ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Observations category.

New at the Lagos Airport

Until a few months ago, the only way to access the Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos as a guest was to park one’s car in an old and decrepit parking lot that was remarkable for its inadequate space, its pothole-ridden mud pavements, and its general soreness to the eyes. Alternatively, in order to pick up an arriving guest, one could keep driving around the arrival terminal for as long as it takes for one’s guest to get out after waiting for about half an hour (or more) to pick up their bags, or one could pay the 400 naira (it was kind of an extortion) fees and park in the said parking lot, and then walk to the terminal about a quarter mile away to await one’s guest’s arrival. At the arrival itself, one waits standing among a crowd of other patiently waiting guests. In the heat of an African evening, standing outside presents great and unnecessary inconvenience. Airport officials regularly came around to upbraid someone who had overstepped the lines of the guest area, or another who had sat on a concrete slab that wasn’t meant for sitting on. For many guests, it was better to stay in one’s car at the rowdy parking lot nearby and hope that one’s returning traveler has a mobile phone with which to call whenever they are done with baggage clearing.

OLD: Customers buying suya, changing money, enjoying the night in the glow of light.

OLD: The airport from around the old parking lot (and suya spot)

At the entrance to the said parking lot outside the terminal was a suya stand and a row of shops where one could buy anything from soft drinks, cookies, and cigarettes, to any foreign currency. At night, it was a market scene lighted by the light from the faraway terminal and a glow from the shops and the coal fire used for roasting meat. Crowds of money changers, idle travelers, and guests of traveling men and women moseyed around in droves. It was mini chaos, but chaos all the same: an African night marked by heat, noise, and people. Driving out of the parking lot after one’s business is done, the guard who collected money earlier on entering the premises doesn’t notice one anymore, and one drove into the night with a feeling of having been dispossessed of something a little valuable without knowing what exactly it was.

Because of the terrible arrangement that got the parking lot in that location in the first place, many would have wondered a number of things: why the amount collected daily had never been put to any good use in upgrading the facility, whether the money went back into the coffers of the state or into a private pocket, and whether the fact that the parking lot had become insufficient in catering to the number of daily visitor cars at the airport shouldn’t have moved a caring federal government to deliver on its promise to completely upgrade the airport into a world standard complete with a top class parking lot that gives value for money.

TODAY: One of the new shuttle buses

A view of the now organized parking space with ruled demarcated lines.

Visiting the airport a couple of weeks ago presented a surprise: the old parking lot has now been demolished, replaced by a well-organised, safely removed, and less cluttered one about a mile away from the airport terminal. There is also a shuttle bus that transports commuters/travelers/visitors from the new parking lot to a spot close to the terminal from where they can safely walk in. Gone are the night crawlers. Gone are the suya sellers and the money changers (many travelers might feel inconvenienced by these. A friend of mine once recalled, fondly, one time when he missed his flight because he was waiting to buy suya). Gone, also, is the terrible mud road. The shuttle bus goes through a newly constructed inside road and delivers passengers and their guests back at the parking lot in under five minutes, where they can pay for their parking, and leave in an orderly fashion.

A crowd of travelers and their loved ones about to board the shuttle bus back to the parking lot.

There is a snag though: there are not enough shuttle buses. Sure, when you’re entering the airport alone after having parked in the said lot, it is an easy ride into the terminal, since people usually come into the airport in trickles. But after a major flight or two has offloaded its passengers and crew into the arms of their loved ones in the arrival lounge, commotion begins. There are occasional golf carts to transmit some from inside the arrival lounge to the bus pick-up location, but how many people can a golf cart sit? And how many golf carts would we need to carry everyone even when many have have already decided to walk with their luggage already risking robbery or vandalism? At the pick-up location, the crowd mills in a throng. And suddenly, the comfortable shuttle bus that sat about ten people on the first leg of the journey now has to accommodate about thirty-five people or more (passengers, their loved ones, and their luggage).

Because travelers are typically tired, and because many of them are arriving with a number of luggage bags, the shuttle bus pick-up point now (inevitably) features area boys willing to help them load the bags into the shuttle buses and offload them at the parking lot (for a fee, of course! Who do they work for? What are the guarantees that they won’t steal from passenger bags when he/she isn’t looking?) The only reason why their presence is inevitable is that the struggle to get a good space in the bus when competing with a number of other people mandates that the traveler has more than one pair of hands. So, is this necessary? After tipping the first luggage help within the terminal, paying for a push cart to move luggage bags outside the terminal, paying police or custom officers who choose to keep asking the tired traveler “Sir/Madam, what have you brought for us?”, does the traveler still need another person to tip (who likely works for the government)?

If it is a work in progress, this is an encouraging start. The old parking lot was atrocious, and is best lost to memory. The new one is great and well done. The only thing left is a nice and orderly transition from the terminal into the new parking lot in a comfortable and orderly fashion.

