How I Ended up in a Police Station in Nigeria while Seeking My Old House

Part I: Searching for Home Across Continents

One of the offending photos I was pulled over for. Man at left accompanied me to the police station. All photos by the author.

“Don’t get out of the car,” my Nigerian driver instructs as he winds up his window. Joseph is going to talk to the policewoman who has pulled us over because she spotted me taking photos along a Lagos road. With a tinny thud of the Corolla’s door, he’s gone, and I’m left in loud silence.

The unfolding drama has drawn a crowd, eager for a diversion from the monotony of waiting for an odd job or selling items as small as a single cigarette. The onlookers seem more curious than hostile, but I’m not about to get out and test my theory. Embarrassed by their stares, I gaze at the road throttled with semi-trailers waiting to enter the Lagos Port Complex. I tuck the offending iPhone under my thigh, although it’s a bit late for that now.

I was simply taking random pictures of the roadside, a boil of trucks, motorcycles and three-wheeled taxis, peddlers of everything from corncobs to car parts, and women walking with beanpole backs to balance massive baskets of goods on their heads, but the cop seems to think I have a sinister motive, I suppose because I’m evidently a foreigner, and thus a possible spy. “I want to know who you are, who is behind you,” she told Joseph. Other than a few Shell and Chevron workers at the airport, I’ve seen…