Crafted beauty #2: Spotting Lagos

A lyrical account of a December in Lagos

I know you think I’m obnoxious, with my abroad-tinged accent (any type of abroad will do) and my timely appearances when the city is at its best. When there is at least one thing to celebrate — the birth of the person that half of the country leans on, to get through the madness of it all. And so, I come. I arrive smiling, Nigerian enough to still have ties to this place, but not Nigerian enough to join in when you speak of the daily pain you feel in living, breathing, here. You bend your head backwards as you talk. Your thoughts are heavy. There is passion in your voice but also a familiarity with your subject matter—fuel, politics, the ghosts of buried frustrations, suppressed tongues, all the ways you’ve been wronged here, all the ways you want to leave (like I have done), and the price of things. You have said this before — you have felt it always — it rolls off your tongue too easily. I can tell how this frustrates you. And I listen. I nod my head, pinch my brows, knowing that there is nothing for me to add. I who happen to be Nigerian from a distance. I who japa’d before there was a word for it. “The price of things”, you speak of. And here I come, a wallet filled with freshly-minted naira notes, changed at an absurd rate from a more desirable currency. Ready to dirty it all up.

You change the topic, knowing that I came to be entertained. To experience only the lightness that can be summoned in this place. After all, your frustrations abound. There will always be more of them, fertile creatures. You gather your funds, or what part of them have been given to you— less than you deserve but it’s hard to complain here— all that has been left over, what, when you take out the things you had to pay for— like generator bills, like free parking spots, and so on, but no, this is not what we speak of now— you take out your funds, and you take me, and we go, ready to forget.

We are tumbling over ourselves and the city, rushing to take it all in before I must go, joining the mass exodus of those that will leave again once the fun ends. We are slowed down by how much it’s possible to do here, what with the traffic, and the cost of things, but no. We are forgetting. You are reminded how charming this city can be, and I’m pulling you through it, making you look. It is beguiling, the way it shows other sides of itself. The way everything, everyone, is so alive here, and that is already consolation for the chaos. I am taking it in, like an excited child, and you begin to play too. We go to places that you would never think to go. Places that don’t cross your mind to visit.

We see a lot of art. You didn’t even realise how many galleries were hiding in loose corners across the city. It shocks you to see just how much colour, texture, skill, there is. How much space we’ve made for it, but how empty these spaces are. You watch me soak it all in, jumping from place to place, having to resist the urge to touch, to buy things, what with the newly minted paper I hold. I see you, I see myself in these pieces; you see me there too. I tell you how it’s different here — to come to these spaces and feel recognised, wanted, seen. I tell you how it’s strange that here, at home (and I say this with respect, because I don’t suffer here, so it’s not the same kind of home for me), I don’t feel black— I just feel like me. But when I walk into these spaces, and I see these paintings, I feel the best part of blackness. I feel black, and I am wrapped in all the ways that I can be captured, in all the colours I exist through.

We eat. There is never a lack of food here. I am torn between the old, the flavours I remember from childhood (fan yogo, chicken republic, suya, shawarma)— the things that remind me that I lived here, was once as Nigerian as you— and the new. The restaurants that trip over each other every Christmas, competing to serve people like me. In these spaces, I am always impressed by the sweetness of the Strawberry daquiris, blazing pink and swollen in round glasses. I roll my eyes back every time. But I notice the foreign man standing in the corner, watching over things, hands behind his back, as you tell me that of course this place isn’t owned by one of us. You want to say more, but you remember we are forgetting.

We are slowed down between destinations, by the mass of bodies trying to get somewhere, anywhere, in this city. I bite my lip as I watch people pile into buses, dangle dangerously from the back of bikes. I notice them in moments like this, when I am stalled from my feverish pace, when I have raised my eyes to squint at the way the city works, at the people who carry it on their backs, pinned under the weight of it. You are numb to this. You see it every day. I look down again, scrolling through my phone, unsure of what to do with the feelings turning over inside me.

I see my family too, and it is their job to remind me of things. That I have gained weight (and yet they still feed me); that I am unmarried (and so they pray for me); that family is a complex thing. I see my little cousins too, stretching out their skin with their height every year; and it reminds me how long I have been away. I offer them gifts and sweets to make them forget.

Now I want to dance, to regain the lightness. And you take me to the place this year. I am overwhelmed by the muchness of it all. By all the bodies that gather here, because they heard the same thing you did. My body is throbbing because of the music — first the volume of it, and then it’s beat, it’s power. And finally, I am losing myself. I am dancing, I want to jump, egged on by how the DJ knows what to do next; by how he keeps the thread running through the night. There are many songs I don’t know, but you do, most of you do — perfect tools for forgetting— tools picked up on long drives to hardly distant places; at weddings; on nights like these. And despite all this, despite the vibe, there is still composure here. I whisper to you over the music, a hard task, and I tell you I had seen someone that was once dear to me— someone I had held hands with running down the school corridor; and she looked away when I caught her eye. I tell you how this hurt my chest. You laugh and tell me that it’s normal here. To pretend that you haven’t seen someone, to pretend that you don’t care. Just to pretend.

You wave to me at the airport. You wish you were leaving too. Not so much because you miss me, but because you envy people like me, for whom it is easy to forget. I get on the plane, and swipe at the wetness on my face. Not so much because I miss you, but because of all the parts of myself I will leave behind, until next December.

Prompt:

Write about your city. Write about how it nurtures you, terrifies you, or both. Share it with me (by sending it on instagram, or replying by email if you’re a subscriber) in the next week, and it will go up on the Instagram page.