IN THE SHADOWS OF THE CITY: GARKI VILLAGE

I had just suffered heartbreak when I first discovered Garki village four years ago. I sought solace in the cool breeze of the early evening. Walking out of the well managed CBN Senior Staff Quarters on Ubiaja Crescent in Garki 2 where I lived, I headed across the road to a little close where a Hausa petty trader sold cigarettes. My nerves needed calming and I was battling my need for nicotine. I glanced at the tables with an assortment of cigarettes, steeled myself and walked past. I won. Looking ahead, I realized for the first time that the space between the two buildings behind the man’s table of goods was actually a thoroughfare.

I walked through to see where the path ended and turned left. Beyond the three shops and little mosque was a massive settlement of cement-plastered mud houses separated by foot paths and open sewage. The sudden change from the wide, paved and lit streets of Garki 2 to this slum reeking of urine and sweat and garbage made me dizzy. It was not the state of this slum that shocked me- I was born in exactly this type of environment in Kaduna, in a place that didn’t have a street wide enough for a car to pass, a place where you were torn between shutting your wooden shutters to keep out some of the stench from the open sewer right by the wall and suffering the heat and stuffiness or enjoying some of the breeze and enduring the stench. It was how these two realities- as different from each other as light from darkness- existed quietly side by side.

A mostly Hausa-speaking Muslim community, Garki Village is the huge area between Ubiaja Crescent and Lagos Street in Garki 2. It has a traditional ruler and palace right at the end of Lagos Street. It also borders the Police Barracks. 

During the build-up to the April 2011 elections, inscriptions on the walls and posters declared almost total support for one of the opposition parties. ‘CPC Sak’ meaning ‘CPC only’ or ‘CPC exclusively’ was painted on almost every building in the area. Once, walking through Lagos Crescent off Lagos Street at night, I saw a crowd gathered in front of a Muslim preacher. I stopped for a few minutes and listened to the man weave wild conspiracy theories linking the ruling party to some sort of plan for Jewish world domination. Underneath his words, however, I heard the anger of a person who needed to blame someone for the extreme privation so prevalent in this place. I could see how the crowd of young men, some standing, some sitting on the dirt floor with bony faces and dull eyes, could nod vigorously at this man who declared any vote for the ruling party sinful.

Lagos street divides two ways of life. One side of Lagos Street has local Northern food: waina, masa, tuwo and miyan taushe. There is hardly any alcohol sold on this ‘northern’ side of the road. Opposite however are at least two open air beer joints. Late at night when the task force which rids the city of illegal structures and sex workers isn’t patrolling, sex workers line up the streets.  Up the street, the sex workers are usually dressed in conservative Northern fashion: blouses, long skirts, head ties and veils to match. The more skimpily dressed ones usually hang around toward the back end of the street where cheap dingy hotels crowd together. They respect each other’s territory. 

Usually when I couldn't fall asleep, I walked out into Lagos Street. Once, I came across a skinny woman with henna tattoos on her palms and feet, who but for her excessive dark make-up, might have been attractive. I must have been staring at her, enough to make her think I was considering her services. “Babban yaya,” she called in a slightly husky undertone, rolling her eyes and sizing me up. I had never heard “big brother” used so flirtatiously. It was at once shocking and exciting. I smiled and walked past. As I gradually became exhausted and ready to sleep, I was grateful that Lagos Street was always awake.

When it rains it is impossible to walk around Garki Village without slushing through sometimes an inch of mud and sewage. Of course there are no drainage systems and after a downpour the farthest I used to go is the tarred part of Lagos Street. 

Over many months, walking down Lagos Street and into Garki Village served both as inspiration and therapy for me- when I needed to clear my head and when I wanted to observe people without participating. I became accustomed to the colorful sex workers, suya sellers, the men who peddled sex performance enhancers, the ‘yan daudu*- ‘effeminate’ men whose subtle, sexual innuendos amused and confounded me, and the many caftan tailors among whom I found the ever-smiling Usman to sew cheap caftans for me. 

When eventually I lost my Garki 2 accomodation, I knew that as long as I lived in Abuja, I would never be far away from this place where people lived as simply as they could, and in spite of poverty, lived life to the full. 

Over the two years I lived around Garki Village, I had twice heard rumors of demolition. Unlike other areas, there was no palpable tension in the village. Everyone seemed certain that this area could not be demolished. I am not sure why. 

