5:07 AM

Photo: Namnso Ukpanah

Tomorrow is Saturday. I am excited at the prospect of enjoying a long and deserved sleep. For me, and many other people that live in this tiny city, Saturdays and Sundays are the only days we don’t grudgingly wake up at 4 a.m. and attempt Olympic-worthy sprints to get on a bus and beat the ever-present but unfathomable morning traffic.

Just before I drift off to sleep, I recall the nasty encounter I had in traffic with this bootlegger that sells pirate CD to commuters stuck in traffic. Jogging alongside the bus I am in, he must have profiled me as a potential customer. As is always the case in this city, the bus eventually merges with built-up traffic and comes to a halt. Sitting by the window, I have a good view of his merchandise. On an open wooden briefcase, he has several greatest hit collections of popular musicians. They are arranged in rows and strapped to a wooden frame with rubber bands. He pitches various options to me—Fela, Michael Jackson, Kenny Rogers. I am naturally drawn to the Michael Jackson collection; I mean, he is the king of pop.

Photo: Daniel James

Despite his lanky frame and slim build, the hawker effortlessly lifts the briefcase to my face.

“Oga, you don see the one you like?” he shouts.

“I no sure say e get anyone wey I like for here,” I reply.

He lowers the briefcase, rests it on the bus and supports it with his thighs.

“You sure say you no see anyone wey you like?” he asks again, this time waving his palm across his collections of CDs as though preparing to perform a card trick.

The hand wave achieves its aim because now I am thinking of Fela; I remember a bare-chested sticker of him plastered on a tricycle. I even remember the caption of the sticker: suffering and smiling. A Fela-themed weekend is not a bad idea.

“Ahh! You get Fela collection there?”

“Na the complete Fela Hit be this. I even get Michael Jackson and Bob Marley own.” He flashes a Fela-branded CD case to my face.

“I no ask you for Bob Marley or Michael Jackson o. You think say na song be my problem now, ehn?”

Despite his aggressive marketing, I am impressed by his athleticism, his effort, his persistence. But more than anything, I want our transaction to end so I can focus on something else.

“Oya give me the Fela own. Hope say na original CD be this o?”

He nods.

I take out my wallet and give him a five hundred naira note as he hands me a CD wrapped in a small black carrier bag. I peep in the bag to make sure that I am getting what I paid for while he sorts my change. At that moment, the traffic clears and the bus speeds off with the driver swerving right and left to avoid potholes and traffic wardens. My money.

The bootlegger who minutes ago was jogging alongside the bus suddenly forgets how to run. It is as if he suddenly switched from a cheetah to a sloth. I stretch my head out of the speeding bus and watch the hawker casually stroll away with my change in the opposite direction.

I only have myself to blame for violating the number one rule of shopping in traffic: always demand the item and the change before you pay. I try to console myself with thoughts that perhaps the music I was hoodwinked into buying for more than three times the selling price will bring me some reprieve over the weekend. As the legendary Fela famously sang, we’re all just suffering and smiling.

“I disobeyed the number one rule of shopping in traffic: always demand the item and the change before you pay.”

I periodically stick my head through the window to be sure that the hawker isn’t running after the bus even though we are kilometres away now. I turn to the man sitting next to me. “Shey you see wetin just happen now.” I nudge him a little. “You see as this man just carry my change run?” He doesn’t even look at me; he just slowly takes out his earphones from his backpack and chucks the pair into his ears. Such as asshole.

Deep inside, I know that the bootlegger hasn’t seen the last of me, and this traffic will make our paths cross again. Come what may, I will alight from the bus and chase him like he stole my money. Did he not?  

***

“Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life,” the preacher shouts at the top of his voice as if trying to outdo his megaphone.

Not again! It is still dark. I can tell that it is past midnight but not yet dawn. I slide my palm across my bed, searching for my phone. I hear a louder bawl: “Repent and give your life to Christ today.” The morning quietude is tarnished.

I sigh deeply, slam my fist on my bed in anger, and glance at my phone. It is 5:07 am. This is strange. Preachers always begin their unsolicited sermon much later in the morning, say from about 6:30 am. And it is the weekend; I didn’t anticipate any early morning evangelism. God, why?

“Because Jesus is the way the truth and the life,” the preacher yells in direct response to my thoughts.

I’ll be damned!

