Running in Lagos...

A few weeks ago I visited Nigeria. Two of the other Fulbrighters were going to go to Nsukka, a town in Nigeria, to interview the artist El Anatsui and they asked if I wanted to join them. I got permission to take a few days off of school and I jumped at the opportunity to go and see another country. After making the arrangements, we all left early on a Saturday morning bound for Lagos. The plan was we would stay a few days in Lagos, the capital of Nigeria (and largest city in all of Africa- 15 million) and then make our way to Nsukka to see the artist. On the plane I finished reading an article by George Packard in The New Yorker entitled “The Megacity: Decoding the Chaos of Lagos.” The article was very good, well written… and scary. The ominous depiction Packard gives of Lagos is one that conjures images of burning garbage dumps, violence, and robbery. “Area boys”, local gangs of hoodlums, run the streets taking orders only to their “oga”, or boss, as how to better make money, through any means necessary. Needless to say, as we got off the plane, I was on my toes.

We were able to stay with an official from the US Consulate in Nigeria who had a beautiful house in one of the nicest, and safest, neighborhoods in Lagos. His house not only had air conditioning and an American style kitchen (I got to cook each night we were there), but also a washing machine and dryer. To many of you in the US, this may sound very run-of-the-mill and ordinary. However, to me, who has done wash with a bucket and my own two hands for the past six and a half months, this was a luxury fit for a king. He let us do laundry which allowed the soars on my hands to begin to heal.

The first morning in Lagos I woke up early and realized that no one else in the house was awake so I decided to go for a run. As I tiptoed out of the house, put on my shoes, and started off, I quickly remembered that I was in Lagos, not Accra. People stared at me as I ran and called me “Oyebo” (the Nigerian version of “Obruni” or “White man”). All in all though, the run was nice and I felt good, not only with my run, but the mere fact that I was doing it in Lagos. I was at the 3 mile mark and the house was insight, not but 300 yards away when everything went haywire. A car on my right suddenly started to back out of a driveway, very quickly, without looking or seeing me. I swerved to the left to avoid the car and as I did, I heard the horn of an “okada” (a motorcycle taxi that is named after an old Nigerian airline that had an incredibly high percentage of crashes, as do the motorcycle taxis). I had one of two options; go back to the right and get hit by the car, or try to cross the road and, hopefully, not get hit by the okada. I choose option B and was, well, partially successful. The okada driver ran into me but only glanced off my arm with his arm and continued. We were both seemingly fine, but he did look back, glaring and yelling in a language of which I could not understand the words, but still, got the message. As soon as the accident happened, I looked over to see five policemen with automatic rifles, jump up and start running towards me. I flashed to the Packard article and thought that the reputation of Lagos is well earned, and asked myself exactly how fast I could sprint the last 300 yards to the house. However, to my very pleasant surprise, the policemen were not running at me, but rather at the okada and yelling at him to “Be careful of Oyebo”! I made it back to the house in one piece which was blessing in and of itself.