While I often hope that the government reaches Garki Village with paved streets, a drainage system and running water I feel guilty each time I return and want to find it the way it was- wade through the gutters to harass handsome Usman about my clothes, stand by the corner to buy suya, dodging the smoke from the fire, walk behind flirtatious ‘yan daudu, eavesdropping; I will miss this place that was my refuge when the concrete and showiness and of the city threaten to drive me crazy. 

Since I moved two years ago, I have been back several times. A few weeks ago my dear Swiss friend who had once accompanied me and often endures my rhapsodies of Lagos Street, suggested we go there. A part of me hoped that I would be ‘disappointed’ and find development where once there was decay. As we strolled down Lagos Street, I tried to ignore people staring at the petite white person by my side so that I could take in the familiar sights and sounds of the street.  This walk was different- for once I saw Lagos Street staring back the way I had been doing for years.

WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR ME IN 2015

So people, this is my big coming-out moment. I am running for President in 2015. It was a hard decision and trust me, I consulted neither friends nor family. It is significant that I arrived at this decision alone. Why? Because (and I love Winston in spite of his being an alcoholic and all) Churchill said that the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. Trust me, while I don’t mean to bad-mouth the people around me, most of my friends and family would fall into the ‘average voter’ category. Forget about the party I will run under. Focus on my manifesto.  

I will go straight to the second reason why you will vote for me- the first reason being that I do not, like the average politician (who I admit is worse than the average voter) waste time on rhetoric and preambles. The second reason is that when I become president I will not change the names on government projects. I will simply add mine. This takes guts. To continue the projects of your predecessors without succumbing to that gnawing urge to do a 180 degree turn, change the names of roads and universities, to paint every government property with my name as if the money for these projects came from my pocket. Now the real reason for this might be that I have a huge ego and will be deeply hurt to see the president after me changing my name to his when he takes over but what does it matter to the average voter? Every country needs a president with a huge ego and I will be saving billions of public funds.

I will not wear a cap. I can confirm to you that this is a serious problem. Let’s face it: which Nigerian President has allowed gods good breeze to visit oxygenated air on his scalp? This surely, with all the heat in the Federal Capital Territory has to be at least partly responsible for stupid decisions like 4 billion naira mansions for First Ladies. I will, by not wearing a cap, save the nation from potentially dangerous policies.

I will ban the phrase “safe journey”. Enemies of our country have for long insisted that the government has failed woefully in building roads. Some even cook up examples and imply that it is a disgrace for example, that the road from Calabar to say an important tourist location like Obudu is bad. While I have not plied this road or others like the Abuja-Lokoja road, my gut instinct tells me these rumours are peddled by enemies of our collective progress who say things like “more people die from road accidents than any other disease” in Nigeria. What they don’t tell you is that perhaps we just drink too much. That surely cannot be the governments fault. However, to solve these problems I will simply stop people from implying that our roads are unsafe by using the phrase “safe journey”. The only other acceptable alternative will be “drive safe” because if a driver goes and crashes his car, the government should not share the blame.

I will not marry. Mention one first lady that has not been the object of attack by cavernous critics whose only joy is to cast aspersions on the good souls of president’s wives. Some even once implied that a certain first lady had as her stock in trade, laundering money and receiving kickbacks from contractors. Such blasphemy! To be sure, however, that such distractions do not plague my government I promise to defy every ‘settling-down’ bone in my body and keep my relationships simple; an unofficial partner at best, who will visit on the weekends. And no, my partner will not sleep over. That is how one gets roped into marriage, to the detriment of a whole nation. God forbid that such a thing should happen.

I keep a moustache. Just stay with me on this one. Tell me one decent head of state that we have had who has kept a moustache. That is, apart from General Buhari who had a small Hitler moustache and whose relative poverty is still cited as proof of his integrity. When General Obasanjo still kept a moustache in 1979, he had the good sense to hand over power on schedule and retire to his chicken farm without looting half the treasury. When he got into power again in 1999, what happened? He shaved. And lost his head so much that after eight years in power, he tried to arm-twist Nigerians into giving him another term! See what a moustache does to people? IBB, Abacha, Abdulsalam - all these guys who, like my friends would say, did Nigeria ‘strong-thing’ - all clean shaven. I will not fall into that trap. I will keep my moustache, so help me god.

