Larmes à Lagos, Rire à Cotonou — A Tale of Two Cities Pt 1
At the point I decided to write this article, I couldn’t decide whether to make it about my vacation in Cotonou or to make it about the deteriorated state of our nation. Well, after great thought and deliberation, I decided I’ll focus on my vacay — To complain about Naija don taya me abeg. I’ll still point out some disheartening things about our beloved country just because I can’t do without complaining.
It should come as no surprise that a lot of people think that Nigeria was destined for greatness — At least that was what everyone thought when the brits gave us our country on a platter of gold. However, 59 years down the line, Nigerians have continued to vacillate between a state of exuberant enthusiasm and irrational irritability… Na Patrick Obaighagbhon talk that one o! This is mostly a result of leadership failure amongst other things. In this article, I’ll point out some of the glaring evidence of failure on all our parts.
At the beginning of the year, I decided I’d start a trend of visiting at least one African country every year. I think this is important in shaping my worldview and philosophy as a true African man. What better way understand Africa and your fellow Africans than visiting their countries and sharing in some of their ways and experiencing life alongside them, even if it is for a short while. I was very excited when one morning at the office, Nino said, Guys, How about we all go on a vacay together? It sounded like a joke, but in no time we were already in a Whatsapp group and voting on where we’d visit. At the end of heated arguments and voting, Republique du Benin was decided.
We had decided to visit Cotonou during the Eid Al Fitr celebrations but somehow our plans got foiled because of the early moon sighting. That didn’t deter us though. We moved our trip to sometime in August to align with the Eid-El Kabir Muslim holiday. Leave forms were signed, passports dusted, plans made, shopping was done, and bags were packed. I hadn’t taken any day off from work since I got employed 2 years ago — I really do like going to work.
Our journey began on Thursday. We took off from Enugu, to make a stopover at Lagos for the night, before heading for Cotonou on Friday morning. The Trip to Lagos was very smooth. The driver was sane, unlike what I’ve come to expect from normal Nigerian drivers. My friends and I booked the whole vehicle, so it was all gist, laughter, and sleep before… Boom! Police checkpoint. I think being a young boy is a crime in Nigeria. There’s a level of suspicion everyone has about you. Is he a yahoo boy? Where does he work? Ah! He is with other boys, they must be armed robbers. The worst of it all is the disdain and animosity of policemen towards you. They just harass you and treat you with disrespect for being young. The policeman, very dark with a look of impatience and frustration on his face looked into our vehicle, looked for a couple of seconds before asking us to come down to be searched. He looked through our bags, frisked us and cracked a dry joke before asking us to carry on. I felt violated.
We got to Lagos at about 2 pm, but as you already know there was heavy traffic and it took us about 2 hours to get to the park, at 4 pm. I was happy to get off that very long and hot Taxify ride, as I had been sitting for about 10 hours. We checked into a hotel in Aguda — Very funny looking hotel. There is something wrong with hotels on the mainland. It is almost as if they all lose interest in maintaining their spaces after the first two years of operations. This particular hotel had that smell of cheap air fresheners usually sold in traffic… GBC or something like that. The toilets looked like they hadn’t gotten a proper scrub in ages, the rooms were a little dank, I couldn’t wait to be out of there.
After settling in, we went to have drinks at a bar opposite Surulere Shoprite. It is always an amazing experience when you’re drinking good beer and having good conversations with good friends — Nino!!!. Nino is a good friend and colleague of mine, your typical all-around good guy and party animal. He initially canceled the trip for some reason. I was feeling a little down as he is one of the people that brings the fun. I had just taken the last swig of my second bottle when he walked in with that mischevious smile on his face. Apparently, he made a last-minute decision to come with us and took the last flight out of Enugu. We ended up on the rooftop of our really dank hotel with some more bottles of cold Heineken and a DJ that was hellbent on driving us crazy with his amazing playlist. For me, the vacay had begun — Wait! Isky was the only person left.
Friday came like Thursday never left and spirits were high. Isky’s flight was moved to 8:20 am so that gave us enough time to look for breakfast. Our trip planner, Ifenlota, came to pick us up from the hotel and we started this long journey around Surulere buying food, supplies and all of that stuff you need when you’re traveling. I really don’t like eating anything if I’m going to be on the road for a while, so I just got 2 bottles of Sprite. Our journey around Surulere ended at the airport in Ikeja where we were supposed to get on our tour bus. 30 minutes passed at the airport and finally, I saw Isky dressed like the lead artist in some modern remake of The Blues Brothers. It was finally time to leave the madness of Lagos to head for Cotonou. We got on the bus, gave the naira we wanted to change to CFAs and the driver had us on our way in a little bit.
Remember our experience with the policemen on the way to Lagos from Enugu? That was nothing compared to everything we witnessed on the Lagos/Badagry expressway. There must have been a gazillion checkpoints on that road. Every man in a uniform with a gun was on that road. Customs, Immigrations, Police, Road Safety, Civil Defence. I was shocked I didn’t see LASTMA officials or even the Salvation Army. I think they kept flagging us down and harassing our driver because the bus had “tour bus” written all over it, so maybe they thought we were trying to escape from the country… lol. One particular guy held us for about 30 minutes and his excuse was that our driver was rude to him. Nino, Anugo and I had to go and plead with him to let us go. Everyone was getting irritated and tensions were heightened but then, the border wasn’t very far now. Heck! The border was right in front of us.
The border is a very interesting place. Nigerian immigration working together with Beninese immigration, people speaking something that sounded like a mixture of Yoruba and French, people accepting Naira or CFAs. It was really thrilling to see that organization in what seemed like chaos. We spent another 30 minutes at the border to get our passport stamped. Someone even suggested we buy some papaya… Yuck!
It was almost as if everything changed from sickly green to sunshine yellow the moment we were on the other side of the border. Cleaner cars, better roads, sane drivers, the bikes even had a dedicated lane on the roads. We didn’t get stopped by any men in uniform. It was at this moment that I realized that the government isn’t the only thing wrong with our country. We went from the border to Mimosa’s to have lunch… I was damn hungry. I had Efo and Garri like the Nigerian man I am. After lunch, we headed to our beachside residence at Fidjosse Plage. This hotel had no funny smell, it was airy, the sheets were clean and the walls were white. The bathroom was squeaky clean, a clear contrast with I experienced in Aguda. I could feel the sea breeze hit me from the large windows. This had to be home because at that moment my heart was there. Savalou!!!
I can’t wait to tell you about all the amazing experiences in Benin. I’ll do just that in the second part of this article.
