Looking for Bono (eBook)

1

Opening his eyes, Baba yawned and scratched his nether regions. With another gusty yawn, he got up from the wooden bench where he’d spent the night, and stretched his thin arms above his head. He was a wiry man, no more than 5’5, with a bald head and grey hairs sprouting from his chin. His large eyes held a haunted look in them and were more often than not red from chewing kola nut, a local bitter fruit that also acted as an appetite suppressant. Under the weight of a certain sadness that wilted his eyelids dragging them down, his haggard worn out face had become a local fixture in the community.

It was 6am, his favourite time of the day. That time in the morning when it wasn’t quite dawn, but wasn’t quite the pitch dark of the night. The dark where, typically, at first sight, the good people of Palemo, Lagos where he lived, scurried away inside, to bring out their solar lamps and light their candles.

At 6am, the air was “freshly laundered” as he liked to call it. At 6am, before the inevitable smell of decayed and decomposing human detritus that permeated the neighbourhood rose up, the air was fresh, smelled earthy, and, dare he think it, was filled with hope.

Baba coughed up a particularly hearty mass of phlegm from his lungs. Turning his head slightly he heaved the whole lot, en masse, into the decomposing heap of rubbish outside his building. He gave a satisfied grunt and reached into his trouser pocket for his pako, chewing stick, quickly returning it there when he remembered he had no water to rinse out his mouth. He spotted the neighbourhood cobbler across the road, setting up his roadside stall. Before Baba could greet him, the cobbler held up his hands.

No water, he mouthed.

Baba’s chest momentarily slumped in defeat, before he remembered he had options. Namely, the two useless boys at the auto-repair shop he frequented. He waved goodbye to the cobbler and started making his way there. But not before taking a backward glance at his building, his hellish hole of a home, and shuddering at the possibility of spending yet another night on the bench outside.

There was a slight breeze as he made his way to the auto-repair shop. He noted the snake-like queue of people waiting patiently at the end of his street to buy water. He couldn’t help but notice that half of them were schoolchildren. As he rounded the corner, a water company tanker appeared and stopped at the head of the orderly line of people waiting patiently for this life-giving commodity. As if on cue, all order disappeared, replaced by a scrum. A man jumped out of the passenger seat of the water tanker with a whip in his hand, with which he began lashing out at the crowd.

Baba heard a few schoolchildren cry out in pain. Resolutely, he turned his face away, and carried on walking. Towards the auto-repair shop. Towards Mama Seyi and her famous, dundun, fried yams, and away from this scene that by chipping away at his Lagos armour threatened to make him care.

Truth be told, Baba himself did not know why he went to the mechanic’s auto-repair shop every morning. It certainly wasn’t for the company; two layabouts with mashed yams for brains who also doubled up as mechanics, did not count for company. Sometimes, as he watched the shop television, typically perched on the roof of some poor bastard’s car, wires protruding down its backside, all the way to the poor bastard’s car battery, he thought he only went there to save the two layabouts from themselves.

Other times, he and the two layabouts wondered why he was deluding himself; they all knew he had nowhere else to go. As Mr Sowemimo, the auto-repair shop owner, who loathed and tolerated Baba with an equal, visceral, passion put it, “He’s like their adopted grandparent and stray dog in one.”

Baba was not a man who wasted his time thinking about, or dwelling in self-reflection. So whenever he heard Mr Sowemimo talking about him in such dismissive and belittling terms, which he noted was with increasing frequency, he would turn his head away from the auto-repair shop owner and face the street. This being Lagos, there was typically some drama unfolding, which was always more interesting than the useless drivel coming out of Mr Sowemimo’s mouth.

Sometimes, Mr Sowemimo would scream and yell at Baba to leave his auto-repair shop, only to be told by the layabouts that if Baba wasn’t allowed to come there anymore, then they would leave as well.

And for another day, Baba’s stay in the auto-repair shop would be secured.

