Panic and guilt

The car slowed to a crawling pace on the tiny incline, and then the engine died. We'd managed about 15 metres. The policeman scraped the key in the ignition, it chuggered and spluttered, died again -the driver swore- and then it came to life, roused like an asthmatic smoker. I looked at my watch. "Don't panic", I thought. Only a few minutes until I have to check in, and I've managed 30 ft. My friend is getting married, and I promised him I'd come back for it. If I miss this flight...
The armed police guard at my apartment was doing me a great favour. He'd been washing down his car at the end of his shift when I'd appeared, the heavy blanket of night not yet lifted, blinking away sleep, looking for my taxi.
The day before, a full 21 hours before, I'd asked the apartment's driver if he could take me to the airport. I wanted to make sure that he was ok with that, because the strike was due to start, and no one but the funnel and pipe boys had any petrol, so I gave him enough time to get some fuel.
"Tell me if you won't be able to take me, if you won't have any fuel, but tell me soon, so I can make other plans."
"It is ok sir," he'd said, "I will be there."
And here he wasn't. Rousing Emmanuel the security guard I asked where Suleiman was. "He was here…" I looked at my watch again, "he said he went for fuel."
I looked at Emmanuel. What? Where exactly did he think he was going to get fuel at this time in the morning? I'd given him nearly 24 hours notice. Rage was building behind my eyes.
A year ago I think I probably would have lost it at that point. I wasn't apoplectic, I don't think I would have gone into meltdown, but I would have definitely allowed the curling edge of panic creep into my temperament. But somehow, after a year in Nigeria, this morning I was determined not to lose my rag.
"Why would he do that, Emmanuel?" I asked.
"Don't worry sir, you will take another taxi." I looked out into the street. It's a back crescent, nice and quiet. On one side, you can see the hills and green bushes, on the other, a clutch of newly built houses. A neighbour owns goats who graze on the grass verges. The sound of the goat chewing, and the dawn chorus, were the only things I could hear. We were the only ones in the street.
"Where Emmanuel? Where are the cars?"
"They are plying…" he said vaguely waving his hand up and down the street.
"But it could be two hours before one comes." A far-away look came to Emmanuel's eyes, as if he'd just seen a fairground on the horizon. In the end the Mopol man who was going off shift said he'd help me find a taxi.
He said: "You have a car, why don't you drive to the airport?" I don't think that it's secure to leave it there I replied. "You could give me the keys and I'd drive back," he said.
"Ummm…"
"I am a policeman, you can trust me."
"Let's just find a taxi shall we?"
In the end we found a car waiting outside one of Garki's brothels. "Do you know how to drive fast?" I asked.
"Yessah!" came the reassuring reply, and we were off.
The sky was stating to lighten as we hit airport road. We were a little behind, but I didn't think it would matter. I checked my bag once more for my passport and ticket which were safely there, and suddenly we stopped.
I looked up in surprise to see the back end of a truck. The road was completely blocked, two lanes had become four and they were all completely stationary. Someone had abandoned their 4x4 on the side of the road, others were pushing their cars, inching toward the Texaco station. We'd hit the fuel queue. I'd heard it costs over $100 to fill a car on the black market now.
The driver whacked his car into the central ditch and climbed the other bank. Adopting a standard manoeuvre, we drove for a mile against the oncoming traffic, blaring horn and flashing light.
Of course we made it to the airport on time, and really -compared with what many people will be facing this week- my experience is a trifling inconvenience. But I felt a small sense of triumph that I hadn't succumbed to panic. It took the edge off the guilt I felt for running away before the strike brought everything to a standstill.
I looked out of the window as the plane took off, zooming over the cassava plots like whorled fingerprints and the pinhead cows at the water pans. And there was the fuel queue… Ok maybe I wasn't feeling that guilty after all.

