Nigeria, 1993
It seemed as if we’d been bracing for impact for hours before the truck finally drove past. Traffic in our lane was reduced to a crawl. Our driver, oblivious to our family’s alarm, continued to inch his decrepit vehicle forward.
When she was finally convinced that we were not on the verge of being knocked over the edge of the road, momma backed away from her threat to abandon the cab, and stepped back into the car. After she closed the rear door behind her, we would trudge through this treacherous stretch of asphalt, mud, and vehicle sized potholes for hours, with the collective hearts of all five of us caught in our throats. We let out a synchronized sigh of relief after we were finally clear of that treacherous quagmire.
As the night descended, we were still on the road, and a considerable distance removed from our next destination. The expanse between Lagos, Nigeria and Aba, Nigeria, my mother’s home, was 680 miles, which was the equivalent of driving across the width of my home state of Colorado more than two times. My sisters and I pleaded with our father: “Can we stop at a hotel for the night, eat, sleep, and regroup for the next day’s travel?” Dad refused. For we were traveling on a very tight budget while navigating an even tighter window for travel — we were scheduled to spend a week in Nigeria, too long a time in my opinion. There was no way that dad was going to go through the hassle of having to change our travel itinerary, nor was he willing to shell out the extra money for a hotel. So we were going to have to suck it up and endure the remainder of this interminable drive.
The evening drive morphed into an over-night drive, and my sisters and I could not sleep again. The anxiety of driving through another country in the dark of night increased as the traffic became increasingly sparse with each minute that passed until there were no cars left on the road except for our cab. This stretch of highway was paved, and with no traffic to impede our progress, we were able to make some good time. For several hours, it was just the six of us, apart from the trees that lined the edge of the highway.
Our cab driver’s vehicle came equipped with a stick shift, black and worn as it was. The ostensible function of the stick was to shift the car into appropriate gears safely. But I’d noticed that the cab driver had not used the stick to shift into second gear for a while. I didn’t know much about cars, but I knew that traveling at high speeds for an extended amount of time at the same gear could not have been good for the car’s engine. The inside of car smelled of gas and exhaustion. What if the engine caught fire or exploded with the five of us inside, killing us all in the process? I thought. Or what if the engine stalled on us? We would be alive but stranded on the side of the road, with no way to contact help.
I reached over the driver’s side seat and tapped on the cab driver’s shoulder. “How long do we have until we get to Aba?” I asked.
“Oh, not far,” said the driver. “Not too far at all.”
I looked down at the gear shift and listened as the engine burned. “How far is not too far?”
“Couple of hours, no more than that.”
A couple of hours? Would the car last until we finally got there?
“All right,” I said as I collapsed back into the seat.
“Ouch, Eze,” said middle sister while rubbing her shoulder. “You bumped into me.”
“Sorry.”
I actually dozed some during the last part of the drive, though I’m not sure for how long. When I awoke the sun was blazing again, and sweat was trickling down the small of back, and into my butt crack. At least the car hadn’t exploded and all of us were still in one piece.
We finally stopped at a rest area for gas and a few supplies. The sweat on my skin had turned into a residue that stuck to my clothes. And with no prospect for a shower in the coming hours, and with more time to be spent squished and boiling inside a compact car, the muck on my body was likely to compound. After we pulled out of the rest stop for the last part of this trip, I turned to my mother. Was she excited or dreading her first trip home since 1975? Sweat was trickling down the front of her face, ruining her makeup. Her face was passive and I couldn’t really tell one way or the other.
We finally arrived in Aba in the late afternoon.
*****
If you want to measure the inequality within a city, just study the roads. The roads in Aba were a patchwork of paved and unpaved throughways. Hotels, municipal buildings, schools, marketplaces and office structures were situated in areas where the Aba’s roads had been finished.
In order to get to the place where my mom was raised, we had to drive through shanty towns. These roadways were littered with grooves, some of which were long and wide enough to engulf the truck that nearly edged us off the road the day before. The size and frequency of the grooves and the constricted width of the thoroughfares made many of the potholes impossible for us to avoid. Our driver was forced to creep through these depressions in the ground. We were tossed around the inside of the cab as the driver navigated them.
