Traveling in Nigeria-gctid246987

[Yaw Asare]

An*Igby Prize for Nonfiction*entry from about travelling in Nigeria by Nigerian humorist Esomnofu*Ebelenna

I live in Nigeria. Not because God painted my ass black, laughed, and then disposed me into this country — a country that's named by a white man's girlfriend. I am not against the idea of letting our girlfriends name people's countries after rivers and weed. Or fruits and biscuits. Or even condoms and sex toys. I don't care. I only care for the characters in your country, in my country.

There are less corrupt countries on this continent, but I choose to reside here in Nigeria because we have a dark sense of humour. Every time I travel, I encounter compelling characters, whom I annoy.

On July 26, for instance, I enter a commercial bus in Nnewi, a bus that's bound for Onitsha, and in the front, a frustrated Biafra agitator with an oversized nose, a man who obtensibly has not brushed his teeth for the past 15 years, is pontificating about the "improbable" Anambra election, Nnamdi Kanu and Biafra. I clear my throat — I have drunk iced Bullet — and ask, Why don't you want election to be conducted in this slate?

Slate? he asks, turning a wrinkled face to see the young idiot who has just infantilized his cherished state. A slate? he repeats, and a horse-looking woman by my left guffaws.

Sorry, I smile. I am just happy — my chicken has finally laid eggs.

The chicken phoned you?

I turn to my right: The speaker is a gum-chewing girl who is squished to the window. She's light-skinned, and her eyes are the colour of urine. I want to beg her to start eating vegetables and fruits, but the fear of being bitten on the left ear restrains me. So, I ask her the name of the gum she is chewing and she raises her eyebrows. Then she smiles at me, a smile that says, Guy, I like you, and I swiftly look away so that she'll not beg me to buy her Gala and pay her fare. I am saving money, you see. I want to get married in 2019.

When the driver turns the key in the ignition and the car farts, I say, to silence the Biafran noise-maker, Driver, wait! Wait!

And he does.

Driver, I forgot to bathe, I say. Can you wait for me while I run home and bathe. I won't waste your time, I promise.

Thankfully, the Biafra agitator's voice engulfs my cartoon's voice. When he shuts his mouth, I explain to everybody on the bus that I want to sit close to the window so that I can jump out if an accident becomes imminent. I tell them that a lorry carrying bags of cement might squash all of us like tomatoes, but they do not laugh. The women scream, Jesus Christ of Nazareth! Some of them shout at me, some hit the bus, some call my grandfather a disgrace. In Nigeria, if you annoy people instead of insulting you, they insult your grandfather. Which is very good.

I am on Facebook reading the embarrassing homophobic posts of Nigerians when we hit Ojoto. The Biafra agitator asks me, Are you a northerner? Why do you hate Biafra?

I love Biafra oo, I say with what I assume is a heavy Igbo accent. If there's any country I hate, it is Nigeria.

Why do you hate Nigeria? A man's voice, from my back. Why do you suddenly want Biafra?

Well, I say, I want Biafra because the flag is colourful. I really want us to leave Nigeria because there's the colour green on the Nigerian flag. I don't like green. The colour green reminds me of unripe bananas, vegetables, algae and elephant grass, and that makes me want to cry. Because we are not grasses and bananas and vegetables. Are we? I like pink.

A hush fell. All the passengers gape at me as if I am some Chinese imbecile who is eating a cooked shoe with a fork in the public.

An aged woman's voice split the silence. But Biafra no get pink colour na¹, she says.

Madam, are you taking this idiot seriously!

If you know what Ndi Awunited snakes³ did to your ancestors in 1968 you will shup up, foolish boy!

Drop this boy in this bush, Driver! I will pay!

The gum-chewing girl squeezes my hand as if I am her lover, and, in a silly girl's voice, I tell her that I am shy.

She grins, exposing her yellow teeth, and I fight down the temptation to prescribe a brush and toothpaste. Shy? That's funny, she says. Are you going to Onitsha?

Yes, I reply. I'm going there for business.

You want to buy clothes or something?

I want to buy another girlfriend. I have kicked my girl out.

Why na? she asks.

I discovered that she has not read Things Fall Apart.

I have read Things Fall Apart, she said quickly. I like Okoye...

Okonkwo, I correct. I'm glad that you read the novel very well, Mrs...?

I'm not married oooo.

Me too, I say. But I will marry before 5: 00 this evening. You want to bet?

Her eyes sparkle and she snickers. Who? Me?

My landlord, I say. I am a homosexual. I prefer men. Women litter our houses with babies, and I hate babies because most of them are dirty and noisy and they can't even speak English fluently. Fuck babies!

