The Smuggler's Route

Hello and a good week to everybody. I have just begun to conquer another technological milestone – twitter! Yes my friends, for so long I have wondered what all the fuss was about twitting all over the place with almost ‘nonsensical’ tweets about favourite pets and, just nonsense! Far as I was concerned it was all just a massive gathering of twits until Frieda explained it all to me. I still haven’t comprehended it fully but I have begun to sound like I know what I’m talking about when I tweet. Point is, I can see what a dinosaur I will be when I become a father. Matter of fact I almost weep for myself because of the way those little mites are going to abuse my ignorance of modern technology. My resolve therefore is this. I must marry someone who’s a gadget freak and is up to date with every conceivable contraption that is invented. She will also be a very bad cook on account of my love for good food. Please don’t think I am mad. I have always loved good food, according to my mum, and the way my metabolism has dropped in the past few years has given me serious cause for concern. If I dare eat even half of what I used to eat three years ago, I could almost watch my girth increase, my cheeks billow and my feet much more leaden. Kilo nonsense en? One of my favourite meals, pounded yam and Afang, I can no longer indulge myself in. hence my solution to my problem; marry a terrible cook so I learn to hate to eat and then I stay slim – ish. How’s that for a solution? By the time my daughter gets married they’ll probably have invented some gadget with to cook any meal her hubby desires. I feel much better now after airing my thoughts in this rather long paragraph. I hope they don’t smell too badly. Now to what I really want to talk about; my smuggling trip.

I had been shooting some scenes of a movie project in Ogun state and we were determined to finish it that day which took us into the wee hours of the next day – 2am to be precise. Some of us decided against putting up in a hotel and opted to drive back in a convoy to Lagos. The road however was a route smugglers typically used to smuggle goods to and from the neighbouring Benin Republic country with fierce customs officers lay in wait and desperate smugglers strived to get their commissions through at all costs. I for one was ready to risk driving along that smuggling route at that hour than face the horrendous traffic gridlock that characterized the morning rush hour traffic. ‘Sides my car had been making some funny noises after I’d waded in a mini lake in a crater in the road on one of our trips to location. There was no way I would risk taking Betty though a four hour traffic jam without seeing her doctor.

Our three cars set off into the night. The moon was full and the ghostly shapes of the tall grass swayed to our rushing headlights. The red eyes ahead of me flashed an even brighter red intermittently as they dodged ubiquitous potholes. Okay Kalu, stop it! We drove fast weaving this way and that as we dodged the numerous potholes that were dotted all over the road. Occasionally we would hear and wince at the jarring crash of the shock absorber of the lead vehicle as he went into a hidden pothole and quickly learn from his mistake. I had no mirror to look into but I knew my eyes were bulging from concentrating on the road and its environs. I wondered what we would do if armed robbers waylaid us at some deep gorge we were negotiating. Would I flee into the bush and leave the women among us to fend for themselves? One never knows what one is capable of until the one faces adversity. This adversity was not one I was willing to accommodate, rather I saw it as an adventure and sped on. Surprisingly, the few customs checkpoints we went by didn’t even bother with us. It was as if they knew what they were looking for and didn’t even glance at us as we sped past.

We got to our homes safely, stopping at the married colleague’s first. After honking our horns at her gate incessantly, the gate man opened them to a relieved but very silently furious husband. I watched as she slunk sideways through their front door like a crab as I left for my own home with trepidation in my heart. I’ll explain. My street has about two or three street gates leading to it from all sides. They all shut at the stroke of twelve midnight and once they do, hardly anyone or thing can compel them to be opened before 5am. Getting there at 3am, I began to bang at the street gate before my gate but no one answered. Peeping through the slits I could see three security guards warming themselves round a fire and smoking what wafted to me as weed. I called out loud to them telling them I was a resident in the adjoining street. They stopped, looked in my direction and calmly turned around and began to walk further away leaving me with no choice than to curl into Betty’s back seat. The windows misted over within minutes of shutting the door and made me wonder how much they’d mist if I were to shag in it – kinda like the Titanic love scene. My rucksack served as my pillow and I slept soundly till 4.50am when my alarm clock woke me.

Well folks, that was my experience plying a smuggler’s route at a smuggler’s time. Who knows? Someday when there’s no more work in my profession… Have a great week everyone!

A Rare Touch of Nature

A very hearty good week to everybody. I don’t know how many times you have to hear my excuses for not putting up posts when I should but things just happen sometimes to upset the cart. Don’t worry, it’s not just you; Nkem’s been on my neck about my posts as well and I say I can’t get a good story sitting in my couch; I have to go out and get it. She’s so anal about me getting things done on time. She should give me some peace! Yeah right. Darn it! This means I have to tell a good enough story if I don’t want you guys eating me raw. Hm, let me see… Okay, here goes… Once upon a time two weeks past, when lizards had multiplied from ones and twos to hordes scurrying about scratching all over tin roofs and bobbying their heads over termite infested faggots for fuel, there was a young(ish) man who dared venture from his concrete hut in his concrete village screaming with mechanised wagons and bicycles to the much more serene and chirpy villages in the very borders of his living memory.

A tad melodramatic I know, so I’ll come down to earth in plain English. We went to shoot the bulk of a movie in the rural parts of Ogun state. It was supposed to be a sort of fantasy horror movie and we were looking for a very lonely derelict hut in the middle of nowhere. The director, Moses Iwang, whom we fondly call Sneeze – don’t ask me why – who, gladly, takes his work seriously, had insisted on a really spooky location to generate the eerie feel and to make the ‘crappy’ actors’ (us) work easier. The bloody nerve of him! This ‘aesthetic’ feel drove us from the comfort of our homes in Lagos to this remote village four hours away in our own cars! The upstart even had the nerve to leave his own car behind – it was too posh to go – and ride in Uche Jombo’s. The good thing is she made him drive for the entire duration of the shoot. Funny how much liberties people take when they know they are loved – and it does irk me to admit that he is good people.

We got there at about four in the evening, disembarked and looked around us. It was a peaceful village. There were no electric poles in sight and it was refreshing to see chickens pecking for food all over the place. I watched in amusement as a hen with her brood of chicks ‘snarled’ at one of the local dogs that ventured too near one of her errant children. It tucked its tail and slunk away and I couldn’t help wondering what the dog was thinking at the time. “Time was when you wouldn’t dare try that with me if not for these meddlesome humans who force this anomaly upon us.” Not too far away a large she-goat butted a much younger he-goat (probably her grandson) that had been amorously sniffing at her rear end. Half naked children played with wild abandon with one another while some older ones of ages nine to twelve herded docile looking cows to juicier pastures on the outskirts of the village. There weren’t many adults to be seen except for the nursing mothers and the aged men and women. It was quite easy to spot the aged women on account of the fact that they walked about topless, stretched triangular folds of skin flapping over their ribcages as they walked with still very sturdy legs. We stared bemused at them wondering why it took them so long to get their kits off. I guess they followed the maxim of exclusivity being the key to increasing demand. Perhaps they chose to bare their spent reserves as a reminder to the much younger ones of what fate had in store for them and for the discerning ones among them to make hay while the sun still shone.

After taking in our fill of the environment and making jokes (the silly Sneeze asked me to take a chance with one of the rare topless beauties and maybe I’d get lucky – idiot!), Chioma Akpotha even twitted about us time travelling back to 1935, we went off into the spooky grove to commence work. Sadly I have run out of the space allotted to me in this post so maybe I’ll talk about the rest next week so until then, do have a great week ahead guys! A bientot!