Inspired By Traffic

By Joy Isi Bewaji

Write. That’s the air I breathe. Here’s a short story I punched in my phone whilst stuck in one of Lagos’ horrendous traffic situations last week…

I bought a blue blanket yesterday to wrap your head. I hope you come with patches of silk hair. No blonde please, how do I explain that to your father, especially as his boss is a white man with red spots all over his skin and brown stubborn strands of beard like the grass at the backyard? 

Your father is his driver. He says the whitey eats, snores and farts all in his car. It is his, your father cannot tell him what to do with his own property.

You will like it here. It’s just as hot and stiff as I imagine your world to be. Like you, we have no electricity. It comes only in a flash and disappears, leaving people roaring like thunder. Where we live is down the street, near Iya Ashao’s compound. It’s a room, and a small space for stove, clothes…The streets are covered in sand. When it rains it gets into our rooms.

I should mention that our neighbours are nice people. Jumoke has a small bastard. He is a ruffian and you will do well not to associate with his sort. But he is useful in his own way; he comes in handy when the sceptic tank vomits. He dives in to fish out the stubborn waste causing the obstruction.

Chinagorom, the man living at adjacent door, is an ‘obioma’; what that means is he is neither a tailor nor a carpenter. And Baba Elegba is the one with the husky voice as bitter as a beaten stereo. Our lives are simple.

I had good news yesterday from the nurses. I’m sure you overheard it when they told us at the antenatal class that our babies do not need peak or cowbell. We clapped. I clapped harder. Your father did a somersault when I told him. We can save the money, so I give you plenty of breast milk instead. It’s healthier. Cowbell is for cows.

They say you’ll arrive in another week. Please hurry, my back aches and my stomach is almost touching the floor.

Talking of floors, did you eavesdrop on the conversation I had with Iya Ashao last week? Yes, I want to start washing the floor of her compound – bathroom floors and balcony. The pay is good, better than selling clocks. How many clocks can one buy in a lifetime? Who needs a clock anyway? Day breaks and night falls; people live and people die; men lie and women cry. Life is life. A clock is just a miserable tool that reminds us how long our tears will last.

But not to worry, your tears will not touch the ground. You are a boy, and boys are not allowed to cry. But you can jump and dance and laugh (not too loud though, your father hates the sound of happiness); you can run when you are old enough to balance a tray on your head. You can join the Union, and maybe kiss a girl.

The Union is where all the money is. Have I not begged your father to leave that god-forsaken white man and join the Union? He could rise to become the secretary there; he’ll be the only one with an education – a JSS 3 certificate. But he never listens to me. He says they are vagabonds. What does he know? I am the one who has to watch Jambila’s wife cook her stews with geisha. Jambila is part of the Union. You must have heard him shouting in the morning, “fun mi ni wazo jor! Abi o’n se re ni?!”

That’s him – loud, rough, and rich. He lives in Iya Ashao’s compound. I’ll be cleaning the floor which he walks on because your father….aaaahh! Please let’s not talk about him. I am tired. You will come and see him for yourself. A man as lean as an electric pole, you wonder where all the efo riro I cook goes to…

That was until I looked up and realised the taxi driver was snoozing on the wheel and had hit a truck in front of us. Sigh! Another day in the hustle…