A Small Silence by Jumoke Verissimo

Author:Jumoke Verissimo [Jumoke Verissimo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911115809
Publisher: CASSAVA REPUBLIC PRESS
Published: 2019-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

On Mosafejo Street in Oshodi, when they lived there, there were no recreational parks. The children created their own entertainment. They carved out playing spaces from abandoned sites, or streets with lesser traffic, where they kicked makeshift balls made from rags and broken condoms found on the road. In the mornings, the edges of the open drains were filled with naked children bending over to scoop water with plastic vessels to bathe themselves. They stood against gutters with brackish water flowing with stale food, shit, and urine; with all the odours hanging in the airlessness. Between this, hordes of food sellers hawked past, with the still-naked children running after them, sometimes with soapy heads, and shouting at them to stop and sell. The sellers walked towards them, placed their wares on the ground, close to the drains, and waited for the children to go in and bring bowls for the food, after which their mothers—clad in inches of cotton ankara—brought them money.

The sandwich of houses faced an improvised bus terminus which left the narrow streets perpetually rammed on most days, so that screaming voices of bus conductors called out for passengers going to different areas in Lagos at every hour of the day. Close by, there was the popular Lion Junction, where area boys continued their conversations between puffs of cigarettes and rolls of gbana. She could not forget the screams of women whose bags had been snatched, howling and running with legs scattered like chickens being pursued by dogs. Considering how young she was when they moved, it always amazed her that she remembered names and people and even faces—once or twice, she met people they had lived with in Oshodi—but they rarely ever remembered who she was.

Her eyes moved about and landed on a policeman scratching his crotch with one hand and shouting orders to a motorcyclist with his baton pointed at him. The posture and faded black uniform soiled her thoughts. She and Prof shared one thing in common: they hated Nigerian policemen. Her father was a policeman, Prof suffered torture at their hands, and Remilekun was indecisive about them.

‘Who cares? A bad man is a bad man. A bad man in a uniform is just a consistent badass man,’ a drunken Remilekun had said, in a voice filled with laughter. ‘As long as they fuck, they can be fucked, and they respond to fucking, they must mean some-fucking-thing to somebody.’

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