As presidential aspirant, I have done my research. All the leaders who started wars, looted our treasury, destroyed the economy, sold us to the World Bank, and imposed weak and corrupt successors on Nigerians have one thing in common. Meat. They were all eaters of flesh. It has been proven time and again, that our stomachs are not built to handle meat. The violence involved in the killing of animals messes with your compassion and empathy. I will ban meat for all public office holders starting from myself. Only fish that die naturally would be permissible. I will be vegetarian. I admit to falling for some point-and-kill once in a while, but recently I made the conscious decision to treat cat-fish like people. The cat-fish won’t understand this, but no vegetarian ever looted his country.

I don’t like flying. I will sell off eight of the ten presidential aircraft. Nigerians can be sure that I won’t spend any crude oil money on presidential jets. It’s that blocking of the ears that does my head in. I will use bicycles. Nigerian presidents tend to put on weight in power.

Related to losing weight by riding bicycles is the fact that I wear slim-fit shirts. When was the last time a president of this great republic looked smart? Like in a slim-fit short sleeved shirt and nice slim chinos pants? For once a Nigerian leader that does not look like a greedy, flesh-eating member of a cultural troupe. Our respect among civilized nations will double.

I use a blackberry and I am very secretive. Which Nigerian president have you seen, in photos or in real life, handling his own phone? I will personally go on Facebook and Twitter to feel the pulse of the nation. While I will not give out my Blackberry pin for fear of abuse, Nigerians can be sure that I will personally read their tweets and not some young overzealous Special Assistant who will end up increasing my number of enemies online. Plus, I like Twitter and would like to return there and tweet funny stuff when I leave power. Why would I mess that up? Surely this is a strong reason to vote for me in 2015.

I plan to invade a small European country. Think of it. The past 200 years, black people have suffered one form of invasion after another by Europeans. I plan to put together a foreign invasion militia whose sole task will be to invade Switzerland. Because more recently they have been our worst offenders. I mean the British and Americans have allowed their guilty consciences to drive them to huge development investments through DFID and USAID. That is good guilt. Even the Japanese who didn’t do anything to us built hundreds of classrooms in Kano. And for all their sins- conniving with every Nigerian looter to hide their loot- what have the Swiss done for us lately? Nothing. I will plead with the Germans and Italians to stay out of it as it is a private matter. I owe it to Nigeria to at least try. If I succeed we will change the government, organize elections and try the heads of their rogue banks for war crimes- because looting the treasury is an act of war. And if I fail, well, at least I tried.  

The choice is yours. Violent meat eaters or aspiring vegetarian. Clean shaven, cap wearing people or mustached and openly bald. Pot-bellied members of a cultural troupe or a smart slim president. These are the important choices, come 2015. I trust that you will, in spite of being an average voter, vote for me and for change. 

once upon a suicide...

I hear that a boy who hanged himself in the huge gully that has mango trees is to be buried today in the Christian burial ground opposite my house. I have never been to the gully but from the descriptions of Mercy, our Ibibio house maid who knows everything about everyone, I must have passed by the place before. It is mango season and I wonder if he saw a ripe mango as he tied the rope, first to a strong branch and then in a noose around his neck; if perhaps he had some before he died- a last meal. He used the rope his family used to fetch water from their deep well. He untied it from the metal bowl- a gas canister cut in half. Mercy tells me the details as if the suicide was her idea. My mind goes through all the processes starting with choosing the site, a lonely gully. Would he have gone to more than one site? Did he think of another way? Swallowing something perhaps? The gully was not too close to his house and I wonder if this means he carefully planned it so that he would have been perfectly dead by the time anyone even thought of looking for him. What went through his mind when he loosened the tight rope around the half gas canister by the well, when he folded the long rope, put it around his waist or in his pocket or in a little knapsack? Did he know how to swim, was that why he didn’t just jump into the well? I wanted to see his face, look for the burn signs around his neck, look at his eyes- as shut as they may be, look at his face. For answers.

I will attend the funeral.