Aba was also designated as an environmental disaster area. Refuse dumps were littered throughout the town. As our car ambled forward, we frequently drove past high mountains of waste, some of which were shaped like the snow-capped peaks of my home state, mini mountains that were taller and wider than two story houses. The garbage heaps were composed of industrial and domestic waste. For some unexplainable reason, the residents of Aba were not able to bag their waste appropriately. So they tossed the trash out onto the streets of the city, and the waste piles rose skyward.
The trash piles had been building for years. The sun’s rays shined down on the garbage piles, causing vapors to waft into the air. I looked toward the sky. A noxious gray haze hung over this place. The people of Aba seemed not to be bothered by the excessive amounts of trash. Negotiating sections of the town that were fit for landfills was just a part of life.
After emerging from a craterous pothole there were other dangers that the driver had to overcome. Like Lagos, Aba was overcrowded to the point of being perilous. Every inch of the city seemed to be occupied by someone or something.
If you were a pedestrian in Aba you had as much claim to the roads as the cars. There were no deterrents against jay walking, no stoplights to manage the flow of traffic, no peace officers to hold people accountable for their actions. People just walked. It was up to the driver of the vehicle to find a way to clear a lane for the automobile. Our driver would honk his horn, and roll down his window and scream at people to “move” while banging his hand on the side of his moto.
Most of the town’s people were consumed with their own business, but there were those curious people who stopped what they were doing to look inside our car as we drove past. Although we were all sweating bullets, members of my family were dressed in some of our best finery, men in suits and women in flowing dresses. We were drawing the wrong kind of attention. There was a particular young man — he was about my age — who bent down to look at me as we drove by. He bored holes through my windows with wide, hungry eyes. I turned away so as to avoid his intense gaze.
The drive through this town was even more shocking to the system than the drive through Lagos. How could a country allow so many of its citizens, the majority of whom were actively contributing the welfare of the country, to live in such conditions? Why hadn’t the people who were forced to live here campaigned more vigorously for the basic needs of a society, like trash pick-up? Again, my thoughts would revert back to Denver, where I longed to be. I wanted to be comfortable in my room while listening to east coast and west coast hip-hop. Rappers often bragged of the perils of living in the neglected areas of sprawling American cities, where poverty reigned, opportunities for advancement were rare, and danger lurked in every corner of the hood. I don’t know if life in the American ghetto could have prepared them for what was in Aba.
*****
We finally arrived at our destination in the early evening, a two-story blueish green house, my momma’s childhood home. There were two people milling about the area where the front lawn should have been, one of them was an ebony skinned and long armed teenage boy. Momma pointed and waved in their direction. The young man, dressed in brown pants and slacks, smiled and waved back, and then began walking toward the cab.
“Who’s that mommy?” asked baby sister, outfitted in a yellow dress and sitting on my dad’s lap.
“That is my nephew,” said mom. “And your cousin, Edward.”
More of momma’s family would follow behind Edward. After we exited the cab, we were overtaken with hugs and handshakes from these strangers who were also family. They were fascinated by us. This was especially true of Edward, who was the oldest of the children who greeted us — Edward was seventeen.
My sisters and I had gained new “brothers” and “sisters” in the span of just a few minutes. I could not remember the last time anyone back home had reacted to my presence in such an exuberant and uncalculated way. Once we were inside the house, we were shown where we would be sleeping for the night. I would be sleeping in the same room with Edward.
I positioned my suitcase against the wall, and performed a quick survey the bedroom. Apart from the wooden desk and an accompanying chair situated below the open window and a single mattress against the opposite wall, there wasn’t much for me to see.
“Is there another mattress for me to sleep in?” I said.
“No man,” said Edward. “This is it. Me and you will be sleeping there, my man.”
“Really?” I said. I pointed in the direction of the disheveled mattress. It was white and dusty. “Cause the mattress is pretty small. How are the two of us going to fit on that thing?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said dismissively. “It’s no big deal. It’s nothing. It’s nothing. You ready to eat my man? Are you hungry?”
There was an aroma floating from the kitchen into the bedroom. My stomach felt abjectly bereft and hollow. “I would like something to eat.”
“Come with me then.”