His daily routine was simple. He arrived at the gates by seven in the morning, sometimes, a little earlier; it all depended on the situation at home. Some mornings, one of the layabouts would just be opening up. Other times, he would have to wait a little for them to arrive and be let in. Upon entering, he would be handed a glass of water, so he could brush his teeth with his trusty pako, chewing stick.

Occasionally, if the layabouts were feeling particularly gracious, they might hand him half a bucket of water, so he could wash his “shrivelled parts” and “mouldy armpits” in the shop backyard. Consider it a service to humanity, they would say, laughing like the idiots they were.

They were full of insults, the layabouts. Most times, he didn’t mind. When they started on their “useless nonsense”, as he liked to call the insults, he simply turned his face away from them, and towards the street, and sure enough, some drama would unfold under the glare of the scorching sun.

Today, he sat on his chair, a rickety bench on its last legs, looking up at the television, now on the hood of another poor bastard’s car, and found himself staring at a man wearing dark red, wraparound sunglasses, their bulging lenses making his square, pale, face look just like a mosquito’s. On the screen, surrounded by jostling cameramen and photographers, he saw the man waving while giving the British prime minister a firm handshake. As the Mosquito Man waved, the cameras exploded, bathing the room in bright flashing lights. A few seconds later, the camera panned to a journalist on the edge of the fray speaking animatedly, his voice loud and barely containing his excitement.

“That was Bono with the British prime minister. He will be at the All African Summit taking place in Abuja in a few weeks, on October 24, to campaign for access to healthcare for all Africans. The highly anticipated summit will be attended by all 54 African leaders. And now, back to the studio...” The newsreader’s voice faded away.

Baba turned to layabout number one; Dauda, a young man in his early twenties, with the swagger of the particularly ignorant.

“Who’s that man?” Baba asked him, pointing to the television. Dauda looked at the television. All he saw was the newsreader, a woman with the moderately bleached skin and modulated tones of the expensively educated.

“I only see woman,” he replied.

“Not her, stupid. The man that was on the television before her. The one with the dark red glasses that makes him look like a mosquito.”

“Na Bono,” layabout number two, Dimeji, shouted from under a car. Dauda went back to the car he was repairing. Only he wasn’t repairing it, he was evidently destroying it. Baba shook his head in despair as he watched him trying to yank one of the car parts from its nether regions.

“Dauda! Come here!” He summoned him. He saw Dauda roll his eyes before swaggering towards him again.

Baba had been coming to the auto-repair shop for as long as everyone could remember, offering his opinions on everything from what he saw on the television to the micro-dramas that were played out every day on the street outside. His ponitifcations notwithstanding, his primary job was, essentially, to survive each day preferably with food to eat and water to quench his never-ending thirst.

In fact, if Dauda was to describe Baba to people who didn’t know him, he would say that Baba excelled at being the very best version of himself, which was as “a useless man, and one that was incapable of malice”.

“Has it ever occurred to you that someone could die because of what you’re doing?” Baba asked him. “You’re stealing car parts from people who trust you to fix their cars. I shudder to think how many people’s blood you’ve got on your hands.”

Dauda shrugged. “Have you finished?” he asked Baba in that particular way he knew would drive Baba mad and no doubt would incur another lecture on Dauda’s insouciant approach to life.

Baba shooed him away, shaking his head, whether in grief at Dauda’s ignorance or the headache that suddenly came upon him, he wasn’t sure.

“Oladimeji, you said his name was Bono?” He asked the other mechanic.

“I’ve told you to call me Dimeji. There’s no need to draw out my full name when you talk to me,” Dimeji grumbled from under a car.

He slid out, wiping his greasy hands on his overalls. “And yes, his name is Bono. He’s a famous singer in London.”

“I see,” Baba said, although he didn’t. If he was a famous singer, why was he coming to Nigeria to tell the government to give people healthcare? Furthermore, why would the Nigerian government listen to him?

Baba voiced his opinions aloud.

“He does a lot of things for poor people everywhere,” Dimeji said. He quickly slid back under the car before Baba started one of his sermons. Baba...