Short Story in the Stylist Magazine

I have a short story in last week's Stylist magazine titled 'Going Home.'

'He will take his children to Nigeria for Christmas this year. It will be their first time as a family. His wife, Agatha has been once before. Her memories are of insect bites and bucket baths, her skin braised from the sun, her stomach turned by a bout of food poisoning. She had not liked his relatives, felt them prying and tactless, bursting into tears once when his Aunt poked at her flat, childless stomach.

“We have children now.”

“It doesn’t matter. They wanted you to marry a good Nigerian girl. You know it.”

He wished she wouldn’t cry so much. His mother had only shed tears at funerals, wailing loudly when the coffin was lowered into the ground and then rushing back to the kitchen to dish out food. There was something unseemly in an adult breaking down over the memory of a 10-year-old slight.'

Read the rest here.  

PS it's my first ever published short story which is rather exciting. 

London Lagos Chronicles Part 2

And all the while I am writing this, there are people trudging their way to Europe thousands of feet under me. I have a cousin who crossed the desert to get to Spain once. Not a first cousin. I distinguish not to distance our association but because I hope no first cousin of mine would ever be reduced to such straits. Even if they fell off the road to prosperity, the family net would catch them but the further you radiate from my father and his brothers to their cousins and cousin’s cousins, the net grows weaker till only a few strands remains, dangling weakly, straws for drowning men to clutch at. He crossed the Sahara, miles and miles of sand, only to be sent back after a few months in Spain.

I saw a patch of grey a few minutes ago and I wondered if it was an oasis. I met this desert crossing cousin of mine very briefly. He came to see my dad in the hospital. If England looks like a living organ still pumping sap, the Sahara looks like a dead organ, dried and exhibited for study in the lab, the cross section of dried tissues and vessels cut open for students and airplane passengers to look into. This is the desiccation of the world. Some of the patterns on the ground look like waves, waves petrified in motion, forever about to break free and continue their surge forward.

When my cousin who walked across these dried waves came to see my dad, we (Dinachi and I) dropped into the office briefly. We greeted him warmly, in the way you greet strangers who you have just been told are your relatives. He did not look like someone that had needed to cross the Sahara. He was lanky not thin and he was smartly dressed in dark colours, either brown or black. I remember what I was wearing. Flared blue jeans with zip pockets in front bough from America, a size 5 not 7 even though my first cousins in America thought I was more a 7. And a pink tank top with a cartoon monkey on it, whose provenance is unknown but which I am certain I did not buy. It was a gift but I cannot remember from whom. I had just been to the bank with my mother, the purpose of my trip I have forgotten but it was just before I moved to England. Anyway, I met my cousin, we shook hands with adequate smiles and then we left.

Later on, my mother told me his story. She said he looked at us like special children, like the children of a rich man who was enjoying life but we were his cousins. It wasn’t an acquisitive look but it was a look that said, ‘that could have been me.’ We come from the same stock. The context of my mother saying this was that my father had offered to sponsor his higher education. He had declined and asked for sponsorship to go to Europe instead, by air presumably this second time not by road. This was where he wanted to continue his life and possibly finished school. It seemed preposterous to my father but my mother sympathised with this cousin of mine. He saw his relatives sending their children to schools in Europe and America, he saw their children enjoying, epitomised by myself in my tight jeans and monkey shirt and why should he not want that? Entitlement is a funny thing. On some level we all have it. We feel entitled to the world. That’s why we wake up every morning and go out into it. I don’t know one singularity about his character, except what I can extrapolate from his willingness to cross the Sahara on foot. He might have been a great explorer in another life, Mungo Park, Livingstone, Stanley, the last especially with tenacity and demons driving them on. Instead, in the 21^st Century, he ended up another immigrant deported back to his country, doing in six hours on a plane what is had taken over six weeks to do on foot.

I have been writing for almost an hour. We have 2:04 hours left of flight time. When I started I think it was 2:59.

16 minutes left. There is a harmattan haze over Lagos so even though we’re so close I can’t see a thing. I much prefer a morning flight actually. I only had brief nap but during the day time, that’s when you realise that 6 hours of travel is not that much. Just three BBC documentaries and a couple of hours of reading, journaling and playing games on my ipad. The ground below is still very scrubby and dusty but it can’t be Northern Nigeria. This plane is fast but it can’t cover that distance so fast. The plane is trembling a little bit. Not jolting up and down in turbulence but trembling. I wish I knew why. When you know the reason behind every strange noise and rumble, you grow less fearful. Maybe I should learn how to fly. Skip driving.

