Welcome to Lagos

by Chibundu Onuzo

Their first job inquiry was at a bakery with a vacancy sign in the window. Walking into the store had been like stepping into the center of a warm, fresh loaf. Rows of golden bread lined the shelves like ingots. Beneath the glass counter were frosted pastries and sugared doughnuts and cupcakes glittering with edible silver stars. Neither he nor Yẹmi had eaten that morning.

  “Good morning. How may I help you, sir?” the attendant asked, smiling.

  “Morning. We saw the vacancy in the window for drivers. Are the positions still available?”

  “Yes, but you enter through the back. This place is for customers. The manager’s office is the first door on the right. He’s Mr. Badmus.”

  “Thank you.”

  Chike and Yẹmi walked out and around to a second door, which opened onto a dirty corridor. A bin overflowed with food waste and delirious flies. Chike knocked at Mr. Badmus’s door.

  “Who is that? Come in.”

  They entered a room, more cupboard than office. Mr. Badmus sat at his desk, clipping his nails with a shiny clipper attached to a key ring.

  “Yes, what is it? Shut the door. The AC is on.”

  “Good morning, sir. My name is Chike Ameobi and this is Yẹmi Ọkẹ. We saw the recruitment sign for drivers. We would like to make an application.”

  “All this English for driver? Oya, where are your references.”

  “We don’t have them.”

  “Is this your first job?”

  “No, but my last employer does not live in Lagos,” Chike said in a moment of inspiration.

  “What of you?” Mr. Badmus asked, pointing at Yẹmi.

  “My last Oga no dey live for Lagos.”

  “I can’t hire you without references. If you can get it, come back. Please shut the door as you’re going.”

  It had been a similar story with the bank and the restaurant. A reference was needed, two if possible, three ideally. Chike had driven a general around a parade ground, turning the corners so smoothly, General Ezeaka had commented. How to get that in writing?

  They would find work of some sort in the end, something menial that would blister their hands before attacking their minds. He saw the bare-chested men with head pans of cement, their torsos chalky from the mix of limestone and water. That would be them soon. The baker’s words had stung him. He was intelligent and well-spoken enough to be a banker or a civil servant or at least a teacher but he had no proof of his university education.

  All the way back to the inn, he worried. The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He had read the psalm that morning and it had given him hope. Now the words seemed a mockery.

  “Kedu k’ihe si aga?” Oma said when they entered the room.

  It was a type of solidarity Chike did not want established. He replied in English.

  “We didn’t have luck today. Hopefully tomorrow. Where is Isoken?” he asked.

  “I gave her some money to go and buy food. She hadn’t eaten all day.”

  “And what about Fineboy?”

  “He, too, went to buy food. Separately from her.”

  “You don’t have to do that for them.”

  “What could I do? The girl has no money and Fineboy said his is coming soon. Once he starts in a radio station in Lagos, he’ll pay me back double. I felt sorry for him. He has the voice but he doesn’t look the part. I wouldn’t give him a job as a cleaner, talk less of a presenter.”

  Chike watched Oma discreetly as she busied herself for the next hour, making work out of nothing, unfolding and folding her clothes, rearranging the contents of her bag, repositioning her shoes on the carpet. All the while, she sang softly to herself. This particular song, Chike’s mother had sung whenever he woke from a nightmare, still thrashing in her embrace. She would sing until he was calm.

  Atulegwu. Nwoke atulegwu.

  Atulegwu. Nwanyi atulegwu.

  Atulegwu. Nwanta atulegwu

  Atulegwu. Nwenu okwukwe.

  Nihi na Chineke n’edu gi si gi atulujo.

  Be courageous. Men, be courageous. They were words his mother had sung in the Biafran War when planes flew over her village and dropped bombs in the lanes. Be courageous. Women, be courageous. Sometimes they would bring the wounded to her house, and his mother would help his grandmother, a nurse, dig out bullets with a kitchen knife made sterile over a flame. Be courageous. Children, be courageous. This was the line for him, always sung louder than the rest.

