Their window was down, and when a BMW pulled up alongside, she saw herself reflected momentarily in its tinted glass, her face rippling across, looking lost and small. As the BMW roared ahead, Chief Ogun's driver pulled into its slipstream, cutting off other vehicles, horn blaring.
"The Nigerian brake pedal," Chief Ogun said, referring to the horn and shouting to be heard.
A motorcycle squeezed in beside them, using the sedan as cover as he attempted to fit his motorcycle through a gap narrower than the actual bike itself.
"Okada
boys," Chief Ogun explained, referring to the young motorcycle taxi drivers, unencumbered by mundane notions of their own mortality, who were weaving in and out of traffic, passengers clinging tight. "They saw off the ends of their handlebars to better fit between vehicles. Very ingenious."
"Doesn't that make it hard to steer?"
He shrugged.
The
okada
driver hit his own horn, a blast so loud it made her jump.
"The music of Lagos," said Chief Ogun. "The
okada
boys like to replace their usual toot-toots with air horns scavenged from trucks. It clears a route more quickly. As I said, very ingenious."
The
okada
driver, gunning his engine impatiently, spotted another opening and sped off into—and somehow through—the cross-hatched traffic ahead, defying both the odds and basic physics.
Ogun's driver grinned back at them. "If they ever have a World Cup of taxi drivers, I promise you Nigeria will win!"
The traffic ahead converged in an intersection where a broken street light, stuck on red, dangled from the cross wires like an eye from a socket.
What am I doing here?
The blare of horns grew louder as they worked their way past a recent collision: steam was rising from the crumpled hood of a taxi and oil was pooling below the rear axle of a BMW. It was the same BMW that had passed them earlier, the same one that had reflected her face back at her in its tinted glass. Its owner had gotten out and was waving his hands angrily. Onlookers had quickly taken sides in the matter, forming instant and passionate allegiances, from the looks of it.
"Traffic in Lagos can be fatal," Chief Ogun said to Laura. "Take a wrong turn, and someone will be waiting. General Murtala, the namesake of our airport and past president of our nation—he was murdered in a go-slow. The assassins walked up to his car, filled it with bullets. They have the vehicle on display at the National Museum. You can still see the holes." He nodded at the mob that had formed around the accident scene, the cries and recriminations. "Are you sure you wish to go to Lagos Island?"
"A minor snag," said the driver. "Very common in Lagos.
Sometimes it leads to fisticuffs, but once past, we will be free."
Chief Ogun glared at him, but the driver was busy forcing his way through a gap he'd spotted, all but nudging bystanders aside at times. Bands of young boys had now appeared, taking advantage of the go-slow to jog alongside vehicles, knuckle-rapping the windows as they offered newspapers and baggies filled with water that bounced as they ran. "News from the world and water! Pure water! Pure water-o!"
"Tap water," said Chief Ogun, sitting back in his seat. "Filtered through cheesecloth. Best not to buy."
Other boys held up packets of batteries, fistfuls of pens.
"Power and pens!"
"Pure water! Pure water
-oh!"
"News from the world!"
Behind a roadside boulevard, cement houses were packed in.
In among them, a truly surreal sight—a home with a shuttered door and a message painted on its rolled-down metal slats:
THIS
HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE.
More such messages soon appeared. Some on shops:
THIS PETROL STATION NOT 4 SALE.
Some on unfinished construction sites, rickety with scaffolding:
NOT FOR SALE!!
One storefront had added a warning:
BEWARE 419.
"That?" Chief Ogun said when Laura asked. "A blight on the good name of Nigeria, I'm afraid. Sometimes, when a family or business owner is away, crooked men will sell their homes and businesses out from under them. They pass themselves off as the true owners, sell fake deeds to the property, and then run off with the money. Property is very expensive in Lagos, so people feel they need to act fast to get a good deal. They often pay up front.
And when the honest owners of the properties return, they find someone else living in their house. Can you imagine such a thing?
