Landing in Lagos

You are immediately disoriented.

“Welcome to Lagos”, the Amharic tinted English crackles from the planes speakers, jerking away from you the few minutes of sleep that you finally managed to wrestle from the large man who has been snoring loudly in the two and a half seats next to you. Meron (by her nametag), the beautiful airhostess, who spent most of the flight shooting you baleful looks because your elbow kept bumping into her ass as she pulled her cart past you, gives your another dirty look.

You feel terrible and want to explain to her that it is impossible to keep your arm tucked in because half your seat is occupied by a snoring mass of Nigerian. Unfortunately Meron doesn’t seem to know too much English. The full extent of her vocabulary, which you got quite familiar with during your quest for alcohol to drown out the incessant snoring, seems to be “yes” and “no” and “more”. 

You collect your bag from the overhead storage bin while hoping that somehow it falls on the head of huge Nigerian. It would be painful for him no doubt, but no less than the five hours of torture he just subjected you to.

Meron is standing by the aircraft door. The standard issue airhostess smile plastered across her face slips off when you step up to leave. Enjoy the rest of your day, you say to her. She says nothing back. You stop feeling bad and wish her and her ass a good life.

Not much has changed in the six months since you were last home. There is a man standing next to an open vending machine, vending the things within. One broken vending machine, one job, and one infinitesimal increase in employment percentage: progress-progress; fitting for Africa’s newest-biggest economy.

You drag your suitcase behind you in no rush. In truth you’ve always held those who run to the immigrations desk in the highest contempt. We will all still be stuck here, sweating by the carousel two hours from now, regardless of the rushing. But ahead they rush, running down the escalator (de-facto stairs). You finally make it to immigrations and you’re the last one in line; at least you think you are until you feel the potbelly pushing insistently into the curve of your back.

It’s two and a half chairs from the airplane come once again to bring hell to you. You decide to ignore him. You shuffle your feet forward giving him a good amount of space. Yet almost immediately you feel his potbelly pressing tenaciously into your back: simultaneously a metaphor for impatience and a bad fuck(in truth, these are the same thing). You stand there seething, hating every inch of his midsection. You imagine yourself sprouting claws at the elbows and ripping into him, freeing him from the burden of the cursed child that must surely reside within.

You shuffle your feet forward, but this time the pressure doesn’t even leave your back. You now have a pot-back. Fucking beautiful. It can’t get any worse you think, but then two chairs decides to join in the conversation three rows over, about how much worse the Nigerian airport is than “insert name of western country short, balding, random just flew in from”. It’s the same text as the last time, just a different group.

“THIS AIRPORT IS SO DISORGANIZED… ”

OUR LEADERS ARE SO CORRUPT…”

“IF ONLY THEY WOULD DO IT THE WAY THEY DO IT IN X”

X = {AMERICA! BRITAIN!  CANADA! WHAT-WHAT! ILU-OYINBO!}

They shout at each other their precious civilization, legitimized by having been abroad, retreating with each shout. Behavior they would never dare exhibit in the “better” countries they just flew in from. Two-chairs shouts the loudest. His potbelly is jiggling now. You must admit, it feels good to have that back support after nearly forty hours of airline economy seating.

But enough is enough, you turn and stand perpendicular to him, arms akimbo, thinking that maybe with your elbow in his gut he will take the hint and back off. He does not. He presses into your elbow. It must be that you offended one of your ancestors when your arm brushed against Meron’s ass, or two chairs has decided that this is a game that he must win by any means necessary.

He leans even further forward to get closer to the conversation, chest pressed against your shoulder. You turn and face him.

Sir, with all of the respect I have left for you, have you heard of this wonderful idea called personal space? You may not know it, since you have been abroad so long and may have forgotten but in Nigeria the line does not move any faster even if you try to stand inside me.

Two-chairs doesn’t seem to move away, but somehow the belly retreats. The pressure is gone, you are healed, praise Jesus!

“Young man, you don’t talk to your elders that way.” He retorts after your back has been turned for the duration of five “STEP-FORWARD!”s.

Sorry, you mumble. Better to say sorry than to face the drama that could ensue should he decide to start shouting. Eventually it is your turn and you step up to the counter.

“Where are you coming from”?

Durham, North Carolina.

“Is that America?”

Yes.

“What did you bring for us? Leave it here”

Nothing O, sir. I’m a poor student on scholarship. My parents don’t have much.

“I know you’re lying but oya go, can’t you see there are people behind you?”

Yes sir, sorry sir.

You head over to the carousel, which has not even started rotating. And promptly begin sweating.You decide that you will learn the words “I’m terribly sorry about what happened, it really was the situation I found myself in,” in Amharic. That way, the next time you see Meron; you can properly apologize to her. Maybe that way the universe will forgive your sins, sanctify your elbows and be gentle the rest of the six weeks you’re home.

Lost in translation... really just lost

If the worth of a son is based on how often he calls his mother, then I am an extremely worthless son. Thankfully, other things like irrational, unconditional love factor into the grading process. But whenever I do get around to calling my mother, I squeeze as much information into our conversations as possible. I tell my mother everything.

I like to hold our phone conversations purely in Yoruba because Yoruba feels like home. During our last phone call, I tried to tell my mother that classes might be cancelled because of an impending snowstorm. I could not. There is no word for snow in Yoruba and that is how things should be. In my opinion, there should not be a word for the cold stuff in any language. Something so unpleasant does not deserve the honor of a name, but I digress. The point is that lately it is harder and harder to translate my first world problems into my mother tongue.

It is not that Yoruba lacks for expression. There are Yoruba ideas you can never fully unpack in English. How do you even begin to render the complexities of “Abiku” or the impish pepper that lies at the heart of “Agbaya”? Even my name, Oladimeji, I struggle to force into English confines. Whenever I am asked, “what does it mean?” I am tempted to reply “…just that. Oladimeji”. In truth the English language is too narrow to contain the nuances that are immediately obvious when I say the name to another Yoruba speaker.

But as I spend time away from home, I find myself having to switch into English more often than I would like during phone calls. How do you describe things like snow days? Finally finding the sweet spot on the shower dial? Insomnia cookie == life? The frustrations of Internet access at UNC? I could choose to do so, but the necessary convolutions detract from our communication. Also calling Nigeria is expensive; every word must count.

I don’t know what this all means, if I did I would not be writing about it. Maybe it is evidence of my growing multiculturalism, this switching back and forth. Maybe I should move to back to my father’s village, start a farm and never have to speak English again. Maybe this is really, really pointless navel gazing. But what I do know is that slowly, and these days more quickly so, my phone calls with my mother do not feel as much like home as they used to. These days almost nothing feels like home.