn't ask him where we were going. It didn't matter, so long as we were going out. It was only when I was in the car that I got my senses back. And I dressed properly. Then I began to ask questions. But those questions were baseless. No matter how passionate I was, Jatau didn't tell me the truth about how he got the car.
Later that day, we had a good time and were lucky to have returned the car to the garage unscratched, just before his father returned from his business trip.
Perhaps, it was that spirit for blind adventures that seized and brought me here. I am sure it is, except if there is something else on my mind.
It is as I remember that I was once a hustler that I know I have misled myself about why I am here.How could the urge for mere experiences and the need to murder boredom have brought me to this border town that is a beehive of activities? The atmosphere here does not differ radically from Lagos, in its best crazy clothes. Why then could I not have stayed back home and dined with the Devil I know!
How could anything aside from my deep-rooted hustling spirits have taken me away from the peace and serenity of my room in mainland Lagos?
I feel I should just say, in a blank sense, I have been a go-getter from birth. It is something that runs in the family. My elder brother Tunde is the lead hustler. I can't fully remember how he made his mark at the seaport in Apapa. Almost everyone at the place knew him. It was a hit at Apapa to say that it was because of his persistent appearance that the term "Port Rats" was invented.
He often made appearances whenever new containers arrived. He was arrested most times but always bailed himself from the hands of his captors. Then they got tired of him and allowed him free hands so long as he would "settle them." He was so good a port rat that he soon needed port mice to share in his booty. I was the next natural choice. I had even made my decision before he approached me. I had seen his fortune change overnight and I was not ready to remain the family's cursed pauper. No, I am not prepared for that, not even now!
So, my first duty called. Tunde came home one December night in the last harmattan season. He was sweating. He was haggard as hi s jean jacket was torn around the neck. They were holes in his trouser pockets and in the sack he slung down his back, too.
Daddy and Mummy had traveled to the village for the burial of Daddy's brother. We had the entire room and parlor to ourselves. And Tunde was not afraid to empty his sack on the center table.
"See," he says, as though I was not seeing already the car stereos, speakers, headlamps, bulbs, rear lights, sidelights, dashboard fans, and several other motor parts items whose name I still don't know now.
"Can you see, brother?" he asks again.
"I am not blind," I say to him.
"Good."
"What's good?"
" That you can see."
Whenever Tunde spoke this way, I knew he had a lot to hide or it was usually because he was ashamed to let me see plainly that he was a thief. And he was my elder brother!
"What about these?" I am pointing on the table.
"There were more than this when I left the container."
I listened carefully as Tunde explained that it was because he was hustling alone that uniformed men were able to rob him of his loot. He was angry about it and he grit his teeth as he spoke between hot breath. He said he wanted to fight them but had to hold back on seeing their rusty AK-47 rifles staring menacingly at him.
Then he wanted the looting of his stolen goods to stop. I was going to be the one to help him. "How? Why? When?" I wanted to ask, but lacked the courage.
Tunde never called it stealing. He liked to dignify his trade. He called it hustling and insisted that I could hustle with him. The loots would be stored in my bag and he had a special route for me. I asked him to use the special route himself but he insisted it was not possible because his helpers needed to see him going out everyday through the normal route, lest they would stop him from gaining free access to the stored goods at the Apapa port complex.
When I insisted that it was risky, he reminded me that I had always wanted to be a Hustler. And if I didn't understand what the word meant, he was going to show me. He reminded me of the Nike gear I saw on the Television during the NBA show, the sneakers, sweatshirt, Rolex, chains and bracelets, and the women in my empty dreams about show business.
(TO BE CONTINUED)
© 2006, GENERATOR 21.
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