The End and My Beating

Goodbye, bad food! Goodbye, crazy dumb host mother! Good riddance, ants on my toothbrush and crawling all over my Listerine bottle every morning (who knew ants liked to be minty fresh?)! Goodbye, overly bold gecko, you sunnuvabitch! Jay-sus, I thought this day would never come! The time was 10:37, on Saturday August 5. As I climbed into the front seat of my sister’s car (also known as “The Savior-mobile”), I couldn’t even contain my excitement. I tried to be sad for my host family, I really did. But I think I blinded them with my toothy grin as I shook hands and hugged them (or, in my host mom’s case, stood from afar and bade her a cheery ‘Adieu’). Our car nearly ‘spoil show’ sha. As I waved my final wave, my sister’s friend, Patrick, turned the key in the ignition—and nothing happened. I didn’t even know when I shouted “EHN!” See somebody that has not prayed for two weeks; I started calling on Holy Ghost, Father God Almighty, Sango, Ifa…I just could not bear to be in that place for even one more minute. Patrick, who drives barefoot, started putting on his shoes so as to check the engine. As he put on the first shoe, I reached for the key in desperation and turned it myself. Maybe Sango heard me. Maybe all the positive energy in my body had charged up my hand with electricity that the car responded to. I dunno, but it started immediately. I forgot that I wasn’t the one driving and pressed my imaginary accelerator, shouted to Patrick, “LET’S GO!!” and off we went! I have spent the past two days in Port Harcourt with my family, eating like a war refugee and sleeping in the buff in an air conditioned room, just because I can. The craw-craw is disappearing from my skin, I’ve braided my hair—I’m slowly starting to resemble a normal human being again. Glory be! But now I’m waiting in the airport to go to Abuja and I’m sitting beside this guy who smells so bad, I had to smell myself to make sure it wasn’t me!

But, no matter. The time has come for me to gist you about those touts that wanted to ‘discipline’ me in Lagos a couple of weeks ago. In hindsight, I’m starting to wonder why the hell I went to Lagos that weekend in the first place. The universe tried to deter me in all kinds of ways, but did kulutempa listen? I thought myself clever; I was going to disobey the rules and not get caught, bla bla bla. Idiot.

I mean, I had an OK time. To be honest, it wasn’t really worth the bother, except for the four shots of tequila that I got at this great Brazilian steakhouse on the Island, Churrasco. The owner of the place is 22 years old, Brazilian and a millionaire by almost anybody’s standards. So this “small boy” was giving me free drinks (by virtue of my being able to prove that I could speak his second language, Spanish) and reminding me of the fact that my life as a professional, perpetual student has virtually no meaning and little promise (at the moment, at the moment—no worry, I no de curse myself). It was with a bitter, remorseful heart that I left Lagos Island the next morning, heading for Ife. I was supposed to stop and see my friend, Sola, on my way—he said he’d give me a ride back to The Village. I’d never been to his place before, and he said that if I took a cab, it’d be a lot easier for both of us (meaning it’d be easier for him). His instructions were:

1) Go to Ojota Motor Park.
2) Get a car going to Ife, but tell them you want to get off at Ilishan.
3) Call me when you get there.

Straightforward enough, right? That’s what I thought. I got to Ojota and asked tout after tout where the cars were that were going to Ilishan. I’m calling them touts now because they proved that that is indeed what they are, but ordinarily, they are mini-bus conductors whose job it is to persuade passengers to ride in their respective buses, destined for various towns all over Nigeria. I met the first one, I told him I was going to Ilishan. He said, “Onitsha?” The second one, I said “Ilishan,” he said, “Ilesha?” When the third one I asked also said, “Onitsha?”, I realized I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I decided to try another approach. I met another one and decided to tell him the name of my friend’s university in Ilishan instead. I said, “Babcock University,” he said, “Taiwan University?” Now consider the fact that I was on a typically noisy Lagos road, in front of a rowdy motor park, and being harassed by other touts who wanted to drag me into their buses by force, in the hot sun, with an empty stomach and my giant sack of a purse filled to bursting with my clothes from the day before. I was so irritated. Actually, let’s call a spade a spade; I was livid. Sola chose that moment to call me and ask me what was taking so long. I started screaming at him on the phone, asking him why he’s trying to get me to come to a place that doesn’t exist, with a car that doesn’t exist (cuz all I could see around me were buses, and I sure as HELL wasn’t getting in any of those). Sola looked at himself to make sure he really did exist, then started trying to calm me down and convince me that Ilishan was a real place and that I could get to it. As I’m screaming at him, the touts are grabbing my arms to try and get me to go into their buses, despite the fact that I’m rejecting each one by snatching my arm out of his grip. For them, it was a game: Let’s Grab the Pretty Girl ‘Cuz She Doesn’t Like It. They formed a line and started grabbing me as I walked past, still trying to find the cars.