I have come to accept and coexist with the roaring sound of the speakers that blare the Salat al-fajr every morning. And the mosque and my house are at different ends of my street, so it is easier to ignore. However, this early morning preacher has most certainly caught me unawares. While most of us take the liberty of the weekend to sleep longer, others make the most of the less-congested road to resume early. I am still determined to enjoy a good sleep, so I head for the spare room. The spare room faces the other side of the street and is thankfully out of the reach of the preacher’s irritating voice. I land on the unmade squeaky bed in relief.

My eardrums are immediately treated to the vexatious sound of a neighbour’s generator. I can’t believe my luck. First, the preacher and now a generator. Who leaves their generator running the entire night? It is far from economical and a nuisance to all but the owner of the generator. What annoys me the most is that my neighbour’s poorly serviced and worn out generator is placed metres away from his apartment. So while he enjoys the comfort, I deal with the noise and air pollution.  

My own small generator ran for most parts of the evening before it fizzled to a sputtering stop.  I knew that it had run out of fuel. It went off earlier than I had hoped; I must have been too generous with how much I opened my fuel control nozzle. Trips to the filling station not only cost me money but also eat into my time, and I have to rest before the madness of the next day.

Anyway, I can tell from the sound of my neighbour’s weary-sounding generator that it is barely managing to guzzle the adulterated fuel it’s been fed. In between the clanking of metals, it puffs out dark smoke that flirts with every receptor in my olfactory system. I shake my head in disbelief. We cannot get reliable electricity, and even the fuel we religiously queue up to buy is no good.

I wonder what it would take to live a decent life and enjoy a good night’s rest in this city. The thought of how bad things are is deeply saddening. Just the other day, I was singled out as a nefarious tenant and a wahala citizen for demanding that the NEPA man reconsiders his decision to disconnect my electricity.

“My friend, will you get away from there,” I warned him sternly. I am billed to pay ten thousand, seven hundred and fifty naira for darkness, and the month has not even run out.

“If you no wan use NEPA light again, we go disconnect your wire. After all, other tenants for this same compound don pay. You are just a frustrated troublemaker.”  

After he was done hurling insults at me, he wore his weary-looking gloves, positioned his crooked ladder firmly on the muddy earth, and headed for the summit of the pole. At that point, I knew reason and logic were not going to help.

“Oga abeg e never reach fight.”

“No, you for dey speak English for me for there,” he yelled back, dangling my now disconnected electricity wire in my face.

I eventually managed to convince him to reconnect my power and promised to pay my electric bill first thing the following Monday morning.

“Better find me something sharp-sharp,” he muttered like a disgruntled child. I nodded my head, dipped my hands into my pocket, and squeezed a torn five hundred naira note into his hands. I had been unable to spend the torn note anyway since most traders acted like I was offering them Zimbabwean dollars whenever I presented it as payment.

Fortunately, he didn’t check the note before dipping it into his pocket. the money with the rest of his amassed boodle into his deep pockets. I comforted myself with the thought that he would have a hard time spending my bribe.

The thought of escaping my preferred bed because of an obnoxious preacher that couldn’t take the weekend off to warn me about eternal damnation angers me. What hell is worse than navigating life in such a lawless and densely populated city. My anger is now slowly transitioning into sadness, thanks to the exhaust smoke I am inhaling. This pungent hydrocarbon stench is what evoked the bitter but exhausting argument I had with the electricity official the previous evening.

I am better off listening to a preacher interrupt my sleep with threats of hell and the soon-to-come messiah than breathe the hellish exhaust smoke from my neighbour's generator. On one hand, I am being threatened with the possibility of hell, and on the other hand, I am being welcomed to hell with an exhaust smoke rehearsal.

I saunter back to my main room. At this point, sleep has evaded my now wide-open eyes. I turn to look out of my window to make out the face of the preacher. He must believe that this early morning auditory onslaught is an act that God would reward him handsomely for.

I hear his voice thin into the silence of the morning as I pull my curtains to get a glimpse of his silhouette or at least make out his face. With each passing second, his screams become fainter. I fix my gaze towards the direction of the preacher’s mutter until it is eclipsed by the Salat al-fajr cry.

I throw myself on my bed and gawk at the fading light of the moon from my window. The dawn of a new day is near and sleeping is the last thing on my mind. The preacher steals my sleep, and I get neither God nor the hope of heaven from his sermon. As with the devious hawker, I cannot help but think that I have been swindled—a second time.