FULL GISTS

Background

I went shopping in Lagos, the fear of Lagos is one of the most tangible fears in my life and I have only recently started to associate good things with Lagos since I decided to take my girls on a one weekend a month trip to experience it so they would not develop my kinda inordinate fear of it. Now, shopping by myself is another very real and tangible fear due to my inability to decide categorically on ANYTHING. Not my fault, I always see some good in EVERYTHING! So the stage was set for a truly devastating trip that had only a bright beacon of hope in it....my aunt! She had been drafted to help me with this shopping! Considering I had been assured everything had been made ready for this party that I had agreed to, in principle, only to get back to find out that Father & Daughter had sold me a dummy.... I was not smiling to Lagos, I had tried to pass the buck to Aunty mi when I discovered she was in Thailand and that all these party things being sold in Lagos came from there anyway. But as with all things Nigerian, the customs and clearing agents decided too choose this period to have an altercation and so made that route impossible also. Forgive my rambling....trying to give you the background noni. Short version, less than 5days after I arrived Naija, I was headed to Lagos on a shopping spree for a 10th birthday! It must be love! It is!

Snippet 1

We made good time! Ask me about my one hour covenant with Lagos-Ibadan expressway and headed to the Island and arrived in a short while. As I have poor navigational skills where the 'inside' of Balogun/Apogbon/some other name the area is called, I asked directions and made it to one of my aunty's shops. I was taken to the main one and made to sit and wait for her arrival. I was promptly fed rice of the Mama Put variety that delights my palate no end, the time passed while I waited. Aunty mi arrived, we formulated a plan & I knew I was in trouble! She loves shopping on most days, but this birthday is for one of her really special babies (that should actually read grandbaby as I am her special baby). Anyway, we took off ( it seemed to me, at the speed of lightning!) and in a short while, we had quite a pile! Aunty mi, had everything under control & I wasnt going to get in her way ( that usually proves futile anyway!). It was while she searched for a particular brand of sweets that she felt children that age would enjoy more than any other, that Snippet 1 occured. It was a convo I witnessed between a market woman and a market Igbo boy. This is why she had to speak English & she did so passably. I schooled my features & warned my muscles to refrain from laughing! You could tell she had had a lot of practice fine-tuning that phrase- I saw you & your girlfriend yesterday on okada! You could not take a cab? I was ashamed of you.......I turned at Aunty mi's question if a pack of 100 sweets would do & burst into laughter, making like she should know it would be enough na! How many could they be? Grateful, I found release for my sometimes English-speaking uppity self!

Snippet 2

Caveat- I did not see it happen! This Londoner person (as identified by Mr Yekini who drives our car for a fee) held her bag carelessly & only discovered that she had been relieved of the burden of four hundred thousand naira only after some 20minutes that it occurred. He knew this becos some people had reported seeing a man stuffing his trousers with huge bales of money and acting really weird which everyone attributed to his having huge sums of money to stuff in his pocket and so no-one challenged him and so he had mysteriously vanished before Madam Londoner let out a civilised yelp at the loss of a sum which is probably nothing to scream about in the London of the abroad where she came from. Considering I had about half of that and hoped to spend only half of that half on the shopping, I tucked my bag (in the car!) underneath my seat, between my legs & rearranged my features to discourage anyone from attempting to relieve me of the burden of my hard earned tosh!

Snippet 3

Been priviledged to be to UK, Canada, US and Nigeria when road works were ongoing and I find that the books that the Engineers who construct or maintain roads in Nigeria read are probably dodgy. The reason I can thus conclude is becos while every effort is made everywhere else to preserve the use of said road and aggravate road users as little as possible, the reverse is the case in Nigeria! There seems to be a determination to make you understand that roadworks are on and the significance of the roadworks (I believe!) is based on how much money the contractor as well as the government officials can milk out before work commences and so in a bid to aggrandize the minuscule work that will be done for the money taken out of the coffers, road users have to have their noses rubbed in the fact that ROAD WORK IS IN PROGRESS. That is how I left home one bright & sunny day to attempt to see a couple of people in connection with this birthday celebration that I was assured everything was ready for before I left my Baton Rouge address! I had  a list that SuperWoman would have shaken her head at but that's becos she tries too hard! I went from place to place to place & I was sooooo very grateful that I did not have to drive in addition to  wrestle with the heat that somehow managed to reach into the car and attempt to strangle me with its cloyness. Also, I had forgotten how very bashful and brash we are as a people and many times my jaw dropped at the daring antics and suicidal attempts of motorists and Okadas alike. The pedestrians even joined to wrestle for first place in this murderous game of "see me cheat death" which had me gasping before long. We are the World's Most Resilient Machines, forgerrit! Anyway, we dodged, and weaved between cars and humans in an attempt to just make it to my errands and then to return home and at some point, I had to give in and sleep or else the vertigo brought on by the inability of Mr Yekini to drive in a straight line for anything more than a few seconds would make me bring up my lunch, and when we arrived home at 6pm instead of the 9pm I envisaged, I almost gave him all the money in my wallet for his dexterity at figuring out where to go & how to go. I would have ended up  a total wreck!!!

This is how far I can go on the full gists of the SNIPPETS http://randomthoughts-n.blogspot.com/2012/05/snippets.html for today! Have a big day tomorrow, Aunty mi is in town & my girlfriend is getting married on the beach!!!Plus I have a house full of people acting like their respiration depends on me (wonder how they coped while I was in far away Baton Rouge?!). I cant add you my readers to the list or else I will have trouble doing what I need to do at work tomorrow. That's why I figured I'd take care of you guys first!