Adding to a rather exacting day at work, the incident highly riled me, but I restrained a racking rage to avoid punching his nose flat, because I would have no witness and the case would doubtlessly turn against me. Coming home to an empty flat, wifie was still at school, (learning Deutsch!); I turned on the radio hoping to hear some friendly human voice. But by some ghoulish co-incidence Shade’s “no matter, no matter what color, you are my brother,” was playing. I quickly turned it off and settled down to a cup of balsam tea to soothe my frayed nerves.

  As I pensively sipped on my tea, I soon found myself eavesdropping again on a familiar voice in a sotto voce soliloquy. As usual the voice seemed to be asking and answering its own questions in the second person. Sometimes it would delve down the memory lane to rake up some poignant experiences of yore.

   “How did you ever get here?” the voice asked. “What are you still doing here? Remember when you first arrived here two and a half decades ago you were pretty sure you weren’t going to stay any longer than five years despite being overwhelmed by the excellent infrastructures, the magnificent buildings and the almost super human orderliness of everything? Remember how the glittering streets and the flashy cars that looked like they’ve just been rolled out of the factory everywhere you looked dazzled you?

   “Okay, you came in quest of the Golden Fleece, have you found it? Now disabused and convinced that all that glitter is not gold, why are you still here? You know that even with your naturalized citizenship you don’t belong here and that the longer you stay the stranger you get, both here and at Home. You hear what happens up east every now and again; those niggers that become victims of racist attacks never get asked to show their passports first,

   “A-ha, you want to avoid the same fate as some others who had tried to relocate without adequate preparations. Some of them turned around and “re-diasporized” because they could not cope with the system back home and some others simply gave up or even died, due to hostile conditions. But think about those who successfully relocated. Must everybody’s fate be the same? The kids from a previous marriage for whom you convinced wifie that you both needed to hang around a little longer in order to support them are now adults only calling in once in a while to say hello. So, what are you still doing here? Working to save up some capital to ensure a smooth relocation back home, you say?

   “What Home are you talking about anyway? Is it not the same Home that is culpable for the woeful failures of all previous ventures you undertook to prepare for your eventual return? You remember the truck you once shipped, packed full of equipments and marketable commodities? You remember how the truck was swept clean by the time it finally got through the rigorous custom bureaucracies at Apapa, regardless of all the measures you took to secure the truck and its payload. On that same trip one of your clearing agents almost made away with your kpalli, which included your permanent German residence permit. You remember how you were miraculously saved at the last second?

   “A second attempt was even more disastrous. The loving folks back Home simply helped themselves and you were back to square one again. Years later after you had leaked your wounds and paid back the bank credits you had borrowed to undertake those ventures you decided to take another trip home. You weren’t going to ship anything this time around, the shipment phobia of the last attempts still lingered. So you were only going to touch base and say hi to the folks. It would be a purely inspirational trip, no business!

   “While still in Lagos, you thought you might as well take a trip to any of the beaches, see some of the attractions of the city and shoot photographs to show friends and family back in Germany. A kind aunt offered her jalopy and someone suggested Lakey Beach. Once at the beach you discovered that a trip to the beach at Home was entirely a different experience from a trip to any other beach elsewhere in this world,

   “The horror started along the access way to the beach. Within a distance of less than two kilometers you passed through a number of tollgates where money was extorted out of you each time. Each time you were helped across an obstacle on the way, many of them artificially created, you had to pay for the good neighborliness. When you finally hit the beach an army of touts invaded you demanding money to take care of your car while you were away, and because the “or else” connotation was unmistakable you settled them and hoped to meet your borrowed car in one piece when you got back to the lot. This was your first encounter with the alaye phenomenon, you remember?

   “When you finally found out that the hassles were not worth it after all, you decided to head back home.  But when you got back to the car and found it, contrary to your fears, still in one perfect piece, though none of those imps was keeping an eye on it according to the contract. Those in sight were faraway hassling a new arrival. You became insouciant and suggested to your entourage, your brother and his family, to go for a photo session at Tinubu Square since it wouldn’t be much of a detour on your way back to the mainland,

   “While you were figuring out the best possible position for a perfect snapshot that would pick up the dried out fountain from its best side, your new Cannon EOS hanging down your chest, two armed mobile police guys came sauntering casually by feigning disinterestedness. As soon as you have positioned your people, ready to shoot, they turned around, remember? You don’t forget such experiences, do you? You did not see anything unusual about their sudden interest. You thought they might ask for a snapshot too, but as soon as the flash went off, they swooped on you and snatched away your camera at gunpoint. You looked into their red shot eyes and knew they weren’t joking!

   “Why? You demanded. Shot up! One of them bawled at you hurting your pride immensely. You had your younger brother and his wife and two little nieces with you and you didn’t want to be reduced to a mugu in their presence. You demanded more vehemently for an explanation. That building over there, they said pointing to a house some distance away, is the central bank and you were not allowed to take photographs anywhere around here. You pointed out to them that there were no signs anywhere prohibiting snapshots, but they simply moved on taking your camera with them,

   “Losing your new and expensive camera just like that wasn’t an option at all. So you followed, your folks gingerly trailing behind you, pleading for your camera and offering them everything else including the film inside as a qui pro quo, to no avail. You employed the names dropping diplomacy, mentioning some weighty names and ranks you could come up with and threatening to use your connections if forced to. But that did not impress them either,

   “You followed them to their post behind the bank where their sergeant was sitting at a table. They ordered your brother and his family to stay away, so they were watching the goings on from a safe distance. As you attempted to talk to their boss, the same guy that had earlier shouted on you drew his gun and yelled at you again, “keep quiet and sit down on the ground!” In the distance, you could see your nieces, who later said they were afraid the police guys would shoot you, crying themselves to death,

   “The sergeant, who must have discerned that the order to sit on the ground would only blow things out of proportion, and rightly so, intervened. There was no way you were going to let them take the humiliation that far, you were ready for a grand showdown and the sergeant saw it. “This is not a matter to sit down on the ground,” he cautioned his boys. After he listened to your plea, he told you emphatically that he had his orders and you could pick up your camera at their headquarters the next day!

