Water Woes
2024; Indiana University Press; Volume: 135; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2979/tra.00008
ISSN0041-1191
Autores ResumoWater Woes Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim (bio) Pete already pulled the engine, making my panting and pushing on the paddle useless. I quickly hauled the paddle out of the water and dropped it by the bowl of wriggling fish and folded net at the bottom of the canoe, the coloured vessel's nose slicing the water waves at a kind of speed I never knew it could run. All my life nowhere had ever really felt completely safe for me. But as we pulled away from the jetty and its surrounding plushness, I wished I could stay in this canoe forever. "I warned you, Nosa. You have messed us up!" I ignored Osa's childish whining, instead focusing on a shiver floating down my back as I pictured what could have happened if we had been caught. I remembered my time in the police cell and the floating turned my bowels. That cell was worse than our damp cabin back at the shanty town; our cabin that the health officers already said should not be fit for humans o. But police people did not care like that, so if they caught us right now, it's in that horrid cell we'd sleep tonight. I looked at the sky stretching before us in the distance, and right now, as much as I hated our cabin, I longed for its algae-coated walls. I turned my stare to Pete and Osa, and could tell that like mine, their hearts were beating like the boots of marching policemen the last time they came to the shanty town for their usual arrests. The fierce afternoon sun bounced around our sweaty, blackened faces from the water, stripping our guilt naked in its glare. Osa's whining didn't stop. But nobody was pursuing us. There was a long tail of roused water on our trail, and the calm wavy stretch on either side of it. The only person in sight was standing on the jetty we left behind at the edge of the beautiful Water Garden Estate, small like a giant toy in the distance, shaking her head it seemed, but making no attempt to pursue until Osa did the stupidest thing ever. At first, I thought maybe Pete threw our day's catch back into the water, but there was no way a few dozen fishes could make a splash that loud, plus Osa's whining had finally ceased. Alas, it was the stupid boy jumping out and swimming his way back to the disappointed girl on the [End Page 78] faraway jetty. The marching boots in my heart ascended into kicking and stamping. The glints in Pete's eyes told me his heart was taking just as heavy a beating. ________ I cannot begin to tell you about life in Makoko and why I never felt safe in our small shanty town. The sun would rise and set and there still would be plenty left to be said. Everybody knows how squalid our Makoko is anyway. The floating cabins and raft houses sit on the dirty waters by the Third Mainland Bridge, where those of us whose parents cannot afford space on land cluster in our shared misery. The water is everything to us, giving us food to eat and taking back the pee and poo that we make of it. But we are not the reason the water is dirty o, blame that on the land-Lagosians. He who throws away the waste might not remember, but when it finds its way to us, we have nowhere to push it to. And when the health people come around, they see traces of the exoticism peeking through the dirtied moulds and algae coatings, all things we could never afford, they still mark us as dirty and blame us for polluting the water. I didn't always use to be a part of this mess. Until five years ago when I was seven, I had neither seen water this large nor known it was possible to live anywhere but on land. As I was told, my birth had killed my Ma, and because my Pa had walked away and not returned...
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