This threadbare Lagos you are seeing today, it was the dream of youth. Like London, America, Malaysia. Upon leaving secondary school, many Nigerian teenagers of early 2000’s had their hopes anchored in Lagos, city of light and development. The state exuded a certain aristocracy in all things, drawing the core of Nigeria’s ambitious energy. I wanted my share and a certain bundle of notes was the first seed.
The bundle was N1,000. Twenty Naira notes. Green. Murtala Mohammed’s afro hair. The bundle was made up of 10 smaller wads, each wad consisting of 5 notes—four notes in portrait, the fifth in landscape skirting the tiny clump into a hundred Naira.
At the time, all important funds came in that lump. The arrangement was for ease of counting, but it also imbued the money with sanctity, like the thing was gathered piece by piece, limb by limb. A musky smell attached itself to all such monies—the smell of camphor in a wrapper box where the treasure had been kept. Every good child understood the privilege, if supremacy of funds that arrived in that packing.
I arrived Lagos with that sacred bundle, money given to me by one imperfect woman who believed I could amount to something. That money was her sweat, sum of her labour and thrift, of a hope that was more punctual than other hopes. A hope which once believed that a tiny lad, whose arm across the head could barely touch the other ear, should be enrolled in school. It all began from there: at a nursery school run by Dem Lebechi of Egbelu and, limb by limb, she built my dream into a whole, like that Lagos money.
That imperfect woman, my mother, died exactly three years ago. But her dream lives on and, by the grace of God, will yield in time. Her name was Elizabeth and she was from Mbaise.
Source: Facebook