This is Lagos
Freedom Park
Jowhor reclines in his chair and draws in long and deep from his electric cigar as the sun goes down. Before him is a row of shops selling ofada rice, swallow and alcohol. The shops all have flags of the countries they hope would patronize them. Lagos as always been a comma in global travel. In a moment, people who recognise Jowhor would rush to his table to say hi and ask when he got into the country. I had said hi to him earlier when he walked into the building to see Dami Ajayi; he was nice and asked how I was doing as a new author. But it is the image of Jowhor, relaxing on his chair in the Freedom Park Arena to draw in his electric cigarette as the Lagos sun goes down that stays with me.
Challenge
Ten minutes into my journey with Logan to Ibadan some days earlier, we realise the trip is unnecessary. Socrates won’t be having a special reading of my book in his grandmother’s house in Ibadan as advertised on Twitter.We’d already discussed that, but Logan’s tests have been postponed. Also Monday is the wrong day to travel to Ibadan if I want to make it in time for Olubunmi’s literary radio show. We look at ourselves across the luggage squeezed in between us and laugh; it doesn’t matter really. I need to rest in Socrates’ house even though he is still in Lagos and Logan can attend some lectures. There is nowhere else in the world I sleep as deeply as I do in Socrates’ home. Besides, Zukiswa Wanner and Ayodele Olofintuade both have readings in Logan’s university the following day. We are exhausted; we are new artists, who have been uprooted from our solitude and presented to the world at the recently concluded Ake Arts and Book Festival in Lagos and we are broke. At least I am. He falls asleep and I wonder how it is that we just started talking this year. I wonder what it must be like, to have three published books at his age and his level of school, how he handles it. We have different intensities I realise; we artists have different intensities. We agree to part at Challenge junction and meet there again in two days to travel back to Lagos and resume the chaos of our literary lives. He is a guest at the Lagos International Poetry Festival and I have two book readings by the weekend and a few people who would kill me if I don’t visit their homes and spend at least a night. My phone shuffles a song into my ears. I have never heard it before but it feels like I have. Something in between DeMarco and Van Morrison. The sort of song that flashes into your phone every other month but eludes you when you search for it in your music folder. It sounds like the kind of song Logan would give me, so just as the miracle of the chorus begins, a gentle explosion that melts in the ear, I give him my earpiece: ‘Take, listen…’
Radisson Blu
What many believed impossible has happened. Ake has happened in Lagos. Ake has ended. Ake was a success in Lagos. An amazing filmmaker is waiting for me so we can have drinks and one more intense conversation before he leaves for his country. It is close to one am and I surprise myself by saying yes, a surprise because in Abuja, nothing can keep me out after ten pm. I concede because a Lagos midnight is equivalent to an Abuja evening. So yes to drinks but I must follow the guests to their hotel. Someone had mentioned visiting Fela’s shrine and when I asked about it being open at this time of the night and there was a chorus of laughter. This is the last night of Ake and I didn’t think I would see them in a long time these guests comprising my artist friends and new acquaintances. I get to see them just once a year. After this night, they’ll return to their states, their countries, their lives and we’ll have to continue our camaraderie on Facebook, Instagram DMs and Whatsapp video calls. Most of them will stay behind in Lagos for Lipfest but I don’t know this, so after the wonderful rendition of Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, I jump my companions’ bus and tell the filmmaker that I am on my way, I’ll join him once I end the night with my friends. I’ll learn that with artist friends, the night never ends.
The plan is for everyone to freshen up before we find Ubers that will take us to the shrine. Some go to their rooms to do that and change into something lighter; others wait in the lobby, at the reception, by the bar, by the pool. By the pool, a group of thinkers from other African countries have already congregated with cigars and alcohol. Where is Frankie? Someone asks. Frankie promised to be here. It is difficult to follow through schedules during Ake, especially this Ake in Lagos that was condensed into three days and multiple panels running concurrently.