I am thirteen or fourteen, when I discover my fascination with the burial ground, hurriedly built coffins, and sombre sermons struggling to rise above crying relatives. From the window of our small living room, I can see through metal window bars, the street that separates our identical block of low cost housing from the Christian part of the open burial ground. A burial usually starts with two or three men early in the morning with daggers, shovels and machetes. There is no readable expression on their creased faces, except eventually, tiredness, by which time their entire bodies are gleaming with sweat. They are just rounding up when the first people, usually relatives, begin to arrive, arms folded, mouth hanging down, eyes staring beyond their gaze, routine heaving and sighing. The first ones apart from the grave diggers come to check if the grave is the right size, if they need to break more of the walls of the grave, if they need to dig deeper.

The women are my signal that I need to prepare before it becomes harder to penetrate the crowd, to see the grave, freshly dug, to see the coffin, and smell the freshly sprayed wood. Sometimes, there is an unsprayed coffin.

Today, the diggers come and the inspectors come and the women come and the pickup truck comes and all the other cars that make our street temporarily difficult to pass. I am there before the truck but after the women. It is 4pm and dad is not due home for another two hours. I do not come in through the gate of the burial ground, but through a hole in the barbed wire fence, the point closest to my house. All the shrubs from this point on are familiar- I was here only two days ago for another burial. A child in a small coffin.

His brothers look upset. I know they are his brothers because of their resemblance with the dead boy in the picture on the funeral program. They have the same nose and vertical tribal mark between the eyes and square head.  They look angry, not sad. They do not nod when the pastor, preaching in Hausa says, ‘For everything under heaven there is a time. A time to be born and a time to die.’ They do not hum amen when the pastor, with veins bulging on his neck, prays that God will ferry him straight to heaven. They seem not to agree with the pastor that he is in a better place. One of the brothers turns. Our eyes meet. I had been staring at him for many minutes.  I see in his eyes a need to punch someone.  To drag his brother out of the coffin and slap him for dying.

I do not know the words of the hymn they are singing but I recognise it from the other funerals.

I do not feel like crying yet. That is until the pastor asks the family to pour the sand on the coffin starting with his parents. I cannot see his father’s face; I am standing behind him.  His mother fetches a handful of the damp, red laterite that has been dug up from the ground. Two plump women are holding her by the arm. She is sobbing as she moves forward to throw the sand into the hole. The women let go of her and just as they do she screams and makes to jump into the grave. The women, faster than her, catch her just as she begins sliding down the heap of laterite by the side of the grave. There is a commotion and she is carried away.

As they drag her away, my nose begins to tremble and hurt. I am fighting back the tears because I know that once that first one rolls down I will break down and sob like I am being whipped with a cane of thorns. Holding back that first tear is important.

I turn to leave before it starts to get rowdy. I push my way through the crowd, jog along the bushy path kicking the broad leaves of the bright green shrubs, run past the ambulance and across the road until I reach my gate. I still have a few more minutes until my father returns.  He is so predictable, my father. I lock myself in the toilet and feel my chest swelling, about to explode. I change to the bathroom instead. The toilet irritates me because there is a leak and the floor floods once someone flushes or when the soak-away is full. The plaster on the bathroom wall is coming off and there is green algae growing in many parts. Sometimes I want to demolish the bathroom and rebuild it with white tiles like the toilet in my Uncles Dogo’s house on Waff Road. The memory of that toilet makes me ashamed because of what I did a couple of years ago. I was with my mum and I needed to go to the toilet. I lied to my cousins that I wanted to pee. So they took me to a white toilet that had a fluorescent light. I had finished before I realised there was neither water nor toilet roll. I sat on the toilet seat for a long time contemplating what to do, until I heard my mother ask me to hurry because we were about to leave. In my confusion I picked up an old pair of jeans on the floor and wiped my bottom. I folded the jeans to cover the mess and tucked it beneath the pile of dirty clothes in the corner and hoped they would never find out.

My mind returns to the burial and I wonder what it feels like to die. What eternal non-existence is, what it feels like. I close my eyes and try to conjure eternity. My mind travels through dark tunnels of space and time until I start to get dizzy and scared and I open my eyes. I wonder what it means when they say God has no beginning and has no end. Again, I try to imagine having no beginning and it gives me the same dizzy feeling.