Losing one's house like that? The legalities of it can get very messy, as you might suppose. Sometimes the legitimate owners end up losing their homes in their entirety, even though it was they who were wronged. Best to put a notice up instead."
This house. Not for sale.
"And 419?" she asked, feigning innocence. "What does that refer to?"
"That I don't know about. Look ahead, miss. We are coming now to the Third Mainland Bridge. A feat of engineering!"
She could see the rise of the bridge ahead, the long line of cars caterpillaring across.
"Lagos is very flat. Built on reclaimed marshlands. A collection of islands, really, sewn together by bridges. The one ahead is the longest in Lagos, maybe in Africa. A marvel, don't you think?"
As they approached the bridge, the number of street sellers grew. Hawkers and hustlers, products and pleas. Men and women holding up their goods, calling out their wares. A dizzying inventory moved past. Some vendors held up trays filled with shoes, others with hats. Some were selling spark plugs, others sunglasses.
Tubes of toothpaste, packets of laundry soap. Cigarettes. Nicorette.
Gatorade and books—Bibles, mainly, and the Qu'ran. Fan belts and fans. And trouser belts. Racks of razor blades. Cartons of rum. Trinkets and toys and DVDs. Magazines. Pocket calculators. Neckties and nectarines. Flip-flops and alarm clocks. Ad-hoc barber's chairs and shoe repair stalls. Cutters moved through, brandishing nail clippers, and a tailor balancing a hand-cranked Singer sewing machine on his head called out to passing vehicles.
One enterprising young man carried an array of toilet seats on both arms as though caught in an oversized game of ring-toss.
"In Lagos, we say that you can leave your house in your underwear, and by the time you get across the first bridge, you can be shaved, shampooed, and fully dressed, with polished teeth and a fresh manicure. And if you have forgotten your underwear, you can get that, too."
He wasn't kidding. She saw one hawker waving men's briefs on a pole, back and forth like a flag, saw another selling brassieres.
(Hefty bosoms evidently abounded in Lagos, given the cup size of the bras on sale.)
"Do you have such a place as this?" Chief Ogun asked Laura.
"Where you're from?"
She thought about this. "The mall, I suppose." Forget the bridge; it was the street sellers along the way who were the true marvel.
As the sedan made its way up the slow rise and curve of the Third Mainland Bridge, buses ahead of them slowed in order to pick up passengers, gearing down without coming to a complete stop.
"They are not permitted to
stop
for passengers on expressways or bridges," Chief Ogun explained. "But no one said anything about not
slowing down
for passengers."
From the rounded swell of the bridge, Laura could see thousands of makeshift shacks spread out directly on top of the water. It looked like an optical illusion, but no.
"The Venice of Nigeria!" Chief Ogun said with a grand laugh. "The Makoko slums. All of it built upon stilts. Ingenious, don't you think? A floating city, built piece by piece over generations. And do you see that cloud of dust over there? Those are the timber yards of Ebute Metta. The forests of the Niger Delta end up there, are cut and stacked and shipped to America and other such places."
Along the water's edge, flat-bottomed boats were moving through the tidal flats, poling across the thinnest veneer of water.
"Fishermen?" she asked.
"Scavengers. The main sewage line from the mainland empties there, and a lot of good things get washed out with the sewage."
Lagos proper was like a honeycombed hive kicked open.
Everything was in motion, even the buildings, it seemed. The smell of fish and flesh. Narrow lanes and claustrophobic streets. And hers the only pink face in sight.
Wiry men pushed wheelbarrows through the traffic, oblivious to the cars and
okadas
that clipped past. Women with pyramids of oranges balanced on their heads followed, threading their way through with a grace Laura had never known—and all without dropping a single piece of fruit.
How did they manage that?
"I will tell you one thing," Chief Ogun said with a laugh. "God is a Nigerian! I promise you, only a Nigerian could make order out of such chaos. There is Africa, and then there is Nigeria. There are cities, and then there is Lagos."
Car exhaust was making Laura light-headed as the city swirled around her. Parrots in hand-twisted cages. Dead rats strung up on a stick. As traffic slowed, a young boy dangled one such collection of limp rats through the window. Chief Ogun shouted at him, and the rats were quickly withdrawn.
