A Side of the Bridge Against the Other

TickTacFoe
Jul 10, 2017 · 3 min read

Human beings are interesting creatures. If it’s survival instinct, I don’t know. This need to show others how much better we are than them, to push them down with all the good things happening to us, to suppress them with our testimonies till they die off and we own up their little spaces, grow bigger and flourish over their humus. Wondering what I’m on about? I’ll let you in:

Last year, when I first moved to Lagos from Enugu, I didn’t know I was expected to have an “Igbo” accent, think in a particular way, love money and be somewhat “unexposed” (because life and exposure happens in Lagos alone and nowhere else in the world), so I found it surprising when someone told me “You know London Grammar? and you grew up in Enugu? How?” that was the most disrespectful and yet pathetic thing anybody has ever said to me, You would think this London Grammar of a thing was anything fancier than an indie rock band, but guess what? it isn’t, London Grammar is just a simple indie rock band, one I had known and listened to years ago in my village hut in Enugu. I have been told also “How come you grew up in Enugu and you speak so well?” Sigh. A story for another day.

But carrying this heavy expectations from people who barely know me was just going to be a small part of my struggle here. I moved here and found myself living on the mainland, a place where no one told me was the dark side of earth, where people are expected to be poor, unpolished, not good enough and completely inadequate when standing next to their “Island counterparts”, because by virtue of where one lives or is born he is suddenly superior or inferior than the other. When I hear people talk about the “Mainland”, they talk about it like how Simba’s dad in Lion king did when he was pointing to the dark side of the jungle where true pride and royalty shouldn’t dare wander. To the islanders who are one bridge away, bound under the same Lagos skies, a town filled with struggle, traffic, potholes, thick air of suffocation and little to no power supply, living on the island suddenly makes you “fancy”, makes you posh, upgrades your existence to 2.0 and takes away all the struggles of being a Lagosian, a Nigerian.

I would never bother with this on a normal day, as a somewhat newbie here, I have a more outsider view to things and sometimes it’s a visitor who would point out to you that the “clear air” you’re used in your home actually stinks. I as an outsider have found need to measure appendages to compare existence by location as a joke, a silly one on the both sides of the bridge — mainlanders laughing at islanders when there is a flood in their area, islanders laughing at mainlanders for being rowdy and not “posh” enough. Lagos is pretty same on both sides of the bridge, there isn’t much difference and even if there are, those difference don’t make people. Are these things necessary? Do they even make sense? Aren’t these what Primary School kids do?

Anyways, you can read this from the other side of the bridge and call me a “hater”, “wailer” a “mainland apologist” any of those words Nigerians use when they cannot stomach a truth. I’d take it and smile at your ignorance, you deserve the smile, actually you deserve to be laughed at, for thinking that a person’s whole identity, totality and being can be summed up by where he is born, lives or rests his head. The joke is on you, go home and have yourself a cookie. To think that the definition of a person should be packed up into the view from his window should not only funny but pitiful.

TickTacFoe
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