On two of these days, I was on a panel with filmmakers and documentary film directors so I barely had time for friends. But Frankie had a better handle on multitasking at this degree of intensity. At this moment, he is at some radio station in Lagos being interviewed. Frankie not here? Never mind then. Who wants more wine? Who knows what happened in what African war? Who wants more cigarettes? My friends want more cigarettes. Some marvel that I write so much without smoking or drinking. I laugh and settle into a cushion and lay my head on someone’s lap or pillow, already heady with the conversation, the party happening around me, the party of writers and painters and intellectuals who don’t realise that this is a party. Sometime around one am, I remember the filmmaker is at Radisson Blu waiting for me.
‘O don’t go yet!’ says Amaka or Tolu or Logan or Ademola. ‘You can get Uber or Taxify at any time. This is Lagos.’
So I stay. So I stay.
Don’t You Worry Child
I made it back to Lagos several days later without Logan. I managed to divide my time between two homes, but I missed several hours of Lipfest in traffic. I realised I was lucky to have been a guest at Ake; my hotel was just a walk from the Radisson Blu where most panels were held. The food was amazing although exhaustion and excitement didn’t let me eat much. Lola would stop me at the entrance to an elevator and ask, eyes searching mine, ‘Have you eaten?’
I ate a lot of sandwiches and apples. I had some good wine. Yet something was eating me up, asking me if I was making good use of my time here. Ope and Ademola and Alexander and Chiebuka and Amaka and Soji and Grace all tried to take care of me. I asked Nicole Dennis Benn a question on her use of patois. I watched, (with glee) as Tolu moderated a panel between her and Paul Beatty. I was able to get Jennifer Makumbi to share some of her knowledge with me and it didn’t matter that she didn’t remember me from last year. ‘Did you know that we Africans were explorers? Did you know we sailed to other parts of the world, long before White people came?’
I didn’t miss the last night of Lipfest though. Freedom Park. I sat outside with friends while they arranged the hall for the silent disco. Sibbyl, who I had not seen in years, joined us. As they talked about everything I leaned back in my chair and thought wow, life could be this easy. Jowhor had disappeared by sundown. Logan was still trying to win the affection of a stray cat. Some of us video-called Mimi in Namibia and showed her the respectable quantities of alcohol we were having in her honor. When the music started, some of us went home. I went in.
The headsets had two dials: red for Nigerian music, blue for electronic dance music.
Naturally, I set blue.
There was a time… begins the familiar voice in my ear, I used to look into my father’s eyes… My friends lose me in no time. As the song travels all EDM must, my body travels with it. At the climax, I am pushed off the cliff of my inhibitions and surrender to the raw sound raging all through my body. All the moves I practiced before mirrors, in the privacy of bedrooms and hotels, come to me on the dance floor. People who know me are shocked.
We all stopped when the music stopped and listened as Logan became omnipotent in our heads. His poetry assumes new life when he reads them out loud, he chants them like little prophecies. The moment is holy and there is a sense of luck one feels being here. Then the music continues. People who know me do not know my body can move like this. The thing is EDM decides for you how to move. The thing is when I was 19 and longing to jump out of my body, I discovered Swedish House Mafia, David Guetta, and Avicii and they saved my life.
An Ending
The song I played for Logan in the car was ‘The Night We Met’ by Lord Huron from his album ‘Strange Trails.’ I had a book reading at my publisher’s office, then another with a book club. The next day I was to fly to Abuja and then the day after that I was to read my work and participate in a brainstorming session with some writers I loved and the Duchess of Cornwall. Why then was I sad to leave? I mean I knew for certain that I hated Lagos. There was the ancient architecture on some parts of the mainland and the tremendous speed of actualisation of dreams to observe all around me, but I knew all this was only pleasant to absorb and enjoy from the luxury of an Uber cab.
I called a friend who had visited Abuja from Lagos and promptly quit his job months earlier and he pointed out the obvious. I was sad because the festival season had ended. I was sad because I would return to Abuja and my life would become ordinary again, I would lose the person I was when I was with friends. Then he asked me one question I haven’t stopped thinking about ‘But it’s still you, whether in Lagos or Abuja. So why does it have to end?’
@Tjbenson is a writer and creative photographer whose work has been published in online and print journals and anthologies like Jalada Africa, Brittle Paper, SSDA-Migrations, Transition, Catapult and Gay Mag. His short story collection WE WONT FADE INTO DARKNESS was published in 2018 by Paressia and his novel The Madhouse will be published in 2020.
