Au Abuja

At 4:20am, the New Haven train station seems to be caught somewhere between reality and the land of dreams. It is quiet, except for the muted laughter of two janitors on the far end, exchanging jokes and cigarettes in the darkness of morning. What few passengers there are in the station are sitting on the bench closest to the schedule board, staring up at the glowing red numbers of the digital clock. 4:21. I had been at the station for three minutes at this point, and was struggling to stay awake so as not to miss my 4:42 train to New York. When I looked around at my fellow travelers, we all seemed to be blinking in unison, and very slowly. I looked back up at the clock. The "1" swelled and twisted around itself, transformed into a "2". 4:22.

I was on my way to Nigeria. Abuja, to be specific. I had planned to be excited about it, but I was now too exhausted to care. Though I meant to go to bed at 9 the night before, giving myself six hours' of sleep by the time I woke up at 3, I ended up sleeping by 12:30am. By the time 3 o'clock rolled around, I opened my eyes, realizing that I had never really fallen asleep the whole time. My red eyes burned with fatigue, but I struggled to my feet and into the shower. I woke up a little when the warm water touched my body; by the time the taxi came, adrenaline kicked in as I rushed down the porch stairs to meet it, my extra-large duffel bag stuffed with two weeks' worth of clothes. And now, I waited.

4:26. In ten minutes, I would head to the platform. To keep my heavy eyelids from closing shut, I pulled out a People magazine that I'd found on a plane a few days earlier and pretended to be interested in the inane articles within. Brad and Angelina seen together in public for the first time, Lindsay Lohan clubbing just one day after her appendectomy. Cute accessories every woman must have. I looked at the words, but let my mind drift to more relevant matters: if I stay awake on the train, I can sleep on the flight to London, but not for long, because I have to save enough sleep for the flight to Abuja, so I don't get jetlagged. Important matters. Then I started thinking about the work that prompted this trip in the first place: my master's thesis. Over the next two weeks, I have to collect enough data and conduct enough interviews about Nigeria's tourism industry to bolster what little work I've done so far and create a research masterpiece (insert "Evil Genius" laughter here). I mentally went over the list of people I had to talk to: Omotayo Omotosho (former DG of the National Tourism Development Corporation), Femi Fani-Kayode (if I could find him), bla bla bla at the Ministry of Information and bla bla bla somewhere else. Got a lot to do, but in the words of Joe Nigeria, I am "up to de tax".

The entire trip was pretty uneventful. I had interesting seat partners on both legs: the first, a beefy English man reminiscent of every British mob movie ever made. He looked like his nickname was Boxer and he pounded Carlsberg lagers throughout the flight. The beer cans were dwarfed by his large, meaty fingers, which were equally dwarfed by the enormous gold twisted-metal rings that adorned them. They looked sturdy. Good for punching someone's teeth out. My seat partner on the flight from London to Abuja was also on the chubby side, but squat. And smelly. Before I saw him, I was greeted by his very striking body odor, which was only outshone by the fecal scent that oozed from his mouth when he opened it to speak. I still believe the flight would have been tolerable, if he hadn't insisted on falling asleep with his fat arms halfway into my chair. Twice, I lambasted him for infringing on my personal space: "Excuse me, you're in my space. You're in my space!" As if I didn't pay the same money as him to fly on that plane. Nonsense.

The toasting started pretty much as soon as we disembarked from the plane. Waiting for my bag, praying that it made it, I was approached by this man in a wide-brimmed hat. He needed a pen to fill out the immigration form that we were handed as we walked through customs. Go figure. Only in Nigeria are you expected to fill out immigration forms after you're cleared through customs. I gave him the pen, noticed that he didn't offer it back even though he was done writing. An inexperienced person might have assumed that he was just trying to find a way to escape with my pen; after all, it's a nice pen. But I knew. When, out of the blue, he asked me if I saw my bag, I was certain. This man was going to toast me. I was immediately irritated. Why do I always get the freaks and the losers? It's 2007. Who the hell wears a wide-brimmed hat in 2007? At least he planned his moves right, so as not to "embarrass" himself (embarrassment being the worst fate that can befall a Nigerian. If you don't believe me, just watch Sharon Stone in Abuja, where she had a gun pointed in her face and was threatening the gun bearer with embarrassment if he should pull the trigger). He accosted me outside, where I stood waiting for Mtama, my uncle/cousin/brother, hand-in-hand with another woman named Jane (really - her name was actually Jane).

I have to give it to Nigerian men - they are relentless. And they have absolutely no understanding of sarcasm, which is my favorite weapon but sadly useless within these borders. I won't bore you with all the details, but we went back and forth for about five minutes, him asking me for my name, me cleaning my teeth, him asking me again for my name, me scrutinizing my nails. Suddenly, he noticed that Jane was attached to his hand, at which point he introduced her saying, "Oh, are you shy because of her? Don't worry, she's just a friend. She works here. On your way back, you can talk to her, she'll help you get through customs and everything." I wanted to tell him that I had been through customs many times without anyone's help, but that would have encouraged him, so I shut up. Not that ignoring him was helping. I literally had to tell him that my silence meant that I wasn't going to tell him my name. That didn't help either. Then Jane, grinning, said, "Just leave her, maybe she's shy because of me. Maybe next time, she will come around." They walked off laughing. I was fuming and incredulous. Shy? I was doing my very best to be stupendously rude, and those morons were calling me shy?? And who the hell did Jane think she was, acting like my pimp? She is what is wrong with Nigerian women today, the ones who make it OK for men to behave like panting dogs, moronic assholes, blind mysogynists, oblivious to their own unacceptable behavior.

But whatever, pretty soon Mtama came and got me, and I have spent the past couple of days catching up to my jetlag (I slept all the way to London, and not a wink between London and Abuja on a flight that landed at 5:40am). It's been dusty and hazy, and I'm getting used to constantly having dry skin since I didn't think to bring or buy Vaseline, the only remedy for harmattan. Despite the fact that Abuja is supposedly "more civilized" than the rest of the country, I find that I'm clutching my seatbelt in every vehicle I enter, afraid of what I imagine will be certain death on roads where every driver seems to think he's driving a Dodgem car. It's nice to be back, though. My brother has wireless internet that actually works (!!), I get to watch Nigerian movies whenever I want (thank you, DSTV!), and Grace (the house help - why are they always named Grace?) is very attentive. Gawd, I have missed being asked what I want to eat! Imagine, I've spent so many years making my own food, when I could have had a Grace! Grace makes most of my meals, Grace prepares all the ingredients when I want to cook for myself so I don't have to do anything but mix, Grace makes my bed, and Grace takes my plate back to the kitchen when I don't want to. And she calls me Aunty. I officially love and will miss Grace terribly. I choose this over New Haven any day!