Swallow by Sefi Atta

Author:Sefi Atta [Atta Sefi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781566568333
Publisher: Interlink Publishing
Published: 2012-06-23T04:00:00+00:00

I decided to take a note to Sanwo’s place that week. Without him around, I was like a stray dog in Lagos, alone and sniffing at other people’s stinking mess. The note I wrote was a quick one: THIS IS A MILITARY ORDER. REPORT TO ME AS SOON AS YOU TOUCH BASE. I WILL NOT TOLERATE ANY DISOBEDIENCE.

I didn’t want him to worry. Sanwo lived on Victoria Island in the boys’ quarters of his uncle’s house. He had one room; his uncle’s cook and driver slept in a second room. The driver was a bachelor, and the cook had a wife and four children who lived far from the island. The three men shared a shower and latrine. Sanwo complained about the habits of the other two, how they left soap remnants on the shower floor, messed up the latrine and never cleaned it. I’d seen worse latrines and showers. Their shower wall was at least whitish, sort of, and the floor was scrubbed with disinfectant. What if the walls were as black as a cooking pot? I asked him. What if he stepped on the floor and immediately fell because of mold? Sanwo was not satisfied. He said the walls ought to be repainted and the latrine replaced with a proper toilet. He complained and complained, used his own money to buy a light blue paint for the walls; he drew up a cleaning roster and made rules, like no peeing on latrine floor, no throwing cigarette butts, no dumping of rubbish, no burning of leaves, no hanging of laundry, except in the designated area of the premises. The rules went on for about two pages and he made the other men sign them.

They fought over the rules. The cook was the oldest, almost fifty years old, and so he demanded to be treated with respect. The driver was in his twenties. All he knew was chicks, Sanwo said. He was always patting the breast pocket of his shirt and asking, “Who took my cig’rette? Where is my cig’rette?” His fingernails were yellow and his lips were black from smoking. He was extremely rude to Sanwo and once called him a commoner.

I did not like visiting him there; there was too much politics over their living arrangements. Victoria Island itself was hard to get to. I had to take a danfo van, then a bus, and then another bus. The island was a ghetto, I’d told Sanwo, just like the one I lived in, except that it was a high-class ghetto. Houses were hidden behind walls, because everyone was scared of armed robbers. They didn’t have broken glass pieces on top of their walls, but they hired watchmen from the North, who manned their gates. Their grounds were huge, with trees and flowers. On the streets were rubbish dumps, piles of bricks and sticks, gutters full of slime, and the usual potholes and hawkers.

Sanwo said I just didn’t want to see the good in Victoria Island. They had mansions with swimming pools and electricity generators, expatriate shops and restaurants.

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