Death. Dying. Eternity. Eternal death. This is what makes me finally break down. I cry hot, painful tears. My chest swells and contracts and I feel heavy with pain. Why do we have to die? I think of all the things that my father and Christian faith taught me about God and His right to rule and Adam and Eve blowing our chances at eternity just because of some fruit. I understand it according to the Bible: why we have to die and all. But I do not know if God made the right decision, letting billions of people suffer for the sins of one greedy couple. I know the answers in my head, but not in my heart. I cry. For a suicidal stranger. For what I will share with that stranger one day.

I hear my brother Azan’s voice and then my father’s. I take off my clothes, open the shower and let the water rush over my face.

RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT AND MATTERS ARISING*

*"Because I care" series #2

Because I care about this great nation, last week I announced my decision to run for president. 

Since then I have thought long and hard about minorities and the way successive governments have treated them. What do we do when we find people who are either blind or hard of hearing or otherwise physically challenged? We start an NGO and treat them like specimen. The president promises to do something about them. The first lady visits them during Christmas and struggles to show that she is not irritated by cripples and orphans. My government will treat them differently. My government will treat them like the equal human beings that they are. Apart from smiling at them for no reason and saying please and thank you, it is my pleasure to announce that my running mate, although I haven’t chosen him or her yet, will have some form of disability, whether of the limbs, or of the skin- even if it is some tribal marks. Have you ever seen someone with tribal marks nominated to contest elections? I will end that discrimination.

Already the wisdom in my manifesto is showing. Any president who is serious about governance cannot afford to marry or live with a partner. Two things this week reinforce my position. Look at the promising South African ‘blade runner’, Oscar Pistorious, who ran his way to global prominence recently. Demons invaded him and the young man went and shot his live-in girlfriend four times through the bathroom door. I mean even if his lawyers turn out to be like OJ Simpson’s lawyers he will still go to jail for possession of unlicensed weapons. And I am not sure they allow prisoners take part in the Olympics. 

Again, last week the wife of the president (soon I will call him my predecessor) had a resurrection party to celebrate her return to life from a protracted death. She came back after seven long days of death. God be praised. Some sources say that about 500million naira was raised, over six times the amount that was reportedly paid to Kim Kardashian to show her gorgeous sex-tape making self on stage for five minutes. I have not seen that sex tape. I would never do such a sinful thing. But I digress. Heaven bless Dame Patience. Think of how difficult it is to compete for the attention of Nigerians with a hot, white, slim, unafraid-to-show-skin-we-all-have-seen-before young woman. But by god, the Dame won. If the death of Jesus and his resurrection after a mere three days is anything to go by, then Kim has failed and failed forever. No wonder she ran away after two minutes on stage. As president I will insist that all celebrities who come into Nigeria fill a form declaring sexual history, amount of skin they plan to expose on stage and a CV showing at least one skill set- singing, dancing, playing Ludo. Anything apart from the ability to live, breath and have sex. But this is beside the point. Think of Jonathan without a partner, without rumours of a wife laundering millions of dollars, without the pressure of inter-First Lady land disputes, without having to host the most expensive resurrection party ever. That’s a happy Jonathan. And for now, Nigeria sorely needs a happy Jonathan. 

After I declared my intention to run for president, something happened that bothered me. First my friend and father (he doesn’t know he is my friend yet but as my popularity grows, this will become clear to him) General Buhari announced that he was withdrawing his candidacy for a younger candidate. I was so happy that finally he had recognized someone like me as a contender in the race. I went out and celebrated with some cat-fish pepper soup (I am still working on being a vegetarian. It isn’t easy). Suddenly, a few days ago, he pulled an about face on us. It was reported that he said only death can stop him from contesting. I had already started preparing posters with my photo and that of a stern death-to-corrupt-politicians looking Buhari in preparation for his endorsement of a younger candidate. You can imagine the trauma this caused me. As president I will push for legislation to prevent politicians from changing their minds. The effects are just too disastrous. 

I am a believer in last words. This is my one quarrel with Oscar Pistorious. People shoot people. We have been doing it for centuries. The world dumps the cheap small arms they are bored with in Africa. We have to use it for something. Who buys a new piece of equipment and just leaves it lying in a room-divider? The real issue is last words. Every person deserves a dying declaration. The least Oscar could have done was kindly explain to his girlfriend what the shooting was all about and maybe allow her one last post on her Facebook and Twitter accounts. Maybe with a hashtag like #dyingthingz or #hadIknown. 

I will insist that we have laws that mandate killers to give their victims the privilege of last words. All these, because, I care.