Every Christmas morning, my father’s Toyota SUV almost expands in width as my siblings and I cram ourselves with our luggage in the back seat. Our four growing hips almost joined together like siamese quadruplets while my mother rode shotgun as we made our way to the East. We did this every year.
The welcoming is the same. From the edge of our village, neighbourhood children run after my father’s car as it tips into the vast valley that is our ancestral land. My father is always very careful with the potholes, encouraged by my mother who never fails to caution, “easy!” or “that one may be deep!” We always go in and out of it anyway, and it is always a blessing if we still feel the muscles in our feet on arrival at our grandfather’s compound.
The faces are the same, albeit a year’s growth difference. The smiles are wide. My grandfather is older. The women welcomed us and made a show of quarrel when my mother offered to help with the cooking. “Go in and rest,” they told her, “You are coming from a distance.”
Lagos is the distance.
Apparently, we travel so long past the treacherous roads and across the Niger.
There is a weight in their “Welcome” that resounds their glee, as if my family had just completed a feat. I did not understand it fully. But I had an idea.
My uncles and aunts who came from Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja and the far North always came with one road trip tale or the other. An uncle got stranded after the car he boarded developed a mechanical fault in the middle of nowhere. One of my aunties narrowly escaped death at Makurdi highway as her husband swerved out the way of an oncoming trailer that had lost control.
But we never had any of such tales. Not one scratch or sad story. Until last Christmas.
My siblings and I had been enduring as usual, however, our sadness was dampened by the gospel music blaring from the radio.
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About an hour ago, we had pulled out of Ore where my brothers ran into the bush to ease themselves, and my mother had bought a large bunch of lemon-ripe bananas with a bottle of groundnuts for our lunch. I had only hung around our car in our brief 15-minute stop, but everyone else had done some other activity so that by the time we got back into the car to go, our hips and legs were a bit relaxed.
The oil palm plantations that my eyes loved to follow into the horizon passed us slowly as we found ourselves in a minor traffic jam. Little stools that held sacks of garri and kegs of palm oil guarded the shoulders of the road. I knew that Benin was not too far ahead.
At the end of the traffic jam, police officers, war-ready in their dark green uniforms and black bulletproofs, directed my father to park. One of them with a missing tooth hounded the driver’s window till my father had parked and wound it down.
“Tinted permit.” was the first thing he said from the gap in his rotting cavity.
The officer tapped his fingers on the top of my father’s windscreen where a UV shield protected the riders from direct sunlight.
“But my car is not tinted; what do I need a permit for?” my father asked the officer in confusion. In all our travels, no one had ever stopped us to ask that before.
The argument went back and forth between a colony of police officers and my parents. And the officers insisted that they would impound the vehicle.
That was when my mother reneged and pleaded with my father to give them a little bribe. My father refused and I began to see our story form. It had been a long day; one that could end in any way from that point.
I began to see and understand the worth of my extended family’s heavy welcomes. The roads were treacherous, and we had taken our good luck for granted while it lasted. Now we had our own story.
At the end of two long hours, my mother’s persuasion worked. He paid them ten thousand Naira and we were allowed to go.
About Lawal Salami
Lawal Salami seeks to understand his society and pins this as a journey he must take on. While accepting the futility of his task, life unwraps before his eyes and he sets stone upon the hem of its veils with his stories. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria. Read more from Lawal.
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This was beautiful…and I don’t use this statement often.
I didn’t want the story to end just yet, I felt like a character like I was in the story watched everything happen. Thank you, Lawal
wow just gave so much life to the story it’s amazing. really awesome tale and so relatable.
This is really beautiful, simple writing.
Thanks for writing this. I feel like I’m seated with you guys. Everything is sooo relatable if you’re Nigerian. And the ‘tinted permit’ own got me