We just flew over some lakes with green land pushing into them, mysterious puzzle shapes of moss. Nigeria is very green, very dark green. I can see a red dusty line running through the verdure, unpaved earth leading perhaps to a village with no running water. The plane has stopped trembling. We are floating noiselessly. The land isn’t parcelled out in square strips like in Europe. No patchwork here. Just green and more green. Plenty of room for modern agriculture. Another red line running through the green. I wonder what state we’re flying over.

Now suddenly, the sprawl of houses begin. Welcome to Lagos. I’m right opposite the sun. Its cloaked in dust. Harmattan makes it almost possible to look the sun in the eye. We’re back to green again. Those houses weren’t in Lagos or at least not Lagos proper. The land makes its own pattern here. A clump of trees, some scrub, some open grass, once in a while intersected by dirt lines like scars. Ooh a tarmac road. The woman behind me said, ‘It looks like Scotland.’ Her boyfriend I think is Nigerian. He has no hair on the sides of his head, on purpose I think. In the middle is a long top knot of dreadlocks sitting in a prim bun. 4 minutes remaining according to my clock and still no sign of Lagos. Clock must be wrong. Lagos is drowning from the ocean and the North is drowning from the Sahara. Houses scattered in the green, haphazardly from this height is seems. What need for order in such space.

A little oasis of green grass in what has become a sprawl now.

‘Look at how densely….’

‘It’s just haphazard.’

My fellow passengers.

I have seen a church from the sky, pink roof and cream walls, and a rubbish heap and some tiny fires burning on a smaller dump. The roads are much nicer in Lagos. Actually I just saw one that looks like eczema. I can see into people’s compounds now. The man behind me is thanking God we arrived safely. Touchdown. It’s good to be home.

London Lagos Chronicles Part 1

Instead of spending 6 hours watching movies on my last flight home, I decided to write and record the experience live and direct. Here's part one of my musings.

Separate the waters. I'm on the British Airways flight to Nigeria.  From the air on a clear sunny day with no clouds, the blue of the sky and of the sea merge into one on the horizon. All around is blue, no up and no down. Flying over England, the land below reminded me of sayings like the land is in the blood or the blood of England flows through your veins. It really did look like an organ with the thick lines of trees like arteries and veins and capillaries carrying thick green sap to England's people. And who are England's people?

The couple next to me are old. They sneeze and splutter and cough a lot. They cover their mouths when they do. Their hands seem ineffectual. Many germs escape I fear and mostly on to me but their politeness is appreciated. We are over France now. Just across the Channel and the landscape seems dryer, more arid and the pieces of the farmland jigsaw are smaller and browner. There also seem to be fewer trees or maybes it's because we're higher up. Some quite persistent turbulence. I am drinking Coke. I fear for your pages. The engine roar grows louder for a moment and then quietens down. I used the loo before I got on the plane but will it be enough? The flight has quite a few empty seats. Perhaps BA is not longer so popular, colonial mentality unwinding.

We're flying over what must be the Sahara Desert now. It's not the Sahara of shifting sands that is so popular in the imagination but the part of the desert that is craggy and brown, unending dryness to the front and the back of the plane. The ground is so unchanging it doesn't feel like we're moving at all. There are thin cracks in the land that look like the beds of where river and streams once flowed. We are leaving behind the crags now and moving on to the more archetypal Sahara. The cracks in the old Sahara look like dried up capillaries and veins, arid England. There are some depressions in the sand. They must be quite deep but from up here they look like pockmarks.

 There is a dark thin ribbon running along the ground for what must be miles. It looks like a grey tarmac road but it can't be. Once you have a fixed point to look from, you realise how fast we're moving. In the few seconds it took to write this, the strange road has already disappeared beyond craning distance. I will make a way in the desert God says in Isaiah, where rivers of living water will flow. There's a patch of sand a lot redder than the rest of the desert, like a birthmark. There are lines running through the desert, swirling and sweeping and it makes you almost think there must be a pattern, some cosmic Artist whose handwork you would be able to fully appreciate if only you could go a little higher. That's how they saw the Nazca lines. They flew.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

An Evening at Parliament

First of all, let me confess my ignorance in the midst of dear friends who won't hurl abuse at me. I got to Westminster station about twenty minutes before the event was due to start. Exit 3 said House of Parliament. My invite said House of Commons. Dear blog readers, I had a serious moment of panic. With not long to go before the meeting began, I became worried that the House of Commons and the House of Parliament were different places. Such are the gaps in my general knowledge. Thankfully they are the same place.