I followed Edward to the living room, and was stopped short by the sight of my mother and the three people who surrounded her. Her family members were reaching for her as if she were something not to be believed. And then they touched her corporeal body, and were overcome by the sense of feeling. Momma returned the gesture, reached for her family members and began weeping, a genuinely frightening scene for me to behold since I’d never seen my momma weep so forcefully.
“It’s good that you came back Eze,” said Edward.
There were ten of us who sat at the dinner table. The five members of my immediate family; Ferdinand, who wanted to become a priest; Cassius, another nephew of my mother; Rosa, who was my aunt; Joseph, my uncle; and finally, Edward, who sat to the right of me. Every inch our plates was covered by plantains, goat meat, a green leafy spinach with onions, and a soup of some kind. There were also two bowls of a cream-colored concoction called Fufu sitting at the middle of the table — we collected a dollop of Fufu, dipped it in the soup, and then swallowed it whole.
There was ample conversation to complement the scarfing down of the food. The adults mostly spoke amongst themselves in the Igbo language, with some English — English is one of the official languages of Nigeria — peppered in between. My sister’s and I spoke to cousin Edward, who along with Ferdinand, was the most proficient English speaker of the Oluomas — Oluoma is my mother’s maiden last name.
I’d already started shaving my head bald back then.
Edward turned to me. “Is that what is reigning in America?” Edward said.
“What’s been reigning in America?”
“You’re bald head? Is that the style man?”
“Um, partly. A lot of guys are shaving their heads now. Basketball players do it a lot. I play basketball.”
“Oh, for real! You play basketball?” said Edward. “I like Michael Jordan. Are you going to be like Jordan? Play on the Olympic team?”
“No. I don’t think that will happen. I don’t think I’ll ever be that good. A lot of guys cut their hair like you have yours now. I like it.”
“Thank cousin,” said Edward. “I like to keep my hair fresh, man.”
Edward was sporting the high-top fade haircut, wore clothes that were rooted in western youth culture, and was proficient in the use of English idioms. Cousin was unnaturally and relentless cheerful. He was also brimming with ambition, and a thirst for adventure that he hoped would eventually take him far away from his home one day. His ultimate dream was to get to America, obtain a green card, build a viable life, and make enough money to send back to the people he left behind.
Edward was right. The two of us were able to fit onto that mattress in the corner. He didn’t have any problems falling asleep. I was kept awake by the stifling heat that I could not get used to and a persistent buzzing in my ear. I would swat the buzzing thing away with my hand, only for it return to hover at the exact spot a few seconds later. This back and forth would continue into the morning. When I arose from the mattress, my tee shirt was drenched in sweat, and there were dozens of red bumps along the sides of my forearms. The mosquito who’d been hovering at my ear canal had been the decoy while the other little bastards had feasted on my blood. And the bumps itched. Oh, how they itched.
Every member of my family were dragging their feet as we prepared for the next leg of our trip. I hadn’t slept very well since the second of the three planes we rode on had left the east coast of the U.S. And I knew that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy a good sleep until I was home and resting in my own bed.
As we loaded our belongings into the cab, Edward approached me while carrying a folded piece of blue paper with multicolored trim in his hand. I turned to face him and he handed the paper to me. When I flipped it around, I saw that his address had been printed in the center.
“I’m glad to have met you man,” Edward said. “Let’s keep the relationship going. Will you write to me?”
We’d only known it each other for the less than a day, but I’d grown fond of Edward. I wanted to please him. “You’re right,” I said. “We should keep in touch. I’ll write and I send you something.”
He smiled, reached out his hand. I took it. “Yes man. We are going to be brothers, right?”
“Yeah, we going to be brothers.”
“All right, man. You take care of your mom. She is very important to us. Okay?”
“I promise you that I will.”
Dad was the last one of us to enter the moto. The area around his eyes were puffy, there were black circles around the rims, and he was irritated. He slammed the door hard enough to shake the entire car and said, “Let’s get out of this place.”
The driver stepped on the gas, propelling the cab forward. The last leg of our journey to my father’s village had begun.
Friends. Support my writing on medium.com and give me as many claps as you can(look for the hands on the left side of the story and click, click, click. It’s completely free. The more applause and followers I get, the more money I make. Here is the link:medium.com/...