A RESILIENCE BREWED IN LAGOS

It was my second trip out of Nigeria. I was returning from the Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Malaysia and was on a nine-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur to Doha.

Hours before we took off, it had rained in sprinkles in Kuala Lumpur; tiny bouts of showers interrupted by clear sky. So, I wasn’t bothered when the Qatar Airways pilot said we should expect more rain after we took off.

I stay in Lagos, and on a good day, it rains a lot. Not the pleasant kind of rain that makes you jump outside and play like a child, no. What you get is the kind of rain that lashes you from head to toe like an African mother who had warned you a million times about not answering greetings from strangers. The rain in Lagos would aim for every part of your body, and you won’t stop hissing as you seek to escape from it. It also has the habit of coming when workers are poised to be out; at 7 am when the bus stops are full and people are running against their HR’s schedules, and at 5 pm, when all I want to do is get home, remove my wig and sleep. 

It was that kind of annoying and misery-loving rain, and I was used to it.

Meanwhile, I had shopped under the Kuala Lumpur rain and it wasn’t angry at all. Just mild showers that wanted to show themselves by disturbing you for a while.

So, the announcement made by the pilot and the weather updates I was seeing didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I was preoccupied with the movie selections and the Starlink WiFi service provided to even bother.

Suddenly, the plane started to shake. It shook so vigorously that the pilot, whose name I didn’t catch, made many announcements.

Every time, overhead, I kept hearing the microphone clear and the pilot telling over 100 of us, “We are really sorry about the weather, but we are experiencing unusual turbulence. Please keep your seat belts fastened as you await further instruction.”

The front camera provided by the airplane had become blinded by the showers, and we couldn’t clearly see the clouds anymore. The warnings and reassurances from the pilot came a few more times, and at this point, I remembered everyone on board becoming alert as the plane shook. Above the hum inside the aircraft, we could hear the lashes of the rain mixed with the big bird’s cruise through the clouds.

I looked around and saw the couple to my left holding hands. I heard the man whispering reassurances to his partner in Russian. The passengers to my right, from my aisle seat, also held their seat armrest firmly while gritting their teeth through the rough air currents. A colleague with whom I was travelling had also become scared. We had to switch seats with another passenger so I could hold her hands for reassurance. It was quite a moment, and I remember that as we landed in Doha, 10:40 pm local time, the pilot said, “We are sorry it was such a turbulent flight, but thanks for coming with us.”

Throughout the journey, I was unfazed. I didn’t get the usual rumblings in my stomach when I feel like something is about to go worse. In fact, I was texting with my sister at the time and never brought up the turbulence. Only mentioned it to a few people weeks after the incident.  

Looking back, I started to wonder how I had become so immune to the great sense of tragedy. And then I remembered that I grew up in Lagos.

Lagos is a city that teaches you to be threatening and brave, even though you feel the opposite.

There is a sense of chaos permeating the city that doesn’t make you take flight; sometimes you stay far and access it, or just walk away. I have seen many things that would make normal people jump out of a moving bus, but I only sit still with my bag and phone hugged to my chest while waiting for the conductor to shout my bus stop. 

One of the moments that sealed my tummy from rumblings on that flight happened just weeks in between my trip to Malaysia and South Africa. 

I boarded one of the yellow buses that colour Lagos, and it is often a regular sight to have people hanging at the back or by the doors, aside from the regular conductors. This is often due to them not having money to pay for regular fares, carelessness, or an attempt to boycott traffic.

That day, this young man, dressed seemingly well, hung at the back of the bus, and then all of a sudden, we heard a shriek from passengers on the back seat. What was going on? The same man was masturbating publicly in the middle of an expressway and at the back of a moving vehicle. He held onto the bus with one hand, and with the other, fondled his manhood and pressed it repeatedly against the bus.

The other one was in 2023 while travelling by boat for a field report from CMS in Lagos to Porto Novo in the Benin Republic. It was meant to be a two-hour ride, but just as we were about to leave Lagos, our boat’s engine stopped working.

The engine had developed a fault that would require the driver to travel to the nearest mechanic’s store via another boat in the middle of the ocean to fix it. So he did, and left us dangling in the middle of nowhere with poor access to the internet for more than an hour.

The only thing I had keeping me going was a life jacket that had seen better days and a will not to die by drowning, as I could not swim.

Lagos has tested my resolve, and I have tested it right back.

Looking back today, I chuckled to my friend and said, “The turbulence might have been served from Kuala Lumpur to Doha, but Lagos brewed it.”