Before I found the meeting room, I walked and walked and walked. Every time I reach another desk with a police man I would ask, where is X room? They would reply, "Just straight down miss." Just straight down, straight down, up a few flights of stairs, straight down before I finally got to where I was going. I passed some busts of former Prime Ministers: Lord Palmerston, Gladstone, faces from my history books. As I walked to the room, my boots clicking on the stone floors, I kind of understood why people want to be powerful. There is something that feels good about striding down a long corridor, hearing your shoes click on the floor and feeling you are going somewhere important, you're rushing to a major decision that lives will hang on.

Now to the reason I was in the House of Commons in the first place. It was a meeting of The All Party Parliamentary Group on Nigeria and it was organised by Chatham House. No, I had never heard of this group of MPs from all parties who "aim to create a better understanding of issues relating to Nigeria; to promote links between Britain and Nigeria and to support development and democracy in Nigeria." Members of the group include Dianne Abott and Chuka Umunna.

There were three speakers. A Researcher on Nigeria from the Humans Rights Watch. The Detective Chief Inspector Economic and Specialist Crime Command, Metropolitan Police and Oba Nsugbe QC, SAN, Head of Chambers, Pump Court Chambers.

The researcher just didn't do it for me. Perhaps because he had limited time, he could only give an overview but unfortunately, a lot of what he mentioned could have been read on the Nigerian online newspaper, 234Next. The nadir for me though, was when he stated that in the past few weeks, the EFCC had arrested 3 governors. Immediately my ears pricked up. Three governors? No. They were EX-governors because the Nigerian constitution does not allow a sitting governor to be prosecuted. If the EFCC could prosecute current governors, then they could catch the criminals early instead of waiting for 8 years and billions of stolen Naira later. That a whole researcher on Nigeria could make this seemingly trivial error, didn't inspire confidence. Maybe the Human Rights Watch should hire some Nigerians to research about Nigeria. They might be able to get more inside gist.

The next speaker was from the Metropolitan Police. Immediately, I felt on this man's side. When he spoke of the trials of catching Nigerian crooked politicians, I really felt for him. He spoke of the case of Alamesiegha. They caught him at Heathrow with a suitcase full of hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash. They arrested him. He asked for bail. He wanted to return to Nigeria to sort out a few things. He said he would be back. They were not stupid. They knew he wanted to disappear. He said he would come back. At his hearing, the whole Attorney General of Nigeria left his duties to come and plead that Alamesiegha be allowed bail. Eventually, bail was posted at 500,000 pounds. It was paid without a blink. Alamesiegha has not been heard of since. The Met is doing better than EFCC. They have secured 15 convictions in 5 years whereas the EFCC has only secured 4 convictions of major political figures since its inception. Which is kinda pitiful. I was on the Met's side.

Then Mr. Nsugbe spoke. First of all, most of the money recouped from the Ibori cases and others of that ilk, isn't returned to Nigeria. I almost had a fit. I could not believe what I was hearing. Most of the money wasn't returned?! Where did it go? It first went to the Home Office, then to the Treasury, then the Met was reimbursed for the time they spent tracking down the criminal, then finally, at the discretion of Treasury, some, SOME of it, MAY go back to Nigeria. Of the 400 million dollars of looted Nigerian money that has been recovered abroad, most of it has not returned. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no charity in this world.

The man from the Met made his rejoinder. After all, sometimes they returned to money to Nigeria and nobody even bothered to cash the cheques. He told one story of how expired cheques were found in the Attorney General's top drawer. And of course, there was the worry that the returned money would just go back into corruption. No point chasing down laundered money, to chase down the same laundered money a few years later. But still, these arguments don't really hold water. If I leave my laptop lying around and it gets stolen, no-one has a right to tell me they won't give it back because they are worried I might be careless and it might get stolen again.

After this revelation, the audience was less than kind. One woman asked why the Metropolitan department that handled corruption was not expanded? After all, it was a profit making organisation (oooh low blow.) In the end, I agree with Mr. Nsugbe. There has to be a balance. The money should be returned but it should be monitored by a credible organisation. When 600 million dollars of Abacha's loot was returned to Nigeria, it's expenditure was monitored by the World Bank and thus, a lot of it was actually put to good use. But sha sha, these people should give us back our money, that's my own.

All in all, I enjoyed my 1 hour in parliament. All I had to do was register online. I didn't know anybody. I didn't need any connections. I wondered when I was leaving, if I could get into a meeting in the House of Senate with such ease in my own country. I doubt it.