  Harcourt Whyte, the songwriter, had been a leper, his mother told him. Every morning Whyte woke with a body further rotted away. This was why he had written “be courageous,” not “be brave.” Bravery was to dash out of the bomb shelter and grab the child left crying on the veranda. Courage was to go to the stream the day after a bomb had scattered your friend on that path because water must be fetched to sustain the life that was left. Everyone saw bravery but courage was in secret. She would lay him back on his pillow and leave him alone in the room.

  17

  The undersides of bridges are multipurpose spaces: shade and shelter, house and office, church and mosque with cement pillars as grand as those in any mansion, grand and bare like an unfinished mansion. Touts roam these spaces, colonizing them at will, extracting dues from anyone foolish enough to linger. There is a strange chaotic order to these places. Every food seller, every hairdresser, even every beggar has paid their levy and they expect security in return.

  “Nobody dey steal for here,” one area boy says proudly. “Under the bridge, our government dey work.”

  —“Lagos Snapshots,” Nigerian Journal

  FINEBOY SUGGESTED THEY TRY the beach. He had seen whole families crawling into pits in the sand and the common sense of their location had struck him. The beach was close to the business district, to the tall buildings with mirrored facades, to the suited workers going somewhere with their lives. The others were not convinced. Who wanted to go and live in a damp hole, fearful the tide would wash you away in your sleep?

  Isoken mentioned the pedestrian crossings that vaulted over the expressways, used by livestock and humans alike. People slept under their awnings, which would shelter one from most of the rain. But a group their size would be a nuisance in such a narrow space.

  Under a bridge was the most obvious choice, yet it was the last suggested. No condition was permanent except that of the drug addicts and other scum who embraced homelessness and lay down beneath the concrete pillars every night. Better to sleep standing than to wake with the weight of a cement sky above your head.

  At checkout, the receptionist showed Oma her dull teeth before saying, “Hope to see you soon.” To leave here and become homeless. It seemed too drastic.

  She did not have to go with the others to the bridge, at least not yet. She could manage alone for a few more weeks. By the time she went to look for them, they would have disappeared into Lagos, moved on to another bridge, been hit by a bus, drowned in the lagoon. Go with them now or never again. To stretch out to sleep knowing there were no walls around you; to bare the soles of your feet to passing strangers; to wake and show your face immediately to the world.

  That morning, Oma had felt a wave of nausea swimming up her throat, and then her dinner of beans and crayfish had rushed into the toilet bowl. She had not gotten pregnant in almost a year. I.K.’s job meant that he spent three weeks on land, three weeks offshore, living like an amphibian to please his masters at the Dutch oil company. His visits did not always match the erratic release of her precious, dwindling eggs. Just when Oma’s acceptance of childlessness had set in, here was this nausea that could be rotten crayfish or a tiny fetus, burrowing into her body.

  A pregnancy test was easily bought. If she were not pregnant, she would return to Bayelsa, hanging her head and casting down her eyes, and after the worst had happened, for he would not kill her, she would crawl back into the space by I.K.’s side. It was obvious that the adventure was over. But if she were pregnant? If the plastic stick said yes? She could not risk going back when a stray blow from I.K. could d
islodge the fetus. It had happened before.

  Let time decide. If there were a baby, it would show. And if there were none, that would also soon become apparent. Let time decide if she would return to her husband. For now she would go with the others to the bridge. She would stop trying to protect her soft belly of vanity. No one she knew would ever see her there, and even if they saw her, they wouldn’t recognize her.

  IN THE AFTERNOON, A steady flow of noise and footfall made Chike at ease with leaving Isoken and Oma to their devices. The bridge arched above them all, vaulting as high as the roof of a cathedral, shading them from the sun. Their new home might as well have been a market: hawkers sauntered by, holding their wares to passing traffic while traders sat beside fresh fruit and vegetables, waiting for customers to beckon. Thin, agile conductors hung from moving danfos, calling for passengers. Students in packs of brown, green, and purple uniforms ambled home, buttons undone, shirttails flapping. By evening, when he and Yẹmi returned, cars still clogged the road but the nature of the pedestrians had changed.

