Once Upon a Time in Lagos: Episode 5

 

I guess I should say I had a good time traveling further west that day. It was fine December weather, with the dry and dusty harmattan wind blowing fallen leaves all over the place. I started asking myself why, when I was still a free man, I had stayed in Lagos and not got the good of this beautiful country. I bought three loaves of bread and four cans of Coke when we reached the next train station(I did not even know the name of that station) and shared them with the photographer and a young  woman with a child. I also bought Daily Times newspaper, which had news about the beginning of the Africa Cup of Nations season and some paragraphs about how the Congo crisis was settling down and a Soviet Union squadron was going to Leopoldville -  the capital territory of the then Belgian Congo.

When I have done with them I brought out Mr. Reddington’s diary – the one that had a black cover – and studied it. It was basically filled with  shot  notes, mainly figures, though he wrote names in some of the pages. For example, I found the  words ‘rifes’, ‘d-day’ and ‘precision’ pretty often, and especially the word ‘coup d’etat.’

Now I was very certain that Mr. Reddington never did anything without a reason, and I was pretty sure there was a cypher in all this. Things like cypher and coded words are subjects which has always interested me, and I did a bit of them myself when I took a Cryptography class – an elective class I took for just one semester during my undergraduate years at the University of Maryland. I also was very good at things like chess and crossword puzzles, and the Cryptography class improved my skills in finding out cyphers. The ones in Mr. Reddington’s diary looked like the simple substitution cypher where every plaintext character of the English alphabet is substituted for a different cipher text character. Usually, any smart person can find the clue to that type of cypher after an hour or two’s work, and like all journalists who want to make things simple, I wasn’t surprised that Mr. Reddington will be content to use this method of coding in his notes. So I started working on the coded words, convinced that anyone can make a pretty good simple substitution cypher if they have a keyword that gives them the sequence of the letters.

I tried for hours but couldn’t figure it out. Then I fell asleep and woke up when the train arrived at another station that I couldn’t figure out what it was called, just in time to bundle out and get into the slow Sagamu train. I did not like the looks of one of the men at the platforms, but I wasn’t too worried about him because he never glanced at me. In any case, when I caught sight of myself in the mirror of an automatic machine I was convinced that with my black color and my simple attire, I was the very model of one of the Yoruba passengers who were crowding into the train’s third-class carriages.

I traveled with about two dozen passengers, most of whom are farmers and traders. They were returning to their villages, probably to collect more farm produce they will later transport to and sell in Lagos.  So naturally, their mouths were full of stories about farm produce prices. I heard stories of how hard it is becoming to make profit selling farm produce to the Marketing Boards – the government agencies that buy farm produce for export from peasant farmers. Most of the passengers had lunched heavily and smelled of hard gin, but they took no notice of me. The train rumbled slowly into a land covered with shrubs and then to great wide rainforests filled with huge trees, with high hills covered with green shrubs of all types showing westwards.

The carriage I was sitting in emptied at about five O’clock, and I was left alone as I had desired. I got out at the next station, which is located at a little village whose name I could scarcely read. The station was set right in the heart of a rainforest, with farmlands scattered all over the place. It reminded me of one of those forgotten little stations in America’s countryside.  I saw an elderly station-master working on his farm, and with his hoe over his shoulder, he walked slowly to the train. He took charge of a parcel, and went back to his farm. A young boy of about thirteen or so, received my ticket and I emerged on an unpaved road that straggled over the thick rain forested village.

It was a beautiful and cool evening, with every tree and shrubs looking as clear as a crystal. The air had the queer, rustic smell of rainforests, but it was as fresh as mid-sea, and it has the strangest effect on my mood. I actually felt relaxed and happy. I might have been a teenager out for a summer cookout party, instead of a thirty-eight year old man very much wanted by the police. I felt just as I used to feel in Baltimore when I was starting for a long walk on a frosty morning in my neighborhood. You will not believe it, but I walked along the road whistling happily. It was as if I have forgotten all my problems, and my only desire at that point was just to go on and on in this blessed, beautiful rain forested village, for every mile put me in a better mood. 