After the fifth grimy motherfucker touched me, I lost it. I didn’t recognize my own voice as I howled, “Leave me alone! I am not going where you people are going, what is it?!?!” Apparently, that was too much for them to take. They wanted to grab me and I had the audacity to dislike it? Did I think that my own body was for me alone to enjoy, me a mere woman? They abandoned their buses and started gathering around me. I looked up and saw about three of them in front of me, yelling loudly and beating their chests. It was very reminiscent of a moment in Planet of the Apes. When they started to block my path, some of my anger began to give way to a hesitant, doubtful fear, and I remember saying to myself, “Uh-oh.” There was a very tall one who had been blocking my way along with the others, but he seemed to have a different agenda because he kept saying, “Wait, wait!” I didn’t know what he wanted, and I didn’t find out just then because the other touts (there must have been five or six of them at this point) had started demonstrating to me that I didn’t really know what it meant to be grabbed by a Lagos tout.

They first tried to snatch my phone out of my hand, then they tried to snatch my purse. And please, don’t get caught up by the fact that I’m using the word “snatch”. The English language lacks verbs to describe the rough and aggressive nature of the “snatching” those touts were doing. The average broke Lagosian is tough as nails on the inside and on the outside. It felt like I was being hit with baseball bats that hadn’t been sanded down until they were smooth. When they couldn’t get the purse away from me, they started with my body, yanking my arms, my clothes, my hair, trying to drag me away from the park so they could deal with me thoroughly. I was weak. My body was freezing, and it felt like it wasn’t mine anymore. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. It was at this point that the very tall tout made his intentions known, as he quickly put himself in a position to shield me and deflect the worst of the blows (which he bravely took on the back of his head—I felt the vibrations from the hot slap someone gave him in my own stomach), then tried to guide me into another bus heading for Onitsha (how ironic is that), telling me to “just wait here, until they calm down, because they will take you somewhere and beat you if you don’t stay here.” I clambered into the bus weakly and sat down, dazed.

There was another man in there who had witnessed the whole thing, a middle-aged man on whom life had taken its toll. He said, “Are you going to Onitsha? If you are going to Onitsha, just follow us on this bus and let’s go together instead of going to find a car.” I heard myself squeak, “But I’m not going to Onitsha! I’m going to Ilishan,” for the umpteenth time, as I watched the touts beating each other up outside the bus, as they argued about who had the right to beat me first. Then someone else caught their eye, a small featherweight of a man who was struggling with him luggage; I’m not sure what he did to offend them, but they just started beating him up instead. He put up a good fight, the poor little thing, but they really took him apart.

My savior, whose name turned out to be Rotimi, helped me get to the cars heading to Ilishan. He got me an okada (a motorcycle taxi) and told him where to take me. I was so relieved I nearly hugged him, but I didn’t. When I got to the cars, another horde of men encircled me, offering to pay the okada man for me, calling me “fine girl”…just basically catching trips off my enrapturing beauty (hehe). It made it hard for me to pay the man, seeing as the last thing I needed was for my wallet to be snatched out of my hand by one of the idiots, but then their ring leader came and dispersed them, like the pack of wolves they looked like and helped me on my merry way. Well, it wasn’t so merry since the taxi broke down when we were too far away from Lagos to turn back, but not close enough to Ilishan for me to walk to Babcock and meet up with Sola. He came to get me though, so I guess I survived. But this is the madness that caused the stressed that caused the migraine that led up to my poisoning at the hands of the quack at APEX MEDICAL CENTER that kept me going back to the hospital where I eventually developed malaria that was misdiagnosed as appendicitis—are y’all starting to see now why it was imperatively and unequivocally time for me to leave Ife?

Chilling in Abuja at the mo’, at Le Méridien, pretending that I’m as important as my brother, who now works and lives here. Ife is nothing but a distant memory, and now the only thing I have to worry about are the arrogant toasters that abound in the form of “honorables”, i.e. House representatives and the like who want to get with you, but would rather walk right past you silently as they flippantly hand you their card, then send their PAs back to get your phone number, by any means necessary. The last one I turned down wasn’t taking no for an answer. He sent his PA to me three times, and you could just tell that the poor guy was getting increasingly embarrassed on his master’s behalf. Welcome to Abuja, I guess. Alas, I must leave you now cuz my room service is here and there’s a succulent half chicken that demands my full, adoring attention. Life is good again. Peace y’all!