Unoma Azuah: A Baptism of Fire

A Baptism of Fire
The harsh Lagos sun came down on the motley crowd of traders, civil servants, market women, roaming mentally ill, children, hawkers, and beggars, which formed an incongruous contrast.

Presently, a rickety bus called molue appeared, quaking and shuddering in an attempt to stop, people jumped out, others in the same manner jumped in.

When the bus eventually came to a stop, the press of people from the inside and the outside created a temporary dam. Seeing this, the driver abruptly jerked the bus a few meters forward; the dam burst, spilling its contents.

The above excerpt from my short story, “The Bulging Bag,” captures one of my early encounters with Lagos from the mid to late 90s. Lagos gave me my first baptism of fire. It prepared me for the world. The saying that if one survives Lagos, they’d survive anywhere else in the world is a truism. The bedlam I met in Lagos taught me how to think on my toes, it taught me stringent work ethics, it taught me how to organize my life within a chaotic time and space.

The “Molue” bus was the metaphor for Lagos. It was a bus that contained all occupants of Lagos including the poor and the middle class. It was a world that leveled our humanity as it ferried us across our destinations.

In spite of the pandemonium, there were still spaces for quiet, for a contemplative walk at bar beach, for festivities and banters, for book readings and critiquing, for live performances to spilled drinks on poetry pages to illicit love affairs and to malicious and profound book reviews. In this wealth of experiences, we found our muse and wrote our hearts out.