In a roadside farm I cut a walking stick from a bamboo tree, and presently struck off the unpaved road up a pathway which followed a narrow valley of a running stream. I was convinced that I was still far ahead of any pursuit, and for that night might just do as I please. It has been a long time since I had my last meal, and I was very hungry when I arrived to the next town. Soon I reached the first house of the town.  It was a big, gated compound which was surrounded by a tall fence. A small storefront was built as an attachment or an extension of the fence and  I saw a woman standing by the door.  She greeted me in Yoruba language, with the kindly politeness of the Yoruba people living near the train stations in western Nigerian towns. I ordered a bottle of coke and we talked for a while. It was difficult for me for I don’t speak Yoruba language fluently. But we managed to communicate by speaking a mix of Yoruba and Pidgin English. When I noticed that she is now comfortable with me, I asked for a night’s lodging. She told me she will have to talk to her husband first. She went inside the compound and, after a few minutes, she came back and told me I was welcomed to the bed at the back of the compound. After I settled down she set before me a hot meal consisting of rice and beans, cooked with spices, palm oil and beef. This is the kind of African meal I have been craving for a long time now. My ex-girlfriend used to cook it when we were still together.

For  some reasons that I could not explain, they trusted me and asked me only a few questions. But I could see they set me down as a black American tourist who is interested in finding his roots, and I took some trouble to confirm their view. During our conversations I spoke a lot about the causes and the best cures for  malaria, of which my host knew little. But I did pick up from him a great deal about the local Sagamu markets, which I tucked away in my memory for future use. At ten I was nodding in my chair, and the so-called ‘the bed at the back of the compound’ received a worn out  man who never opened his eyes till five O’clock the following morning.

My hosts were surprised that I woke up so early. But I explained to them that I had to take care of something that is very time-sensitive, and they understood. I offered to pay them for my one-night stay at their house and they politely refused to take my money. At around six O’clock I breakfasted on tea served with four slices of buttered bread. Then I began my westward journey again. My plan was simple: I will continue walking until I reach the railway line that is about a station or two farther from the station I had alighted from the previous day. Once I do that, I will immediately turn back. This will be the safest thing to do, for I reckoned that the Nigerian police would naturally assume that I was always making farther from Lagos in the direction of some town in the hinterland. I was convinced that I had still a good bit of a start, for, as I reasoned, it would take Nigerian police some days to fix the blame on me, and several more to identify the man who got on board the train at the Lagos Terminus located at Iddo Island. Unfortunately for me, I underestimated their abilities.

The good thing is that the weather is on my side and I couldn’t help being in a happy mood. In fact I was in a happier mood than I had been since I came to Nigeria. Leaving the town behind me, I took a pathway that goes through what I believed was the Sagamu rainforest. Nesting shikras and tawny eagles were crying everywhere, and every part of the forest is alive with all kinds of animal life: bush rats, antelopes, shrews, monkeys, and insects of all types. I was lucky I did not see a snake or a lion. That would have been very creepy for me. All the slackness and boredom I felt in the past months are basically gone, and I was walking happily like a teenager going to his promenade dance. Soon I came to a swell of land covered by short grasses and shrubs, which dipped to the valley of a little stream, and about a mile away I saw the smoke of a train.

When  I reached the nearest station after about an hour’s walk through the rainforest, I was glad that it was ideal for my plan. It was located near a hill  in a sleepy town and is surrounded by thick bushes. Surprisingly, it has a waiting room, an office, the station master’s hut, a tiny garden cultivated with green leafy vegetables, and a left room  only for the single rail line. It has only one single and tiny dirt road to it from the town, and to increase its isolation the waves of what appeared to be a hillside river or lake lapped on their grey granite beach about half a mile away. I waited in the thick bush until I saw the smoke of a west-going train on the horizon. Then  I approached the tiny booking office and bought a ticket to Abeokuta.

The carriage I entered had only one passenger in it: an old man who, I believe, was either a farmer or a food merchant because he had five bags filled with dried rice and beans. He also had a dog, a sleepy-eyed brute that kept looking at me with great suspicion. It reminded me of a Rottweiler – the breed  of dogs common in Germany.  The man was asleep, and on the cushions beside him was that day’s Daily Times newspaper. I eagerly picked up the newspaper, for I figured it would tell me what was going on.