The Yellow Teeth does not talk to me again, so I have the opportunity to go through Onyeka Nwelue's interesting timeline. I am enjoying the fights on this writer's Facebook wall until we hit Oba — my hometown. The horse-faced woman wants to alight. She's obese( Many Igbo women are getting fat nowadays. Too much of cassava and foreign rice?) and she is struggling to get down. She finally succeeds, but the driver's eyes are fixed on the buttocks of a young girl who is crossing the road. We ask the filthy little man to move, but he lowers his big head to the steering wheel and grunts. Perhaps he is suddenly stung by a scorpion sent from Above. Or he has just got an idea for a love poem? If he is really stung by a scorpion, does he expect us to buy him Cowbell milk and Vanilla ice cream and rush him to the hospital? If he has got an idea for a poem, does he expect us to wait for him till he finishes writing the poem in his head? I imagine myself stabbing the driver's ass with a breadknife.

Christ, what's wrong with this driver sef²? The Biafra agitator asks in a sheep's voice.

I think he's praying, I say.

General laughter.

I am serious, I say. Our driver is praying for this country. Everything is possible here — Terrorism, lynching, rape. I love terrorism because it reduces the population, but I hate rape. Babies are raped every day. Even plants and animals. Nothing is safe. One day you will return home and catch a grey-haired man raping your banana tree or fowl and accusing it of seducing him. I think our banana trees and fowls need to wear non-removable panties.

The car starts, then shudders and dies. The driver lowers his head to the steering wheel again. Fuel, he complains.

He has fuel, I say. He is just writing a poem. Let's wait for him.

Someone laughs. Who are you, This Boy?

I want to tell her that I am a bishop, but I remember that I don't even know what rubbish Paul wrote to the Corrinthians. A van, quite suddenly, emerges from behind and the driver, a red-eyed young man with some missing teeth, pours dirty water into our bus, spat at our driver's face, cursed our driver's mother's cunt, and then jerks off, his tyres squealing. Our driver, who's presumably polishing the final draft of his poem, jerks up from the world of unreality, stunned and speechless. The passengers are already screaming and hurling curses back at the disappearing bus. But I am laughing, although I am in a hurry, although the fleeing driver's smelly saliva is trickling down my own cheek. What do you expect me, a boy whose only weapons at the moment are the TomTom sweets in the trouser-pockets, to do? Jump out the window and pursue the antagonist's car with one of the sweets pretending it's a bomb from Russia and, if he brakes, I stab his neck with a 2B pencil? Or find a plank? Or borrow a shovel? My dear reader, if I do this I will have to limp home with a missing ear, a black eye, a disfigured nose and lips the size of Mr Bigg's doughnuts. Ask our driver what they do to the back of his neck with spanners and other instruments.

This is what the driver does: He swerves the car to the other track, races after the enemy, overtakes him, overtakes another bus, and then vehicle begins to fly like those cars in Fast and Furious. The passengers yell and call upon Jesus, their Lord and Personal Saviour, and the girl with yellow teeth wraps her arms around me and screams. God, I will die without having enough sex on this planet, I think. God, I will die and my debtors will celebrate. God, I will die an inconsequential man. God, I haven't published a single book. God, if I die with this girl with yellow teeth, one of my brothers, might dash off to a publishing with my unpublished novel, a satirical novel that's filled with insults, and tell the editors that it's his work. What will happen to my mother, a church-going woman who tries, unfortunately, to love the fucking beer out of me? She might jump into my grave and implore the gravediggers to bury us together. What about my father? Ah! The old boy is probably in front of the standing mirror in his room, rubbing Baby Powder on his face. I don't want anybody to disrupt the funny man's make-up with the news of his son's death. He might get mad at Mr. Bringer of Sad News and kick Mr. Bringer of Sad News' ass violionly so that he, Daddy, will lose his shoe in the man's stomach. Dad's face is most important to him. Which is very good.

But Jesus — or the Idemili royal pythons? — saves us: The bus screeches to a halt just inches close to the deep gutter at Oba 8 Miles — the driver pushes the door open and jumps out. We watch in horror as he bolts towards the oncoming bus driven by the man who spat on him, and smashes the screen with a breast-shaped rock. Meanwhile, I fly out of our own bus like a pigeon and, without unzipping my trousers to make sure the girl has not run away with my penis, I pick my fallen glasses and run and run. The vagabonds and his shirtless boys are still fighting our driver and conductor with machetes, spanners, cables, etc. when I jump the tea-coloured stagnant water, almost throwing a pregnant woman with an umbrella into the deepest muddy water.

Now, as I write this story in my favourite beer-parlour in Nnewi, I hope my friend who's based in Malaysia will not interrupt me by persuading me to leave Nigeria, although I've made it public that I'm in this country to savour the farcical travels and I speak and write here primarily to annoy some people. Am I stupid?

Na: "Now" in Nigerian English

2. Sef: In fact

3. Ndi Awunited snakes: Igbo words for the Haunited snakes people

Esomnofu Ebelenna*is a Nigerian humour writer. His stories have appeared in The Scarlet Leaf Review, The Kalahari Review, Kmtyw Writer, Tuck Magazine, DNB Stories and Storyzetu. He annoys people in the morning, drinks iced beer in the evening and writes in the night.

https://kalaharireview.com/travelling-in-nigeria-4c306cc7e399