  Men, young men, shirtless for the most part with trousers that sagged and showed pelvic contours, strutted about. The women were sitting where Chike had left them, leaning against a pillar covered with film posters. They were “the women” in his head, a block unit to give preference to and evacuate first. Isoken’s elbows were hugging her knees and Oma was scanning the road.

  “Nnọ,” she said when she saw him.

  “Daalu.”

  He did not wish to make a habit of speaking Igbo with her but there was something soothing in being welcomed, even to a home as derelict as this.

  “How was it?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Fineboy had still not come back. Perhaps the boy would cut his losses and go and burrow into the beach like a crab.

  “Some men came to meet us. They said we have to pay someone called Chairman before we can sleep here.”

  “What kind of men?”

  “They looked like touts. I told them that my husband would speak to them when he returned. I didn’t want it to look like we were two women on our own.”

  “Yes, that was wise. How much did they say we have to pay?”

  “Four hundred naira per person.”

  “Whose funeral?” It was Fineboy. The boy had returned.

  “We thought you weren’t coming back.”

  “How can? Y’all are my Lagos crew.”

  “There’s a problem. We have to pay to sleep here. Two thousand naira in total.”

  “Are you kidding me? I knew we should have gone to the beach. I guess we gotta pay the money, Oma.”

  “Why are you calling her name?”

  “Because she’s the only one that has up to that amount.”

  It was probably true. Between him and Yẹmi was just over one thousand, and whatever money Fineboy had would remain in his pocket as long as someone else could pay.

  “Take,” Oma said. He had not seen where she had brought the cash from and he hoped neither had Fineboy.

  “Stay here with the women,” Chike said to Fineboy.

  “No, let me come with you. I know how such people think.”

  Chairman was a middle-aged man with a torso running to flab. He must have been a prizefighter in his day. Past battles were mapped over his arms and chest, archipelagos of scar tissue, marks of a life spent in violent straits. A barrier of testosterone milled around him. These boys would move instinctively on Chairman’s orders, a shoal, darting with one mind.

  “Chairman,” Fineboy said, prostrating himself flat on the ground.

  “Who are you?”

  “Fineboy nah the name my mama give me. Your boys talk say we must greet you before we fit sleep here.”

  “Your friend nkọ? He does not greet?”

  “Good evening,” Chike said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Emeka.”

  “Ah, ọmọ Íbò ti ni . That’s why you don’t have respect. My boys told me there are two women and three men. You will pay two thousand naira for all of you. For security. We’re stopping armed robbers and bad people from coming to this place.”

  “Sah, we don’t have the money complete,” Fineboy said.

  “You must have it before you sleep. You don’t want to know what will happen if you don’t.”

  The army shielded you from other men’s egos. It was civilians that begged and bribed, kneeling with faces pressed to the dust, not minding their fine clothes and new shoes. Even this Chairman would learn to grovel if Chike had come with a small section of his platoon.

  “Please—”

  “Please sah—” Fineboy continued for him, “we have come from far. From the Niger Delta.”

  “Is that so? Wetin you dey do there?”

  “Freedom fighting.”

  “You don’t mean it. Shake me. I so much believe in what you are doing there. You people are still looking when a real freedom fighter is in our midst. Dagogo, go and bring some bitters.”

  “Chairman, the fee.”

  “We can’t charge a soldier fighting for the freedom of Nigeria.”

  “His friends nkọ?”

  “How many did you say they are again?”

  “Five.”

  “Five is too much. Ìbá j pé yin mẹta péré ni . . .”

  “Let’s pay for only two, then. Give us three for free,” Fineboy said. How had the boy picked up Yoruba so quickly?

  “We don’t normally do our things like that but just because of respect I have for what you’re doing.”

  Chairman’s thug made a show of writing out a receipt, a neat tabulation that included the price before and after the discount. Chike was ashamed to give Oma her change, proof that the men in the group could not protect them from the idiosyncrasies of this city. Where else must one pay to be homeless?

