Featuring the National Assembly and a few other places.
This is the kind of bargaining I’m used to. You walked up to the seller, you offered your rate and s/he offered his/hers. You went down and down until s/he could tolerate you no further and then you bought. I have found out a new version. I had walked into the shopping complex at Wuse Zone 3 a few days ago, desperate to buy a Dell powerpack. One I was using had blown up in Ilorin and I really really had to send an email. I entered the first shop and the sales person there was very welcoming. I told her what I wanted, she confirmed the voltage and went to look for it.
“How much is it,” I asked.
“Bring 5,000 naira,” she replied.
I’d learnt to be wary of offers that begin with “bring…” so I said, “I’ll pay 3,000.”
Actually, I really wanted to pay 2,500 because I didn’t have much to start with, and I couldn’t remember just how much I bought it the last time.
We went back and forth for a while, and after a while, I noticed that she was beginning to like my “3,000” idea so I went down again. “Actually, all I have is 2,500.”
She flared up.
Apparently, the way to bargain is to choose the lowest common denominator and bargain up to meet the seller. “Why did you say 3,000 when you knew that all you had was 2,500?” She demanded angrily and turned me into the bad guy. I wasn’t ready to be bullied into a hasty purchase anyway, so I walked to the next shop where I got it for 2,700. I had started my bid from 2,000.
Unfortunately, as soon as the purchase was complete, I was kicked out of the shop for staying longer than necessary “testing” the equipment.” All I wanted to do was to send that pressing email. And even though the first shop had a more welcoming attitude, it was too late to return there to ask for a favour. A teachable moment.
Before setting out to Kaduna, I sent a lot of questions ahead of me, mainly because whenever I thought of the state, my memory just fails to conjure up any images at all. If I had only thought a little while back to years of childhood, I might have remembered that the Nigerian Defence Academy that trains all Nigerian soldiers is located in the state. I should have known this because there was a time when my brother was seriously considering enlisting. That was like twenty years ago. Now, all that circled my head were merely blank thoughts that never materialized into any concrete images, and my father had always said that there were no stupid questions.
So I asked, in all innocence and as a precaution to a situation of being hopelessly stranded in a strange land far away from home, “There is a UBA bank branch in your state, right?” And the problem started.
Unknown to me, that was the ultimate of all ignorant questions in today’s Nigeria. Actually, even to me, I realized the folly as soon as the question was uttered, but I justified my question with instances during my youth service in Jos when my National Bank account was suddenly rendered useless when I realized that there was no branch of the bank in the state. If I had thought about it a little more, I would have realized that after the consolidation of banks throughout the country, one of the requirements of new banks was that they must have branches in all thirty-six states. Yeah. Dumb me. To add salt to injury, as Zainab took time to remind me about a hundred times during our first meeting since New York, “Kaduna was the capital of the old Northern Region. How could we not have UBA?”. All my protest that the question was supposed to be a reflection on UBA and not on Kaduna as a state fell on deaf ears, and I’ve been paying for it ever since. Think about it, I said. You have Chase Bank in NY and we don’t have it in Edwardsville. It doesn’t mean that Edwardsville is “bush” as you must have thought I meant, but that Chase just doesn’t have the national reach. The more I made the argument, the more I lost.
And there’s more. I never really put my mind to the extent of the Shariah law introduced to some states in Northern Nigeria since 1999 so my asking the question also seemed to put her at some defence. “Yes, we cut people’s hands,” she said, and I will make sure that you lose one of your fingers before you go back to Ibadan.” Now I’m doubting whether father was right after all, because here I am looking like the dumb American returnee, and about to lose a limb. I am still a Nigerian, am I not?
By the time you read this, I should be on the road. It is a scheduled post. I do not know which way the road might lead, but it is surely not southwards just yet, except maybe they’ve removed that narcissistic governor of ours with several skin colours from the Government house, and then there would be something to rejoice about.
Now here are the choices: Abuja (again), Kano, Sokoto (the seat of the Caliphate), Katsina (where the Christmas bomber hails from), Jos (again, where I had my national youth service, and where the Red Cross had been working with the victims of the January and March clashes), and Nassarawa (where a friend had invited me to come and spend a few days).
None of this destinations is in the Eastern or Southern parts of the country. That trip will have to come later. And definitely not in these days of journalists getting kidnapped for a ransom of up to 30 million naira. And not the Niger Delta area soon either. I may not look like an American, but who knows what a random search of my bag might show.
In any case, I’m on the last leg of my tour and home is calling me little by little. I hope my dogs won’t be disappointed that I left them for so long. I have had my fill of Nigeria, almost. One of the best places of interest in this trip was the Anglican Church at Wusasa, a very prominent place in the history of Northern Nigeria.
The only thing my mother says she is worried about is that I (must have) been wearing “the same shirt all over Nigeria.”
From the dusty roads of Ibadan to Ife, and later to Akure, Akungba, Ikare and Ilorin, and then Kabba, Abuja, Kaduna and finally Zaria, my pair of black denim(?) jeans has literally seen it all, the good, the bad, and the downright uuuuugly. This is no joke. Through rain, mud, lawns, beer spills, dokunu which Peter made me eat, Chiedu’s ogbono soup, and suya spices from Hamdala Hotel, tonight, it will fairly contest as the dirtiest fabric south of the sahara.
On the other hand, my intermittent internet access has taken all the fun out of spontaneous blogging at historical or memorable sites. While sitting peacefully in front of the open bus park at Jabi in Abuja yesterday, I all but screamed at how much stress it was and no stable enough internet connection to put up a post. Unfortunately, three hours later, a new reality had replaced my latest impressions and I moved on.
Alright, I did changed my shirts many times along the way. I even managed to buy a few more hausa-type fabrics, and a fulani-made leather wallet in Kaduna for my American friend Chris. The problem however, like the fabled cripple, is not up but down. Shirts and tops well scented like fresh dew and a dirty black jeans with all the country grime from Ibadan to Wusasa just does not make a good combination. I am having sleepless nights. I know what you’re thinking: why not take everything off at night, wash them, sleep naked and hope that by morning there would be electricity to make them dry if the rain wouldn’t allow? Ah-ha, ask Wande Coal how that usually ends.
Lesson learnt, next time never ever leave the house again on impulse. Sit down and plan for it. That way, you would hold at least two pairs of jeans so you can change them at will. And wasn’t it Ife that you told them at home that you were going? Now here you are just returned with her from one of the oldest monuments to Christianity in Northern Nigeria. You could get an article or more or out of that, you know. Yes, na article we go chop? And what will you do with this jeans in the absence of another to change it with yet? Buy? Yes yes, I know. Just shut up and go to bed. But it’s raining outside? So what? Get your grimy self up and find your way home.
Picture is that of Zuma Rock at Suleja on the way from Abuja.