Requiem for the City

Osogbo is in a spiritual crisis.

It is going through decay and sudden change. It used to be idyllic, now it is a dump of dirt and engines and bridges and industries, Osogbo is like a city going through war. It is melancholy, it is damp and grey. All the shops look pale, and the mounds of sand along Alekuwodo up till Oke-Fia look like they are put there to distract imaginary kamikaze circling the June sky.

Businesses are shutting down. The active ones fight for attention. They are there along Alekuwodo, along Ogo-Oluwa. From Olaiya through Dugbe up to Ayetoro. Everywhere in this city, the people are enduring a disappointment. The lightbulbs in front of business houses have stopped working. Look at Auxtus house. Three years ago, it was a promise, now it is an eyesore. Tabitha house looks unsure in its faded pink and stupid frontal marble. Behind its glass panels the skins of the manikins are pale brown, and their clothes look dirty. The building looks like it is waiting for evening, so it can go home. All the shops in the city look like that, like there is a place they will go by evening. Some of their roofs are opened, and the people under them look on unhappily into space. The people laugh and dance, but they do so unhappily that one embarrassingly wants to tell them it is going to be fine.

Go to Post Office area. Hear the music there from the speakers. It sounds like noise, it is like everybody knows this but doesn’t want to mind the speakers. They just drag their feet on the tar and moisturise their lips when it is sunny and try not to think of the noise.

They are suffering from the sobriety of war. Oh God!, they know this. They are like a siege people in a siege town trying not to mind the kamikaze and the Little Boy falling at 138 km/h from the scudding clouds into the silver day. They know this, all the people in Osogbo do, but they go to the market and buy vegetables, and go back home and cook and sleep and have sex. Their sadness is tangible, but tangibility will not buy food in the market.

I take evening walks all the time. I see all of them, I watch this city. I mind my business, but I see all of them. I listen to all of them. Many of them think the governor is unserious. They don’t say it out like that, but I hear it, because I am always walking beside them, in front of them, behind them, I am always begging things from them so I can hear a little of what they think about the governor.

About a year ago, my mother sold petty things at Olaiya. Then one day some guys came and blocked the mainroad, they said they were government people. They said Oyetola was going to build a flyover bridge at Olaiya. We didn’t say anything. At first my mother sold oranges, then oranges and mangoes, then oranges, mangoes, and bananas. Then she started selling biscuits, sweets, gala and pure water, because the people who sold them had left to Aregbe and some to Oke-Fia. She sold those things for about a year that it took Oyetola to build the bridge. It was a difficult time for her, but we didn’t complain too much. We didn’t hit our heads against the ground out of frustration. When my mother ran into debt, we quietly stopped selling those things, and, at first infrequently, she began to stay at home. I didn’t go online and say how unfortunate my life has been, how poor my mother looked, sitting at home and gossiping with the neighbours. I just nursed a deep grudge with the flyover. It still amazes me how I don’t hate Oyetola, but that I hate the innocent bridge, a mass of rock and cement and sand. (And even now, I don’t hate Isiaka, but the unborn bridge at Oke-Fia). My brothers and I always talked about Olaiya bridge, that it should fall one evening when there would be nobody there. And how would we mock Oyetola in our parlour, stomping our feet, slapping our palms, with our mouths wide open with laughter, because that was the only way we could feel powerful!

All the people in Osogbo feel in similar ways. They do not think Isiaka is very wise. They think his head is not in the proper place. There are some things they want to say to his face, they say it when I take my evening walks, but Isiaka is a big man and they are afraid of him. They think bridges will not save them, they think bridges will not save anybody.

I love Osogbo as I love my woman. I become touchy when I see trailers and the caterpillars in the city, I go gaga when I see that a senseless project will distract everybody from the simple joys of making profits, of taking evening walks, and their right to not be harassed by the sound of drilling in the afternoon and of loud whirring at night.

There’s a renovated fountain in front of the state government house. Beside it is the prospective Isiaka garden. What a sight they are! Elegant and dappled. But I think everybody is asking a question about it. Inelegant questions, questions bland from use.

Also, there’s a bridge going on at Oke-Fia. They think the best Isiaka can do in a national economic crisis is to build bridges. Oyetola also built a bridge, so there’s really nobody to blame. They are just embarrassed; they don’t know where their families will walk on Saturday evenings; they don’t know how the shop-owners and the pepper-sellers, how the beans-hawkers and the shack owners, especially at Rasco, will make profits, have something to take home when they are harassed by bridges and fountains. In summary, they want to know, the people are asking the governor, how urban will Osogbo get before Isiaka realises these are not the times to build bridges but to conserve strength, and not the time for another garden but maybe for getting money into the hands of the people for continuous circulation. They do not want to live in a fine city and wear rags. They want to know how urban is Osogbo going to get before they wear rags.

Of course these are trivial questions. Anybody who has ever walked in this city knows them. But we cannot complain to walls and to rivers. We cannot beat our hand against the ground; we cannot wail; we cannot walk from Omo-West, from Okinni, from Oke-Baale, on our barefeet to Abere just so we can say what we can say again and again in gossips: Do we need bridges? Do we need to endure the noise at night? Do we need to… etcetera, etcetera. And while asking these trivial questions, it is out of impulse, and not out of a need, that we try and save ourselves from speaking too loud or beyond our circles of three and five.

This evening, I am taking a walk again. I put my left hand into my pocket. The wind is light and cool, it is the wind of petrichor when the evening light is faintly gold. A man is swaggering down the pavement in front of me. He wears a small afro and his red shirt looks damp with sweat. At the intersection, he doesn’t stop, but lumbers absentmindedly into the road. Two okadas come towards him. I whistle and call, and one okadaman whistles and revvs. The man suddenly realises himself and jumps away. At the other side of the road, he turns back to me with a grin, says thank you, and continues swaggering and turns uproad into Akindeko.

I saved him from death.