There were two columns about the Victoria Island murder, as it was called. My houseboy Adeyemi had given the alarm and had the newspaper vendor arrested. Poor him – I felt so bad for him. It looked as if he had earned his twenty naira the hard way. He seem to have occupied the Lagos Police for the better part of the day. As I continued reading the newspaper, I found more articles about the murder. The newspaper vendor had been released, I read, and the true criminal, about whose identity the Lagos Police withheld,  was believed to have got away from Lagos by one of the western going trains. There was a short note about the owner of the flat where Mr. Reddington’s body was found. I guessed the Lagos Police slipped that part into the article, as a smart trick to make me feel that I was not the suspect they are looking for.

There was nothing else interesting in the paper, nothing about Nigeria politics or Prime Minister Tafewa Balewa, or the things that had interested Mr. Reddington. I got bored and laid it down. Soon I discovered that we were getting close to the train station at which I had got out yesterday. The elderly station-master who was working on his farm yesterday looked very alert, for the west-going train was waiting for us to pass, and from it had descended three uniformed men who were asking him questions.  I was convinced they were the local police, who had been stirred up by Lagos Police, and had traced me as far as this part of the town. I was very surprised that the Nigeria police could move so fast. I often think of them as being so laidback. Perhaps they moved very quick this time because Mr. Reddington is an American and if they don’t do that, they will have to explain their reason to the American government.

 I was sitting well back in the shadow and, from my position, I watched them carefully. One of them had a notebook with black cover, and he took down notes. The elderly station-master seemed very surprised, but the young boy of about thirteen who received my ticket yesterday was talking confidently. I became worried.

My only companion in the carriage woke up as we moved away from that station. He fixed me with a confused glance, patted his dog gently and asked me where he was in Yoruba language. It was very obvious that he was drunk. I told him he was in a moving train.

“That’s what comes from staying away from alcohol,” he said bitterly.

I expressed my surprise that in him I should have met a very alert person if he had laid off alcohol like he claimed.

“Oh yeah,” he said pugnaciously. “I am a strong teetotaler. It was my last year’s new year resolution, and I haven’t touched kai-kai(a local gin) or beer since then. Not even at Christmas, though I was tempted.”

He swung his heels up on a seat, and laid his head into one of the cushions placed near his  seat.

“And this is what I get for quitting alcohol,” he moaned. “A head that is not much better than hell fire.”

“How did you manage to swing it?” I asked.

“Well,” he said. “I drank palm wine(a local alcoholic drink tapped from oil palm tree). Being a teetotaler I kept off kai-kai and beer, but I was drinking palm wine. It wasn’t a bad choice. It is all natural and  has no foreign chemical in it,” His voice died away into a splutter as he dozed off.

My original plan was to get off the train as soon as we reach the next station and find my way ahead, but the train suddenly gave me a better chance, for it came to a standstill at the end of a large culvert which spanned what I believed to be an extension of the Ibu river and the Eruwuru stream, the two water bodies closest to Sagamu town and Lagos. I looked out and saw that every carriage window was closed and I did not see any human being in the landscape. So I opened the door, and dropped quickly into the tangle of African green shrubs and elephant grass which edged the line.

My exit would have been alright but for the Rottweiler-like dog. I think it probably had the impression that I was escaping with his master’s belongings. It started barking and charged at me but only got me by the trousers. This woke up its master and the occupants of the carriage next to ours, and they stood shouting at the carriage door, probably thinking that I had committed suicide. By then, however, there was no turning back for me so I continued moving. I crawled through the thicket that consisted of mainly the African green shrubs,  and elephant grass, reached the edge of the Ibu river and the Eruwuru stream extension, and in cover of the bushes put about a hundred yards behind me. Then from my shelter I looked back and saw the guard and almost every passenger in the carriage closest to ours have gathered round the open carriage door and are staring in my direction. I couldn’t believe that a single dog could expose my escape in this way.

END OF EPISODE 5

P.S. Stay tuned for Episode 6, which  will be published here next Sunday.