Inside the shuttle bus on the way into the terminal.

The buses are new and well equipped.

An idea that makes sense is to NOT have the loved ones of travelers come into the terminal AT ALL. They say their goodbyes at the parking lot while their loved ones are transported by shuttle into the airport alone. The same applies on return: they stay at the parking lot while the nice buses bring their loved ones back to them. Many things are achieved: the terminals are tidier and more secure, the shuttle buses last longer and are saved from early wear, and the rides are more comfortable. Everybody wins.

To satisfy African longings for communality and a bustling avenue for goodbyes, an entertainment venue can be built around the parking lot. The parting goodbyes and welcomes can be done there. But the ride to and from the terminals should be for passengers alone.

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The airport, built during the second world war, was named in 1976 after the then recently assassinated head of state General Murtala Rahmat Muhammed.

The Murtala Cenotaph

At a small roundabout facing the old Federal Secretariat in Obalende, Lagos, is an almost inconspicuous artwork designed in the form of a military epaulette bearing the rank of a general. For those familiar with it, it is a cenotaph, commissioned 24 years ago at the spot of the gruesome act, to commemorate the assassination of Nigeria’s third military president, General Murtala Muhammed. On the way to work on the morning of February 13, 1976, without adequate security detail (a result of personal modesty), the then thirty-eight year old head-of-state with a reform agenda was shot and killed in a coup attempt.

Those unfamiliar with the story will only notice the spot as a weird anomaly at a roundabout between a fuel station and the old Federal Secretariat. Worn by time and a poor maintenance culture, the object merely (and barely) puts up a dignified presence where the intention must have been a bold and defiant resistance to the memory of terror. The plaques describing its purpose are broken and dirty, the lawn around the object is barely tended, and the object itself seemed needing of a face lift at worst, or an upgrade at worst.

This is not a peculiar problem to this location. A few miles from here, at the Onikan premises of the National Museum, the Mercedes Benz car in which the president was assassinated lay within the dusty corridors of a poorly maintained room. The bullet holes and the caked dried blood from the gruesome event can be seen (and touched), providing at least some relief to a museum without any other redeeming quality. Original artworks that used to be housed in there have either been stolen and sold, or given, in a fit of subservient generosity, to foreign sovereign.

On one of the four sides of the base on which the epaulette and two gun replicas stand is the inscription: “The Cenotaph erected by Eti-Osa Local Government in honour of Late General Murtala Muhammed on the spot where he was assassinated on the 13th of February, 1976, was commissioned by the president and commander in chief of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Gen. Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida CFR, FSS, MNI, on the 13th of February, 1992. On the others are quotes attributed to the late head of state. One of them reads: “As true Nigerians, we must at all times put the national interest above all considerations.”

We could do with some of that.

A Review of Tendai Huchu’s “The Intervention”

“The Intervention”, a short story by Tendai Huchu, which can be read here, was recently shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African writing. Here’s my take on the work.

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“Intervention” could be read in many different ways: as a tale of distant compatriots grown impotent by time and distance; the futility of armchair activism or the inevitability of same in the face of real challenges; or as a common allegory on the state of the continent in tumult.

It could, however, be read simply as a story of love, lust, disappointment, and one man’s care-free interrogation of it all. That man was Simba in this case, a poet, along with his friends, Z and Tamu (and their girlfriends).

The texture of Huchu’s story goes from casual to mundane to judgmental observations of people made by the principal character, Simba, who lives in the United Kingdom, far away from the scene of electoral action in Zimbabwe, his hometown. The story climaxes at the end of a national election in Zimbabwe where the president who has ruled since the country’s independence in 1981 was “elected” into office for another term. Then it descends gently into the chaos of domestic dispute between lovers and friends: a not so subtle subplot that had followed the story from the start.

So, is this an allegory on the state of our impotence and confusion on the continent? I’m more inclined to that conclusion. Or, in trying to find other ways to appreciate a story so ordinary yet representative of a slice of some immigrant life from a failed African country, I might be forced to dismiss it as a neophyte attempt at storytelling (at worst) or an effort carefully riddled with levity, for particular effect (at best). The characters are naïve if not simple, and prosaic if not uninspired. An example:

“…I never cast a single stone in this entire charade. I was consumed with overwhelming fury, seeing what Tamu was doing to this little princess. How could he sit there, chatting nonsense about his privacy, as she trailed the list of names from his phone.”

Apart from the fact that the last sentence is missing a question mark, the expression itself is not that striking, especially in a work of fiction aspiring to Africa’s largest literary prize.

In an earlier scene, Simba says: “I gave him my wtf face”, written exactly as quoted, with small letters for “wtf” which one assumes does not mean “Welcome to Facebook”.