  “Fineboy got us a discount. I’m sorry we had to pay at all.”

  “It’s better. Let’s just follow their rules.”

  She had worn a nightie on top of her clothes, its lace frills crawling down her chest and disappearing into the folds of her wrapper. She was another man’s wife, a man who had not thought much of her, beautiful as she was. He would make something of himself in this city so that people like Chairman could not so easily trample on him. When Oma began to sing, a reedlike melody in the dark, he joined at a lower octave.

  “Atulegwu. Nwoke atulegwu.”

  18

  Bola Smoothguy, male, twenty-eight. Tall, dark and handsome. I’m a God-fearing, single, mature guy. I work in a bank and I’m looking for a graduate in her early twenties, of medium height, who can cook and is ready for marriage.

  —personal advertisement, Nigerian Journal

  IT WAS TWO WEEKS since they’d moved to the bridge, and each night, Oma had fallen asleep facing Chike. He had never slept so close to a woman he was not romantically involved with. He liked to watch her in the mornings, when she combed her hair that fell over her shoulders, then wiped her face with a wet flannel before smoothing over her eyebrows, licking her index finger and slicking them down. Then she put the flannel under her clothes, her hands moving vigorously, lingering under her armpits, and then finally she passed a second flannel, reserved especially for that purpose, it seemed, between her legs. Sometimes she would inspect this auxiliary towel, bringing it close to her face. Once it came away with blood and Oma had begun to cry. He had turned away at this inexplicable grief over her menses. He was no voyeur.

  She was older than him, though he could not say by how many years. Sometimes he guessed a decade, other times, when she sang, he thought less. He would have liked to have met her in other circumstances, to have sat down at the opposite end of a narrow table and asked where she had grown up and what her favorite colors were, a plate of food in front of each of them. He had learned in his first year of university that these cheap ingredients, rice, chicken, and attention, were enough to seduce a woman.

  And then he had learned he did not like the ki
nd of woman for whom repeated offerings of carbohydrates and protein were enough to sleep with him. Celibacy had crept up on him: first in reaction to the slim pickings and then as a response to the brothel trips of barrack life. And now? If he offered himself to Oma, would she take him, a penniless ex-soldier?

  Watching her in the mornings was his only moment of calm. His search for a job had become frantic, almost panicked. He and Yẹmi ranged the city, tramping where they could, taking buses when they could not, riding into the financial district with its glass buildings that distorted reflections, stretching them into thin, long, powerless creatures. They stood in queues, watching others ushered forward because they bore the right talismans, runic Mercedes symbols sketched on conspicuous keys, chunky gold watches, no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment. Marx was writing of Lagos, surely.

  The city had begun to pick at his self-discipline. He was like other men, Chike found in these weeks of wandering through Lagos. His officer training made him no better than most male specimens, only more likely to hold his head erect when he was walking. He began to pick fights with strangers weaker than him, reedy men like the vendor who shoved him in the chest for bumping against his wares: VCDs piled in flimsy cardboard casings, cheap, pirated copies of Nollywood movies. Chike grasped the hand that had pushed him, his grip tight enough to snap bones. The man had begun begging, a film of unshed tears glittering in his eyes.

  “We go find work,” Yẹmi said as he pulled Chike away.

  He had begun reading more psalms, their despair suiting his mood. Save me, O God, for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. He did not hope much for deliverance, the divine rescue that the psalmist was so sure of, but he understood life in the pit, clawing and clawing and sliding to claw again. Lagos was a jungle, an orderly ecosystem with a ranked food chain, winners and losers decided before they were born.

  The rains had come, sweeping through their new home and flooding it, dead smells and creatures rising to the surface. Oma knew best how to cope with the new weather. She fetched rainwater in a bucket. She fashioned raincoats out of nylon bags. She even washed her hair in the rain, working her head into a cloud of suds and letting the sky rinse it clean. Chike wondered if her husband would ever show up to claim her or if Oma herself would grow tired of their bridge life and return of her own will.