Nigera 1997 - Arrival and Tomatoes

The first time I went to Nigeria was in July a year earlier, in 1997. We arrived back in Wales in the early days of September, the day of Princess Diana’s funeral, because we couldn’t find anyone to pick us up, as they were watching the enormous even on television. The reason we stayed two or three weeks extra than planned is something I cannot remember, but I think we were unable to get a ticket, which meant I missed the Pontardawe Festival and I had to spend my ninth birthday in the corrupt, foreign country of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

We flew from Cardiff International Airport to Schipol in Amsterdam, which took about an hour and a half, this felt quite weird because for eight years I have been stuck on an island. We then arrived at Lagos Airport about three hours after taking off from the Lowlands. As soon as I stepped out of the doorway, the heat came at me like ten men and hit me instantly. The sweat was coming off me like the Niagara. As it was my first time in Africa, I didn’t have an insight to how hot it was.

In the airport itself, the conveyor belts were shabby, as they weren’t working properly, if they were working at all. The straps were rags and half of them were missing or out of place. The cogs were rusted and full of webs and dust, probably even the spider moved out, as it was collapsing under its own weight. Because the belts didn’t work, my brothers, my mother and myself had to sit on the uncomfortable leather seats, and leather and tropical heat goes together like an arsonist and a match. We sat there for hours, as my father went through the large crows of shouting, sweaty, angry people waiting for luggage on the only working, slow conveyor belt, which was old and creaky.

Eventually, when he arrived with our bright yellow suitcases, we went through customs, but to make matters worse, we had to wait for another couple of hours: the Nigerians had to go through our suitcases looking for anything illegal such as weapons, explosives, drugs or maybe even a family. But instead of using their hands or x-ray machines, such as most customs would do, they flicked everything everywhere, rummaging around, by using their rifles. After they had finished, we had to find out things they flung around the room and put them back in the suitcase.

When boarding into the small bus (with other people who were working with my father), I fell asleep straight away. This would have been impossible if I wasn’t so tired; as the main roads were something I’ve never seen before. At first, I didn’t know they were main roads because they would be classes as dirt tracks in this country. They were filled with holes and craters. For filling up the holes, passing drivers would pay the Nigerian children for doing so. But, after the drivers passes, the children would re-dig the hole and start over again and pretend to work on the hole and rob other drivers. The children weren’t sniggering as if the just pulled one huge prank (which they had); they kept a straight face and kept on ‘filling’ the hole. It was like a job to them.

Later on, we saw dead bodies on the side of the road. My mother, with quite a flushed face, asked the bus driver:

“Why doesn’t someone move those bodies and bury them?”

“No do that!” replied the driver, his English was as poor as the people, “If move body, will be accuse!”

“Accused of what?” she asked with a puzzled look.

“Murder! People see you move body! People say you kill, you be accuse, go to jail and pay funeral! Very expensive!” explained the bus driver. The people on the bus, including myself, were quite astonished by this. It would never happen in our country, as there would be police everywhere. But if a Nigerian were to walk down a Nigerian road, and see a dead body, he would have passed it even if it were the President, as there are probably so many bodies around.

A few days later, my father was at work in the aluminium plant, so the rest of us went to the market. The natives, noticing us by our skin colour, suddenly thought we had loads of money, and then a hoard of them came at us like a herd of elephants. They were trying to sell us food like breadsticks, which were hard and bland sticks that were quite difficult to chew, and they didn’t taste nor look like bread at all). No one at all liked them, except for me, I didn’t mind them, and so my mother bought one bag, which contained about ten, and I ate about one a day as they took so long to finish, yet there wasn’t an expiry date on them, so I could still have a bag on me now and still be eating them, but it would be a bit risky. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were slightly aged in the first place. The market traders were rushing around, balancing wooden trays and wicker baskets on top of their heads. The open market was situated along a main road full of holes. One of the traders, a small kid with ragged clothes came up to us and said, “Pay me!” He was selling tomatoes; they were small and scarlet red with no bruises, which seemed unusual. The boy’s arms and legs were long but as thin as running tap water. His tray was balancing on his bald scalp somehow, his skin was all wrinkly and he had flies crawling all over him. His eyes were big, white and close together, which made them really stand out.

My mother was inspecting the tomatoes, they seemed ripe and not in a bad condition. The only thing was they were small, so that meant she would have to buy more. A few tomatoes cost twenty Naira, which was equivalent to two pence. My mother placed the tomatoes back in the tray and reached for her purse to pay him. Then there was another guy, wearing a dirty, blue shirt with half the buttons missing and he wore trousers, which seemed they had argued with his ankles and getting friendly with his knees. They were also torn at the bottom, too. He came running towards us. He was clean-shaven and his hair combed back, and he was carrying a bag of large, unripe and bruised tomatoes. As he was running towards us, he picked the kid up and threw him in the gutter. The mud splashed everywhere as he landed and the child was covered in muck, and so were the rolling, bouncing tomatoes.

Then the bloke said: “Buy my tomatoes! Bigger and only fifteen Naira!” My mother refused, walked off towards the dirty child who was picking his tomatoes up from the ground and wiping the mud off them. She bought a few of them from him, even though some of them were now slightly bruised since the torn road had battered them. She did it because she felt sorry for the kid, as anyone else probably would. And the man acted in an inappropriate and childish manner by doing what he did; and I wouldn’t have bought his manky tomatoes after that.