A taxi to market

One Saturday, Mom tells Lisa and me that we're going downtown to the market to buy cloth to make us each a Nigerian outfit. We have to put on long skirts and sneakers, she says, because we'll be doing a lot of walking. 

"Are we walking all the way downtown?" I ask, my eyes wide. Mom smiles and shakes her head. 

"No," she says, "Aunt Janne is going to show us how to get a taxi." I have never ridden in a taxi before and start to skip around the house, putting a long skirt on over my shorts and tying on a pair of sneakers. I hate skirts, but I must wear one whenever I leave the compound—except when we go to school. The sneakers are still mostly new, and I wonder if they will need to last me for the next four years until we return to the U.S. 

Aunt Janne knocks on the screen door, and we grab umbrellas and start down the dirt road toward the compound gate. Aunt Janne isn't my aunt; she is our Australian neighbour, Shelley's mum. But here, the children call all adults except teachers "aunt" and "uncle." Shelley and Kimmie are going downtown with us, too. It's a 10-minute walk to the gate, skirting potholes and puddles, and I am hot by the time we greet the guards in Hausa and move onto the road that passes by the hospital compound where we live.  

We turn left, and my senses are assailed from all sides. Horns honk from passing cars and trucks. Reggae music blares from a shop across the street. (The electricity must have come back on since we left our house.) Exhaust clouds around us as we walk along the muddy shoulder toward the roundabout where our road meets the road that runs south into town. Cars here don't have to do emissions tests, apparently, and I cough on the fumes. There is colour everywhere: grass greener than I ever saw in California, brilliant azure sky, and vivid—even garish—patterns in women's clothing.We veer left at the roundabout, and I see a gaggle of green cars parked in a grassy area, each with a wide yellow stripe painted horizontally all the way around the car below the door handle. I'm reminded of making a similar stripe while dyeing Easter eggs by putting a rubber band around the egg before dipping it. Aunt Janne tells us that taxis from different states have different colour patterns. Taxis from Kano, for example, are blue with a white stripe. 

Aunt Janne walks up to a parked taxi, an old Peugeot 504 station wagon, and negotiates with the driver. I hear her say, "Terminus" but am not sure if that's a place or a price. The taxi looks a lot like the station wagon we used to own in California, except it's more beat-up. The paint is scratched in numerous places, and I see dents along the passenger side. The back bumper is twisted and rusty. Aunt Janne gives the driver a few notes of currency—naira—and we clamber in. There is a row of seats behind the bench seat that I would normally call "the back seat." One of the back seats pushes forward with the lifting of a little handle, and Shelley and I climb in the way back. Aunt Janne sits in the front seat, and Mom, Lisa, and Kimmie sit in the middle seat. Aunt Janne explains that normally the taxi driver would stop along the way to pick up more clients, but she has paid up-front for a direct ride to the centre of town, Terminus. 

The taxi looks older on the inside than it does on the outside. The seat cushions beneath us are torn in several places, and I can see the springs inside. The windows are cracked—the windshield looks almost shattered over in the lower right corner. The doors are missing panels to cover their innards, leaving metal rods and gears exposed. The driver's side back door has no handle on the inside at all. The upholstery smells odd. Kimmie scrunches up her nose and tells me it's a goat smell. Aunt Janne shushes her as the driver shifts gears and we leave the car park. 

It isn't a long ride, but I have never been this direction in town before. Most of the women we pass—even the young girls my age or smaller—wear a head-covering that covers all but the face. In other parts of town where I've been, the women cover their hair with an elaborately tied piece of colourful cloth. Here, however, the women's heads and shoulders are completely covered by a single draped solid-colour cloth—grey or white. It reminds me of pictures I've seen of girls in Saudi Arabia, except the girls' faces are visible. I wonder about this but am too shy to ask. We pass a man pushing a wheelbarrow that is full to nearly overflowing with huge white sacks. Another man pulls a two-wheeled cart filled with 10-gallon plastic water jugs. At an intersection we are passed by a motorcycle carrying a man and two children—one in front of him and one behind. None of them are wearing helmets. I can't believe how many people are on the streets. I'm sure there are more people on foot than there are in cars. 

And then we are at the roundabout they call Terminus. It's jam-packed with vehicles—taxis like ours, vans big and small, bicycles, big trucks, motorcycles, and private vehicles. The driver pulls over, blocking two other cars, and Aunt Janne gets out and opens the back door. We clamber out, and she hands the driver another note.  

"Mun gode," she says, nodding her head, and we move back from the taxi. 

"That's Main Market over there," Aunt Janne tells us, gesturing with her chin towards a huge multi-story building to our left. "Stay together." We start walking in that direction, Shelley, Kimmie, and I linking arms as we follow our moms and Lisa through the crowds. There are just so many people—men, women, children, old people, young people, all shifting and cutting each other off. I've lived in Los Angeles, but I've never been downtown, and this is new to me.  

We walk a short way and then turn to cross the intersection diagonally, first to the roundabout and then to the market building corner. There is no traffic light, no crosswalk, no policeman to direct traffic. It is a free-for-all, every-man-for-himself fight against traffic. Fortunately, Aunt Janne is a pro and makes sure we all cross safely amid the tide of people and push of cars. The traffic is actually an advantage, as it's easier to pick our way between cars going only 5 miles an hour than dashing between speeding cars. Still, I'm relieved when we reach the opposite corner without injury.  

This is where the fun really begins.