"They sell rats?"
"Not rats, rat poison. They want to show you how effective their products are."
With the car barely able to move, they were now besieged by beggars. The blind and the broken, the bandaged and the battered, the dustbinned of life, palms out, singing their sorrows. "Please for me, blessings please."
Laura began rummaging in her pockets, but she had no coins to give, only Nigerian naira bills whose exchange rate she didn't completely understand—that, and the $100 bill folded tightly in her skirt pocket.
"Don't," Chief Ogun said when he saw what she was doing.
"Once you start giving, it never ends."
The next street brought the sedan into a shadow realm of soot-stained lanes. Narrow passageways splintered off under corrugated rooftops that almost touched overhead. Smoke uncurled and new smells drifted in: tanned goatskins, burning sticks.
"Juju,
''Chief Ogun explained. "Black magic. Older gods."
Every
mugu
was driven through the
juju
quarter in Lagos at some point, he knew, and Chief Ogun had given his driver explicit instructions to that effect. It helped jostle the
mugus
minds, unravelled their judgment, made them more suggestible. More pliant.
He watched her taking it in: the fetishes that hung in bunches like shrivelled grapes outside grimy stalls. The animal paws and accompanying heads. The reptile skins, splayed and stretched.
The chameleons in cages, and snakes as yet unskinned. Albino boas sliding over themselves behind clouded glass. Elephant tusks.
Leopard hides. Rows of teeth strung together.
"Crocodile teeth. That is what they claim." He laughed.
"But all and sundry know they're just canines taken from stray dogs. It's all good fun, madam. Potions and poisons, and what have you. Would you like to stop and get out? Purchase a souvenir of Africa?"
Laura shook her head, was having trouble forming the sound necessary to say "no."
Just as well. Christian though he was, and immune to such superstitions, the
juju
quarter unnerved him, too, and he was relieved to put it behind them.
Ash filtered down from mounds of smouldering garbage, piled two floors high at times. But none of it seemed to settle on the people. Everyone was so tidy, so well turned out in crisp shirts and starched blouses, the women with headwraps artfully tied like the bright bows on Christmas packages. No one drooped, even in this muggy heat.
She looked down at her own creased cotton skirt and canvas sneakers—
Avoid open-toed sandals and never get into a taxi without first making sure the air-conditioning works! (Traveller's Tip #37).
She felt lumpy and dishevelled, sloppy and sweaty.
Men in impeccable white robes and women with equally impeccable smiles. And behind them: a stack of burning tires. Bucket-throws of smoke billowed up. It smelled the way blood tasted, and for a heart-skipping moment, Laura thought she saw someone inside the flames, burning, a single hand raised almost in greeting, fingers trailing smoke. When she looked again, it was gone.
And now the acrid smell of burning tires was overpowered by something worse: the wet thick odour of human feces. Pools of urine in littered lots. Open sewage, running through drains and ditches. The reek of it folded around her, filled her mouth. She held back a reflexive gag. "Can we—can we roll up the window? Please, the smell, it's too much."
The Chief smiled sympathetically at her discomfort. "I apologize. It is very bad. But I must say, we Africans do not produce nearly the amount of stool and waste that you do in America. You just hide yours better."
"Please... I can't."
"If we roll up the windows, you will melt."
At last, they came into an open square and Chief Ogun signalled for the driver to pull over. Minarets and their ornate domes were catching the light of the late afternoon, creating a well of shadows below. "The south is Christian, but we have many Muslims also, especially here."
He fished out his cellphone, dialled a number. Again, no one answered.
Across from the mosque lay not a market so much as a city of shops and stalls. Women, everywhere. "The market ladies of Lagos Island," Chief Ogun said. "Very strong. Even the police are afraid of them." He redialled the number. Waited. Still no answer.
Chief Ogun chewed on his lip. Then, with a sudden resolve, he said to the driver: "Take the Ring Road."
