In my novel, The Carnivorous City (go and buy it o, if you haven’t, tenkiu) I wrote that Lagos “the chaotic and carnivorous city which was at the very same moment, a garden where men and women came to harvest dreams.”
Something happened to me two weeks ago and made me recall those lines. In fact, it wasn’t so much something happening to me but me running into someone.
As many people know, I grew up in Bariga and my sister had a friend who lived a few streets away from our house at Ladi Lak. I said ‘friend’ but what I meant was a younger girl who looked up to her and so a ‘younger friend’ would be a better description.
I was mostly at Uni but I got to know this girl when I came home on holidays. She was a footballer. I mean she was good and she was playing football, long before the Asisat Oshoalas of this world.
I remember her as always dressed in shorts and jerseys and sneakers. She walked with confidence, head held high, chest out and legs straight. Just meeting her you knew she was a sports person.
One day, when I had just started working, my sister came to me to ask a favour. This footballer girl was going abroad for trials and needed money for a passport or something. I didn’t have a lot but I ponied up something.
Then a year or so later, something else happened. My sister said the girl needed 100,000 naira. She had been called to the national camp and needed to pay the coach or else he wouldn’t pick her for the World Cup.
I was just starting my career and I didn’t have that kind of money. So, I couldn’t help. My sister said the coach had told the girl that he would sleep with her if she didn’t bring the money. She refused and so missed the call up to the World Cup.
Time passed, I moved out of my parents’ house, got married and life happened to us and I forgot about that girl.
Female football grew. Stars were made. The Anne Chiejines of this world and the rest of them became stars and changed the fortunes of their families just from kicking the round leather.
Once in a while I remembered her and thought about what had happened to her but I always forgot to ask my sister what had become of that talented young woman who had almost made it to the World Cup.
Anyway, two weeks ago, my partner and I were at the office. It was lunch time and the food I brought from home had gone cold so I finally agreed that we should buy a micro wave oven.
We drove down to a super market down the road and picked out a micro wave oven. We were at the till when a lady ran to me and said “Bros, how na?”
I hadn’t seen her in over 15 years but the moment I looked up and saw her face I remembered that young girl who almost changed her family’s fortune through football.
She had a dream and that dream had almost budded but Lagos and some lecherous old man happened to her.
Today, she is past 30 years old. Her football career is over (even though she has that athletic figure and gait) and she is a security (wo)man manning the tills at a neighbourhood supermarket.
By the time I got back to the office, my appetite was gone.
Lagos is a dream killer.
(Watch out for Part 2 next week)
