Finally, we were ready to leave the following morning. And it was going to be very early. I could scarcely sleep that night. Sleep totally eluded me. There was a cacophony of thoughts in my mind and voices in my head all at the same time. Is mother doing the right thing? Is she doing this for me or for herself? Is this about her looking forward to being a grandmother or really because she was scared God could punish me severely by making me lose my life if I went ahead to procure an abortion, like the one I did almost turned out? Was it God that made my abortion attempt almost backfire or it was purely coincidental? Questions, questions and more questions waiting for answers. Deep inside of me, I doubted if I would ever find the answers to some of these questions.
I had always looked forward to visiting Lagos someday. That was the dream of most young, bright eyes girls in the village. I had heard some really astonishing stories about Lagos and how pretty the girls look. We were told that if you were an ugly girl, if you get to Lagos and mingled with the right crowd, you would become transformed into beauty overnight and people won’t be able to recognize you again. I didn’t know whether that was true or not. But I knew I always said that if I was ever able to come to Lagos, I was not going to look for ways to become a beauty overnight and mix any kind of crowd, I would stay on my own, work hard and take good care of myself because as far as I was concerned, I was a stunning beauty. Very few girls could match my beauty in my school and neighbourhood. And the few that did couldn’t match my brain. And now, to think I was now heading to that same Lagos shattered, miserable and pregnant just simply broke my heart. What a sad twist of fate it was for me.
It was already early morning before I started to doze off slightly. But it was too late for me. It was time to start packing and leave. Aunty Florence had arranged with a cab that would come and pick us up from home and take us to the garage where we would take a bus going to Lagos. “Get up, Rosemary, it’s morning, go and start preparing,” mother’s voice barged into my sleep as she woke me up. She had also passed the night at Aunty Florence’s house, possibly just to ensure that I didn’t change my mind at the last minute.
About an hour later, the car arrived and Aunty Florence and I entered inside. Mother had thanked Aunty Florence a thousand and one times for doing her what she called ‘help of a lifetime’ and promised her she would repay her back one way or another. She told me to be of good behaviour and assured me she would come to visit me in Lagos before I put to bed. But I barely paid her any attention. Nothing she said made any sense to me. She tried to hold me but I broke free from her hold, told her goodbye and entered inside the car…..I did not look at her again till the vehicle drove away…
The journey to Lagos was long and torturous for me. There was nothing interesting about it. Aunty Florence was trying to point a few landmark structures and locations to me, but I simply lacked the enthusiasm to flow with her and enjoy the ride. There was a young girl about my age on the bus as well, apparently, the mother was taking her to Lagos for the first time. She was super excited. I envied her. She chatted excitedly all through the journey with her mother, looking from left to right as the mother identified places and structures of interest to her. Looking at the young lady from the corner of my eyes, she was all smiles, thoroughly basking herself in the euphoria of the prospects of stepping foot on the big city called Lagos in a matter of a couple of hours. And I could understand her euphoria. She was moments away from that big city every young girl in the village dreamed to go. But unlike me, she was not pregnant. She was not carrying a fatherless baby in her womb. There was no way she would be as excited as she was if she was the one in my position, carrying in her womb an unwanted pregnancy gifted to her through a rapist and with a future she had no idea what lay ahead for her.
“We are almost there,” Aunty Florence’s voice barged into my thoughts. I turned to her and nodded slightly, trying to pull off a smile that just would not come.
“Are you enjoying the journey at all?” she asked, apparently trying to start a small conversation with me. But the truth is I wasn’t just interested in any kind of conversation, all I wanted was to be left alone in my thoughts, to see if I could make any sense of the bleak and scary-looking future lying ahead of me.
“Yes, Aunty,” I lied, and again, I nodded slowly. And I looked away from her, staring into the long, dusty and winding road in front of us.
”Are you alright?” she’d asked me. Now, she was really getting on my nerves. She should’ve realized that I wanted to be left alone. How could I be alright? How could anyone in my situation be fine with all that’s happening to her? I wanted to ask her these questions but chose to keep them to myself. It was better that way. She was not the reason for my situation.
“Yes, Aunty, I’m fine,” I answered, looking away from her.
She sighed. “It’s okay, but I must tell you that you need to be strong. Thinking too much about the pregnancy will not help matters, it could even affect your health,” she said.
I thanked her. She was right. But what else could I have done? I was not prepared for this. I did not set out looking for the pregnancy in my womb, otherwise, I should be happy now that I got what I was looking for.
Finally, we got to Lagos. “We are in Lagos now, Rosemary, this is the Lagos you have been hearing about,” Aunty Florence said with a bit of excitement, apparently trying to get me to smile.
“This place is called Oshodi,” she said as we alighted from the bus. I looked around us. I had never seen so many people in one place. Too many people. And every one of them seemed to be in a hurry. They were bumping into each other. There was barely space for everyone to walk. There were so many buses too. Everywhere looked untidy and the picture I was seeing before me was not the one I’d imagined to see of the beautiful Lagos we had often been told about.
“Is this really Lagos?” I had to ask Aunty Florence again, despite myself.
She burst out laughing. “You’re shocked, right? You were expecting to see some kind of paradise, right?”
I was still looking around, taking in the tough and dirty looking young boys that littered the place. There were young girls too, everywhere, selling stuff and playing around with some of the boys. I just could not place the sight before me to the picture of Lagos we had been shown back in the village.
“See, Rosemary, Lagos is not really the paradise you people back in the village think it is,” Aunty Florence explained. “Although this is not what the whole of Lagos looks like, in fact, most parts of Lagos are much finer than this, especially when you cross to the other side of the lagoon called Lagos Island. But still, I must warn you, Lagos is not a paradise-like people think, it is a jungle city. It is a place where only the strongest and the smartest survive.”
I will never forget what she said, because years after, everything began to resonate in my head. She called Lagos Jungle City, the place where only the strong and the smartest survive. And that was exactly what I found out about Lagos. It was not just the city where the strong and the smartest survive, it’s also a place where the mad and the outrageous can flourish.
We were on our way to the garage to board the bus that would take us to Ojuelegba when something crazy happened. It was like a scene out of a Nigerian movie. I was carrying the bag containing my things and Aunty Florence’s stuff on my head. It was quite heavy. I was also holding a small nylon bag in my left hand. It contained my purse and a few personal items. All the money I had been saving from school was inside the purse. Suddenly, I just felt somebody grab the nylon bag and yanked it off my grip. Terrified, I turned and found it was a haggard-looking guy that took the bag from me. And in a flash, the guy threw the bag to another guy in the crowd of people around us before they both disappeared into thin air. I couldn’t say a word. I was too shocked to speak. It was Aunty Florence that was quick to snap out of the shock and began screaming, thief! Thief! But nothing happened. Nobody stopped them. They just ran past everybody and everyone was looking at them like nothing happened. I had gotten my first taste of the jungle city called Lagos..it was a welcome treatment I will never forget…
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