ya ya aiki?
on Fantastic Voyage (Nigeria), 07/Jul/2010 16:04, 34 days ago
Well, that was certainly the stupidest thing we’ve done here so far – and probably the most unpleasant, too.The weather here hasn’t really lived up to its ‘rainy season’ billing as yet (those of you who have nothing better to do may have glanced at the BBC weather reports for Abuja, which have claimed heavy showers here forever.  It’s a complete lie), and there are in fact some gentle worries (not that Nigerians ever really seem to worry) about the dryness of the last few weeks.  There has been the odd storm, though, which I may even have written about somewhere before: they’re pretty awesome things, mostly because of the sudden sharpness of the change.One of the few things I’ve missed since being here (apart from people, of course!) is The Wasteland.  I haven’t read it for many aeons, and I figured that no-one needs that when they’ve got Four Quartets (both by TS Eliot, poetry fans).  But there’s a bit in ‘What the thunder said’, which I think is part 4, which I keep thinking about and wishing I could read properly now.  He bangs on about‘dry the season, dry the rock’ – that sort of thing – and there’s a cock that I think sings ‘co co rico co co rico’ and it’s all just really raspy and arid.  You can feel the dust on your tongue when you read it.  Then, suddenly, it breaks with a‘flash of lightning | Bringing rain’.  And it’s such a relief, as well as somewhat intimidating.And that’s pretty much what it’s like here, apart from – between the stillness and oppression and birds calling into the silence – there’s a sudden terrific upsurge in wind. ‘Windy’ doesn’t really seem to be a weather condition here (unless a lot of people have just eaten the amount of beans I was served up for lunch), but just before a storm the wind whips around buildings and howls like the coming of a thousand witches from the north.  Then it stops.  And then it rains.So, anyway, that’s all sort of bye-the-bye because last night wasn’t like that.  There’d been a storm while we were at work, so a chap here very kindly drove us back rather than let us rideabachasand become sodden.  But we were going out in t’evening for a friend’s birthday and to watch the Netherlands game (there’s a little Dutch community here, mostly of volunteers).  Not far away, and you’re not supposed to go out let alone catchabachasafter dark so we though we’d walk.  And it was kinda drizzling, in a pleasingly English manner, as we set out– but the sky was lowering and beetling its brows and the sun was sending out the kind of rays that feel a bit like a dying howl of bright anguish, so we should have known really.About half way there, drizzle became onslaught.  There’s a bit in the Lord of the Rings where the weather on the mountains tries to stop Gandalf and chums getting across – so it targets them in the pitiless elemental way you’d expect from atmospheric conditions.  I don’t quite believe that happened – but it is the case that the rain just poured (rather than anything cheery or exotic) down.  Lots and lots and lots of it.  We clung to each other, like Maggie and Tom Tulliver (but with slightly less tragedy), and in mild hysteria tried to struggle on to our destination.  One lovely chap offered us a lift (which we’ve been told – and I’m entirely confident in this, in broad daylight and in an office – is as safe as houses), but – being English and wet and miserable – I refused, so we staggered, splashed, crept onwards.  After about 20 minutes of this (in the pitch black, of course, apart from when the sky became bright pink for almost a second at a time in lightning), we came to our final road.  Which was, more or less, a pool of mud.  We were already drowned rats arriving late at the house of a man we’d never met, and with the return journey to be made after inevitable orange victory.So we turned round, and walked back, and became one with the water.  I felt like that nasty man in the first X Men who turns into a sloppy kind of balloon full of water.  Even when swimming I don’t think I’ve been so wet.  The pavements– hardly pavements – little lines of sportive rain run wild – were unusable, so we walked in the road.  Cars and the oddachabadidn’t seem to really mind the very, very wet roads and were largely in a big old hurry to get home.  So we were splashed and beeped at a number of times.  I can’t quite comprehend how the headtorch strapped (incredibly tightly, actually – I have a forehead dent) round my head didn’t give up (thanks, mum and dad!!), but it certainly saved us from more misery than we already had.  And the last bit of road before the guesthouse was, basically, a ford.My, it was unpleasant.  But also, of course, quite exhilarating and absurd at the same time.  And being out in the thunder and lightning was just magnificent– really superb in every sense.  So I’m kinda glad we had the experience, but gladder that it ended!  As the picture attests, Jenny was not a happy bunny at any point…The worst thing was that we had no alcohol to make it better– just tea and stale biscuits; that the storm more or less stopped when we got home so we couldn’t luxuriate and listen to it beyond the rapidly retreating rumbles; and that our bath water is almost as muddy as the pavement water. (That was things, not one thing.  I must have been more anguished than I realised.)But we survived, and one day we might make T-Shirts to commemorate the fact.  In the meantime, I’m going to get some hard spirits stored up against another such eventuality…