Africa Magic

It's three in the morning and I can't sleep. The reason I can't sleep is the sound of saggy drums and shouting leaking through the wall from my neighbour's apartment. He's watching Africa Magic at full volume.
I think the film he's watching is the kind where guys stand around a forest wrapped in sack cloth discussing which one of their wives is a witch and who is going to kill her. I can hear the reedy shrill tones of those wooden whistles the paramount rulers love to hear, yabbering incantations, and of course the staple of Nigerian movies, lots of shouting.
I hope you understand, I talk about these films with some trepidation. Every time my friend and I made sniggering comments about the production values of Nollywood films, his Nigerian girlfriend would get very upset. She'd slap us about a bit and say nasty things about white people.
But right now, with this racket going on as the dawn comes up -that terrible synthesizer music quavering tremulously in my ears!- I say they're fair game.
As far as I can see there are two general types of Nollywood film (I have to admit I've not seen any Hausa films, and so will confine my rant to the Lagos-based productions). There are the ones set in olden times, with spirits, kings with chunky beads and women with dots on their faces, which I will name, for the purpose of this article, "juju shouting films". The second type is the modern day trials and tribulations of Lagos, which I will call "area shouting films".
The general plotlines of these, as far as I can gather, go like this: In a juju shouting film, a good woman has given in to evil and transgressed some boundary of society, her royal husband is shamed, she must redeem herself, or be killed. Or a malevolent witch is wreaking havoc with the bloodline of a royal dynasty, she must be stopped. They do this under giant mango trees, presumably somewhere near Oshogbo (with the producer's Merc just peaking into the shot).
In the "area shouting" films, the plotlines might be something like this: A good looking area bad boy falls in love with a girl, but her father is a High Court justice, and he must return to his village to learn the error of his ways. Or: A high school girl struggles to be popular at school, gets gang-raped, contracts HIV and must return to her village to learn the error of her ways. Or even: There is a guy, he is (supposedly) good looking, he has more women than he can deal with, he must go back to his village and learn the error of his ways.
I spoke to a friend who works as a script developer for the BBC World Service Trust about this, he told me that 99 per cent of the scripts they get sent from young writers end with the protagonist returning to the village to Learn the Error of Their Ways. If only they remembered the juju shouting films: the village is just as malevolent a place!
In these films "actors" have only two pitches: quiet sobbing, and frantic shouting. There is no in between. It can't be just because they're low budget that the production values are rubbish, some of them must actually go out of their way to be this bad. In one film the actress was so bad she needed prompting at every line of a telephone conversation, so a woman sat behind the sofa and read out the other half of the conversation. They might have got away with this, only she was meant to be talking to her errant man. There is no excuse for that other than the people who make these films believe it's ok if they are total crap.
It needn't be like this. I have seen one film that I loved, Tunde Kelani's Saworoide, which was maybe a bit long, but has fantastic story, acting and direction.
Nollywood is quite famous in England. Sunday supplements occasionally have spreads about the 'remarkable rise' of the Nigerian film industry. It's become One Of Those Things people know about Nigeria, like corruption, 419 and the Delta. But if they were actually to see one, I would say most English people would switch a Nollywood film off pretty quickly. If you enjoy them, reader, I salute you. Just don't impose them on me at 4am. If I need to see some people shouting at each other in a pink room, I know where to go.

A robbery

I suppose I should have known better than to stick around in the crowd after the new president left Eagle Square. I think it was during the pushing and shoving that erupted when former president Obasanjo walked to his car that my pocket was picked.
After he finished his speech, Yar'Adua returned inside the bullet proof walls of the VIP pavilion for a final round of handshakes, and the crowd pushed forward. Where there had been green jacketed press photographers jostling for a snap, suddenly there were hundreds of young men clamouring for a glimpse.
Where had all these guys come from? Outside the stands, filled with party bigwigs and ladies of substance, behind the chain link fence, thousands of people were pressing on the gates. The police couldn't keep them out, a score of officers were braced against it and it inched open bit by bit.
The floodgates must have snapped open. People were hanging off the balustrades of the podium, shoved tight like sardines in between it and the stands. The mounted guards who escorted the president into the square had to push their way into the crowd. Their scrawny horses nervously hopped from one hoof to the other, spooked by the people around them. The guards, perched on top of their jittery rides, peeked out from under the white peaked helmets, tassels twitching, trying to stay in formation. They were followed by the state limousine, inching its way into the throng, pushing its way bit by bit toward the red carpet. Somewhere guards were holding back the masses from closing in on the new man in power. The crowd swayed and rocked forth and back. People were stepping on my toes, then scrabbling on my shins, as they fought to keep their feet. As the guards pushed the weight of people back it fell on them again, twice as heavy like a breaking wave. I had to hold my camera above my head to desperately try and get a shot of the new president as he emerged and made his way to the waiting car. All I could see was his hat.
After the vice president left the pavilion, the minders flooded in through the bullet proof doors. The stairs were crammed with burley men in suits. During the ceremony they had been lined up on the other side of the glass. I saw one Chinese bodyguard who looked as if he'd stepped out of a kung fu film, wearing a crisp black suit and shades, pencil tie, and slowly cooling himself with a large Chinese fan. Now they were falling over themselves to get in and by their bosses' side. A large Russian type was pulling other guards by the shoulder to make way for him, and a fat Nigerian policeman got into an argument with another body guard, they pulled at each other and the policeman toppled over and fell down the stairs.
Suddenly there was a roar from the crowd, Baba had appeared. He put his hands aloft to recognise the appreciation and there were instantly hundreds of arms in the air returning the jubilation. All through the ceremony he looked tired, sad, even lonely, weighed down with solemnity, standing out on the podium watching the marching troops go by. He looked like an old bloodhound, down in the mouth. But now, as if feeding off the proximity of his supporters, he bounded down the stairs, his guards barely able to keep up. He disappeared into the huddled mass and the crowd went wild. A man nearby looked up at me and said "He is Nigeria's strongman, our strongman, we love him." Shouts went up "Strongman! Strongman!"
I stuck my hand in my pocket and tried to pull out my recorder to interview him, but it wasn't there. My clothes were soaked through with sweat and my pocket seemed to be in a knot. The man stood and regarded me as I went from pocket to pocket, but it wasn't there. I wondered if it had been him who had taken it. "Have you lost something?" he said. I turned on my heel and walked out of the crowd. Standing in the heat going through my pockets for the third time I felt that mixture of anger and shame that follows a robbery. How did I let this happen? I tried to push it to the back of my mind and went to find my colleagues. As we walked to the car one of them said: "You heard him talking about all the progress Nigeria has made? There are many thieves here, and many people who have little money for maize, and then wait to see if God will bring them anything else, if he does not, they go without. That man who stole your midget will probably sell it for as little as N500."