To Bayelsa and Beyond

Is it a good sign or a bad one for the state of a country when a man comes and gives a prayer for your bus before it leaves the station?

When we passed the first one on the side of the road it took me a moment to realize that the pile of chicken wire, corrugated iron and garbage was in fact a car. Even then I had to squint and tilt my head to make out chassis, frame, door.

Some were overgrown with rust and grass. I wondered if the government had left them here intending them as a warning, a poetic speed limit marker that even an illiterate driver could read. However, it was the “fresh” ones that really got me thinking. I have never thought of automotive crashes in terms of ripeness of the slaughter, but these reeked of freshness. There was the unmistakable impression had you been five minutes earlier you would have heard the pop of glass and the crunch of metal. Some were still clouded in the odor of petrol and burnt rubber. Many were still ringed in crystal shards that had not yet been swept up, or blown away by the wind, or scattered by speeding tires. Others were still surrounded by stunned, although not entirely surprised, people.

I found my mind defensively rejecting the obvious reality of each wreck. I would ponder how could you ever generate enough force to crumple a car like that without someone driving, or, why would they drag cars all the way from the dump way out here to litter this highway. The reality was that of course these cars had not been dragged from anywhere and of course there had been a driver inside, probably a number of passengers as well, and now, almost assuredly, they were crumpled and in pieces just like these vehicles.

At one point we passed what might have been a small Fiat or Datsun. It looked like an accordion that had been put through a blender. There was no paint left on the reddish-brown metal, and gray-green moss or lichen had started spreading atop the rust. There was no glass remaining anywhere on the car. The sheer completeness of the wreck took my breath away. I wondered what could possibly have done this. Twenty yards further was an overturned tanker, similarly colored by rust and moss, on side of the cab was smashed in and seemed to exhale, “PWAugh!” like a boxer hit by the final, sweeping upper cut which lifts him off his feet and onto his back. There were gapping, jagged holes in the sides of the tank and I wondered if they were from sliding or an explosion. My first reaction was, “Go Fiat! Way to take out a big guy!” and then I felt guilty and a little tense.

Adeola told me that the Lagos-Badagry Express way which goes past their university is the main highway that runs to Benin, Togo, Ghana and beyond. However, on the way from Lagos to Bayelsa, I feel I have found the quickest road out of Nigeria.