Maybe the pedestrian storyline of a bunch of immigrants in England watching and pontificating about their home elections does call for equally carefree characters speaking in insipid turns of phrase. Or maybe the primary character is an extension of a writerly experimentation that didn’t quite achieve its goals. Either way, one is left with a feeling of deep dissatisfaction when it all ends. This is 2014. A failed African state and the disappointment of its emigrated elites isn’t such a tantalizing storyline except something new is added in the form of great and captivating writing.

“The kids didn’t speak Shone, so we were introduced in English, and check this out; I was “Uncle Simba”… The kid just looked at me blankly like I was talking effing Zulu.”

Effing, really? Who is this character? A twenty-two year-old Zimbabwean visiting England for the first time and intent on convincing us of his acquisition of street and teen lingo?

So, maybe the writer didn’t care much for inspiring our imagination or challenging our capacity for linguistic fireworks. Or maybe he couldn’t. We may not know until we read his other offerings.

Or maybe the story is a deliberate simplistic portrayal of simplistic existence. Zimbabwe goes on in its charade of a government. AIDs continues to ravage the continent. Sudan is now two countries. Egypt has changed its government more than twice in three years. Boko Haram has turned the fragile Nigerian state into a colander of dust and dead bodies. Kenya is fighting Al-Qaeda on its streets. Somalia is a violent ghost of whatever was there before, and Libya after Gaddaffi hasn’t lived up to Western (and African) hopes of its survival. Yet here we are in a quotidian cycle of daily vanities: dating, cheating, smoking, etc, and goofing around in our new realities, too impotent to act in any meaningful way. On this level, I understand and appreciate the effort and direction of the work. Otherwise, I should also probably go for a smoke (and hopefully not “cry like a pussy.”)

In any case, if it is the writer’s first, it shouldn’t necessarily be his worst. Next, please.

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First published on Brittle Paper.

The Church at Abeokuta

The Cathedral of St. Peter at Ake, Abeokuta, is the oldest church in Ake, the oldest church in Abeokuta, the oldest church in Western Nigeria, and – due to the proximity of the town to the Atlantic Ocean and the coming of the first missionaries – the oldest church in all of Nigeria. Built reportedly in 1898, it served as a rallying ground for a number of initial missionaries to Abeokuta many of who played other roles in the government of indirect rule between the Crown in England and the chiefs in Egbaland. The foundation of the church was laid by one Reverend Andrew Desalu Wihelm around 1846, and completed during the time of Henry Townsend.

One of the most known pastors of the church include the Reverend Josiah J. Ransome Kuti (also known as the grandfather of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the inventor of Afrobeat), among many others. A hall in the church premises is named after another famous pastor, the Reverend Henry Townsend.

In some ways, it is the Southern equivalent to the Church in Wusasa – also a first in the north, built in 1902 – whose survival depended very much on the hard work of volunteer priests battling a society that – at the time – very much resisted the change it represented. In the account written in Wole Soyinka’s 1981 Autobiograpy Ake – the Years of Childhood, most of the early missionaries faced life-threatening confrontations with the elders of the town to whom Christianity represented a real and present threat. Many churches fell down after being visited by men from the local cults, sometimes while people worshiped inside. In the case of the Wusasa church, the threat came from the Muslim societies in the north who felt threatened by the new religion. That these structures have lasted so long is homage to maintenance, but more importantly, the cultural place they occupy in the societies that own them.

To My Wife

It has been a while since I’ve been mushy, but seeing my wife through the physical and emotional burden of being the primary caregiver for our little son has filled me with tremendous appreciation for the role of mothers in the life of children, and as pillars of families. Yes, I provide support in all the best ways I can, but nothing compares to being the sole source of food and care for a tiny being who also happened to have lived in your uterus for about 9 full months. There were the days of crazy cravings of pregnancy, and those involving spontaneous vomiting in uncomfortable places. There were the fevers, and the cramps, and the final days in the labour ward. And now, even after all that, a tiny thing latches onto your body for survival for about a couple of months more. Sleepless nights, nipple sores, worry, and days spent fretting about every new development in the stages of the newborn’s life.

For many, like her, driven and ambitious career-wise, giving up full-time work is just one of the sacrifices to make in pursuit of the having it all. And in today’s patriarchal societies with no paid maternity or paternity leave, it is often a costly trade-off. Maybe if everyone lived in Sweden, for instance (with a reported 13 weeks paid leave for parents of a new child), or Canada (with about 35 weeks of paid maternity/paternity leave, life might be a bit easier for everyone. A shame, in this case, that Nigeria, the 26th largest economy in the world, and the largest in Africa, can’t afford to give its citizens the comfort and peace of mind that comes from paid leave for child care.

This post is to appreciate all the mothers doing well by their families, sometimes at the expense of their own careers of individual pursuits. This post is to appreciate my wife for all her work and dedication to the building of a great, functional, and healthy family.

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