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I am standing by the road side waiting for an okada. Its 8.03am on a Tuesday morning. The rains had been heavy the night before. The gutter by the road side is stuck. I am standing just in front of it. Much of the content has sipped onto the road. It smelt very bad. I notice that others around had handkerchief’s held to the nose. I didn’t have one. With a repeated wave of my palm across my nose, I struggle to keep my sense of smell in check.
Tamako misabinilahhi….or some thing that sounds like that, a man calls out. He is old and dressed in a once white babariga. He is blind. A little boy of about six leads him by a pole. The boy has a plate in hand. As the blind man calls out, the boy juggles the coins in the aluminum plate to produce a sound. It had a rhythm. Like a tax collector, the boy moves to every by stander.
Tamako…rents the air, the coins ramble in the plate. The boy then looks on at you for a while his eyes saying “Oga Do something”.Where are these okada men? I wonder. It is beginning to take longer than normal. The smell from behind me was fast winning the battle. I move over to the other side of the road. A man in his mid ages, made older by years of hard labour pushes a cart of water. We call them mai ruwa. He is ascending a slope. As he pushes, I see the veins pop out on his neck and forehead. The muscles of his hand stiff. His right leg stretched out backwards to provide support. Sweat drops form beads around his neck. I recall the taps have not flown for days now.A bike finally arrives. I flag it down. The rider says his fare is N50. I flare up. The normal fare was N30.
The rider reminds me that it took him two hours on the queue to get just a few liters. Now the reason for the dearth of okada men this morning comes to mind. My initial anger is deflated. I bargain. We agree at N40. I mount.Something strikes me about my rider. It wasn’t about the brown collar of his shirt which stood inches away from my nose, or the stomach churning smell of the perfume he had bath himself with. It is the fact that he is a minor. About thirteen-fourteen I estimate. A child his age should be in school at this time. My thought is still on the under age rider, when I see a better reminder that so much is not as it should be in this country. The queue of vehicles at the filling station near the Tee Junction was now a full lane on the road. In took a crescent form. It curved round the filling station.
The look on the faces of the people in the driver’s seats spoke volumes. A sound in my throat expresses my disgust.I board a bus into town. I am shocked the fare hadn’t also increased. I sit in the front, between the driver and another man. The driver talks at length about the fuel wahalla. He seems happy to find a willing listener in me. He arrived the filling station at 4.00am and left just a while ago he revealed. He was proud of how he was able to maneuver at certain points just to get ahead. I nod and smile as he talks. He is encouraged and keeps talking. The man on my right hand is not part of our discussion. He is busy on the phone. He is speaking my mother tongue. I eavesdrop. His business has suffered a serious set back and he begged the person at the other end of the line for a loan. Call it a bail out. The other end seems not to be yielding. The man employs more adjectives to qualify his plea. He reduces the amount he asks for. He swears by the bible to pay on time. The other end seems to budge. The man smiles and blurts out a series of gratitudes. The call ends.
Behind us in the bus, someone argues with the bus conductor. I hear two raised voices. I listen. N10 was the bone of contention. The driver acts as though he doesn’t hear. He minds the road and tells me how wicked VIO (vehicle inspection officers) are. 'Dey wicked pass Road Safety', he opines.
I am nodding and smiling. The man by my side is making another call. The subject of discourse is same as the earlier one.
I get to Wuse and we disembark. Hawkers are every where. 'Cold pure water'…'buy winners chin chin'…'glo and zain SIM cards here'…'plantain chips'…'cold lacasera- viju'… 'buy gala meat'.
I make my way out of the melee. UNICEF might change their view on child abuse if they see this, I imagined. Most of the kid hawkers are on bare foot. The seemingly half-hearted efforts of the AEPB to rid the city of hawkers didn’t seem to be yielding much fruit.
I walk off. Down the road, I am harangued by calls to take a digital passport. They lined the whole length of the road. Young men with red or white cotton materials in hand. And a digital camera hanging from their wrist. They feed by the number of people they convince to take a shot.
I have eight unused passports in my wallet. I made them over a month ago. I still sort for an opportunity to use them. I ignore the photographers.I don’t miss the posts that dot the entire walk.
Endless job adverts. The very nature of the adverts made them suspect. The pool of people gathered around each advert said otherwise. Job seekers could be so desperate and quite gullible. I am a jobseeker too. I succumb to the temptation of having a peep. It was about the Nigeria police e-recruitment. How can they ask people who had no jobs to pay N1000.00. It didn’t seem fair. I walk away. I didn’t have N1000.00 to gamble with.
I walk past two conductors fighting. A crowd of spectators gather around them. Nobody is attempting to stop them. I walk past a man with a python wrapped around his neck. He held his audience in awe with his magic. I walk past a sweating Traffic officer having a Coke under a shed. He is visibly tired. His shoe too is tired. I remember my own shoe. It had undergone surgery in the hands of an aboki only the day before. The boy had done a great job. He gave the shoe new soles.
A jeep is parked on the side of the road. The glasses are wound up. I suddenly remember the biting rays of the sun over head. A lady sits before the steering throwing her right hand about. The left holds a phone to her ear. The bracelet on her wrist reflects through the glass. Diamond it must be. I remember the popular James Bond movie. Diamonds are indeed forever.The conductors are at work.“Mararaba-Nyanya, AYA, Secretariat, Zone four”“Nyanya-Mararaba, Zone four, Secretariat, AYA”“Any marching brake na fifty naira. Abeg, enter with your change oh” Conductors and change. What was it with them? I wonder. I take the bend. A small green car pulls up beside me. The driver hunks his horn twice. “Car drop” he calls out. I don’t even give the driver a look. He drives off. Soon another pulls up and the process repeats itself.
I take another turn to the right. I see the Business Plaza just in front. About a hundred more meters of trekking. I urge my legs on. I wipe the sweat from my face with my palm. I curse myself for not having a handkerchief.
“When you get there, call me so that I can come out and meet you” I remember Ben’s instruction. There is no call credit on my phone. It is over two weeks since I last re-charged. My eyes search around for a GSM pay phone stand. The AEPB was harder on Pay Phone stands than on child hawkers. I see one off the road near the residential buildings. The yellow umbrella is folded. There is no chair, just a table. It was the operators’ adaptation for quick disappearance at sighting the AEPB men. Chairs were an added luggage.
I make a detour. This call had better go through I tell myself. It was my first clear shot at a job. Ben had been certain his madam would take me. A sales boy in a big super market wasn’t a bad idea. My B.sc didn’t matter now. Four years of studying Mathematics was now all rubbish. Any job would do. I needed to remain alive. The operator is a familiar face from my Youth Service days. We shake hands and he asks if I had gotten something yet. I give a sincere reply. He recounts how hard things have been for him too. The phone stand was his response to it all. I make the call. Ben wonders what has been keeping me. His madam has been waiting. I end the call certain I would jog the rest of the fifty meters to the Business plaza. I shake hands again with the operator. We bid our farewells with the consolation…e go beta.
Sylva Nze
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