   “That option was unthinkable to you, so you told him you were leaving town early next day and would like to have the matter resolved here and now. He called his boys aside for a tête-à-tête and then asked you to negotiate with them. The end game, you were rid of 600 Naira, a huge amount at the time in question, but you were glad to have your camera back. Fazed, you thought it was ironical that they needed such big guns to squeeze your little money off you, while the million Dollar frauds went on inside the bank with little pens. City centers anywhere in the world were usually tourist zones and tourists usually carry cameras with them,

   “On your way back to Europe, you responded with yes when asked at MMA if you were in possession of any food items. You had one tuber of yam and six half ripe plantains you wanted to share with your family to give them a taste of food from Home, you remember? The check-in clerk told you to settle the ogre (oga) behind him before he would pass your luggage. You looked up to see a highly decorated customs officer standing full height behind the check-in area, proudly clutching his staff of office in one hand,

   “You were unsure how to approach him, afraid you could be indicted for attempting to bribe an officer. He noticed your dilemma and bawled impatiently, “Bring wetin you get my friend,” to the hearing of everybody around. Totally fazed, you handed him a 100 Naira bill and disappeared from the place as soon as your checking in procedures were completed. That was how your inspirational, no business trip ended up. These experiences no doubt could scare you from Home but remember that Nigeria has changed a lot since then, especially in the present administration with its war against corruption.”

   Is that true? Just then wifie arrived home from her language school jolting me back to the present. Sometimes when I visit the NVS, I wish we would stop pretending that bad politics and ethnic differences are the only problems facing us. What about the social aspects, our reciprocal relationships, our unanimous mentality? Everybody seems to be out to rip everybody off. Without a change of attitude our politics and ethnic relationships would remain flawed, no matter how much we “yab” ourselves here and for many of us in the Diaspora, going Home would remain a nightmare indeed .    

Robot  # 1 | 04.06.2006 00:57

It had been a rather incommodious day. You know, that kind of day you would best b...Read the full article.

DeepThought  # 2 | 04.06.2006 13:04

This article captures the decay in Nigeria. I wonder if the mobile policemen were the way they were because they are Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba. Heart breaking.

Auspicious  # 3 | 04.06.2006 14:40

.... and the last time you visited Nigeria with your 16 year old daughter, remember? Remember how those customs officials delayed you and your poor daughter because the customs happened to find both a Nigerian and a German passport on her while checking your luggage? Remember how she was interrogated like it was a crime to be a dual citizen?..and forced to choose one between the two passports? Of course we remember the one she chose - your guess is as good as mine.. The question is, how on Earth do we find a means to rid our society of that psyche that makes us prisoners and victims of our own vices? That was a good, thought-provoking article by the way.

Papino  # 4 | 04.06.2006 19:01

Chidi, Your contribution is indeed thougth-provoking especially with your smooth way of presenting the realities of the Bavarian setting in Germany.Realities that took you to memory lane thereby,unearthing horrible experiences you had in your two attempts with your roots-business and a visit-in your two and a halve decades of sojourning in Germany. My brother,though the experience in the Bavarian bus doesn't necessarilly reflect a standard behaviour of Germans,they sure need an urgent remodelling of their approach to the world of today.The words used against you in that bus, are not casual but common in suburbs in Germany and this is not an attempt to argue that foreigners should stay in big cities or that people are likely to be less discriminated at in down towns. Though it might sound weird but i prefer racism that is clear-cut,raw-built and straight in your face delivered,than the hidden type where the racist laughs with you,assures you that he/she has nothing against blacks but rushes to the bathroom once at home to clean his/her hands because he shook an African.I call it positive-racism!! The situation in Germany today is that foreigners especially those of us from Africa are vulnerable to attacks.The recent attacks in Potsdam and koeln(Cologne)are but examples of the side-effects of a frustrated generation of youths who actually carry out these attacks.Unemployment level is over 7% and the welfare system is becoming impossible for the economy to sustain.Coupled,with their natural closed-up and stay as you are nature.This nature is summed up in the famous"Deutchland ist keine Einwanderers land"(Germany is no migration land)maxim.Invariably,they have a tendency to resort to attacking foreigners anytime they face economic crunches like now.I was inches away from a 16 years old who went on a stabbing spree last week in Berlin when,Angela Merkel(Chancellor)was opening the ultra-modern Berlin Hauptbahnhof(Train station).This kid stabbed about 12 people in that gathering and one of the victims-the third person stabbed-confirmed to the police that he is HIV positive.The other victims quickly lined-up for a free HIV test and i want you to imagine yourself in their shoes!!. This incidence though isolated,cannot be zeroed down to race-crime but has potentials for such because he choose a location that had an ample lot of non-German faces.The authorities argue that such attacks are not common and cannot be controlled.For a city hosting the world cup finals,it gives me jitters. We can go on with instances but it still settles on the issue of knowing turn-around time and being ready to face some anomalies.For starters,the Nigeria you desribed has moved a bit farther than what it is today.Much as the west would preffer an arrangement of perpetual dependence of the developing countries on them-one where they gain more,it is evident that they would appreciate a fomular whereby we are at our various countries while depending on them.The truth remains that we cannot change our society from outside and no matter how disconnected one feels about Nigeria,its still our country and can be better than anyother if we are committed.