Fear

Yesterday, I came the closest I’ve come to throwing it all in and going home.

After a week of being in Abuja, of standards of living comparable to the UK, and of taking taxis everywhere, it was always going to be a shock to come back to Kaduna and to taking okadas. I felt a little unsafe on our ride into work (but then I always do – I never feel fully safe on those things), but then the journey home was something else.

For some reason, the main road had far more traffic than we’d ever seen at that time of day, and it was backed up a long way from one of the roundabouts. When okada drivers come to traffic jams (or ‘go slows’ as they’re known here), they try to find ways through them. Or around them. And if there isn’t a way, they invent one. So we found ourselves weaving in and out of tightly packed cars and buses, mounting curbs, humps and bumps to take muddy dirt tracks at the side of the road – onto the road, off the road, back onto the road, each time colliding with the driver and feeling like I was going to come off. Twice I had to slam my hand onto the bonnet of a vehicle – a 4x4 and a bus, both much larger than we were – which was trying to drive into us from the side.

That’s beyond my risk threshold, I’m afraid. I stopped the driver and got off – in the middle of what seemed like an industrial estate, and with no other prospects of getting home for a while since the roads were too crazy to catch a bus or bike and far too busy to consider walking alongside or crossing. After a bit of a walk along quiet side roads, we found a chop house (café) where we sat down for a drink. Weeping into my bitter lemon, I wondered how everyone else does it. Other volunteers seem happy enough to take okadas, or to take shared cars or buses along busy roads at alarming speeds; and Nigerians do it all the time! I’m finding it really hard to know that whatever I want to accomplish today, I’m going to have to take a potentially terrifying and dangerous journey to do it. And it’s exhausting to tense all your muscles and hold your breath for large portions of your commute because you’re worried you’re going to hit that car or come off the bike.

I know the answer to how Nigerians and other volunteers do it – they don’t worry as much as I do. And actually, in the case of many Nigerians, the answer seems to be that, since they believe that God will choose their time to die, they have no control over it and there’s therefore no need to worry about it. I have to say that’s becoming an ever more appealing philosophy. Although, it’s also the reason why no okada drivers wear helmets and presumably the cause of many deaths which could have been avoided.