A Bit of Difference

Sefi Atta

• Publisher: Interlink Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781623710217
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

At thirty-nine, Deola Bello, a Nigerian expatriate in London, is dissatisfied with being single and working overseas. Deola works as a financial reviewer for an international charity, and when her job takes her back to Nigeria in time for her father's five-year memorial service, she finds herself turning her scrutiny inward. In Nigeria, Deola encounters changes in her family and in the urban landscape of her home, and new acquaintances who offer unexpected possibilities. Deola's journey is as much about evading others' expectations to get to the heart of her frustration as it is about exposing the differences between foreign images of Africa and the realities of contemporary Nigerian life. Deola's urgent, incisive voice captivates and guides us through the intricate layers and vivid scenes of a life lived across continents. With Sefi Atta's characteristic boldness and vision, A Bit of Difference limns the complexities of our contemporary world. This is a novel not to be missed.

Foreign Capitals

On her overnight flight from Heathrow Airport to Lagos, she sits next to a woman who is reading a Bible. The woman started before the plane took off, mumbling psalms to herself. When the plane is about to land, the woman brings out a white rosary from her handbag and begins to pray out loud. The engine drowns out her voice. Passengers unclasp their seatbelts as the plane taxis. They grab their hand luggage from the overhead compartments. A flight attendant, who has not bothered to dye her hair in a while, ambles down the aisle saying, “Please remain seated.” No one pays her any attention.

The moving walkway in the airport is stationary. Deola hurries past rows of blue chairs and down the escalator, which is also immobile. She is first in line at Passport Control, which means she has to wait longer for her luggage. Two flights have arrived this morning. Passengers sit on the edge of the carousel, hissing and sighing. Their suitcases emerge between cardboard boxes, which are untidily taped. The air conditioner is not working and the spot where Deola is standing reeks of armpits.

A gap-toothed man walks past her shouting on his cell phone: “Our luggages were delayed! I said our luggages were delayed! I can’t make it until tomorrow!” He laughs and pats his handkerchief, which is hanging out of his jacket like a limp tongue. “My prince! My professor! No, it’s not New York I went to this time. It was London. For business.”

Deola cherishes her homecomings because of characters like him. She loves her fellow Nigerians, especially this one with his white pointed shoes. His arse is halfway up his back and his jacket almost reaches his knees. His oblivion is a spectacle of beauty. She can’t stop looking at him.

She eventually gets her suitcase and wheels it toward Customs. The customs officers are men. One scratches his head and asks, “Sister, wetin you bring come?” He eyes her midriff as his colleague chews on a toothpick.

“Nothing,” she says.

They wave her through. Her mother is in the crowd waiting on the other side of the automatic doors. She hugs her and they rock from side to side. She could easily lift her mother up, yet she is somehow able to lean on her.

“What happened?”

“There was a delay with our luggage.”

“We’ve been waiting for over an hour now.”

“Sorry.”

“I was beginning to worry. The driver has been circulating outside.”

Her mother, Remi, wears a navy T-shirt, white trousers and wedge-heel espadrilles. Her perfume is musky and she has a braided chignon attached to the back of her hair. A small woman, she parts the crowd while raising her hand in a stately manner and ignores the touts who call out, “Yes? You need cab?”

Outside, she asks, “Where is this fellow for heaven’s sake?” and signals to the driver, who is standing behind the barricade. He waves to indicate that he will bring the car around.

She turns to Deola. “So how are you, Miss Adeola?”

“Fine,” Deola says, feeling as if she is back from school with a report card that doesn’t quite measure up.

“Is this a new hairstyle?”

Deola smiles. It is a prelude to a disagreement they have had too many times. She has been through experimental phases: twisting, dyeing and perennial braiding with extensions. Her hair once fell out after a relaxer.

The air is humid this morning and she sweats in her shirt and trousers. Her pashmina scarf hangs on her bag and her loafers pinch. The driver manages to park by the barricade. He loads her suitcase in the boot of the Range Rover. She and her mother climb into the backseat.

“Is this new?” she asks, pressing the leather.

“It’s your brother’s,” her mother says. “He lends me his driver once in a while.”

“What happened to yours?”

“I sacked him.”

“What if he needs his?”

She is conscious that they are talking about the driver as if he is unable to hear them. She sees his eyes in the rearview mirror. He seems to be concentrating on the traffic ahead.

“You do what you must,” her mother says.

“At night? With armed robbers?”

Her mother shrugs. “How for do? They attack in broad daylight.”

Deola straps on her seatbelt. “You still don’t use a seatbelt, Mummy?”

She is surprised by the resignation she encounters at home. Her mother’s eyesight is poor, yet she won’t wear glasses, except to read. The roads in Lagos are full of potholes. Why would a seatbelt matter? Her mother says she doesn’t use them because they wrinkle her clothes. Deola starts to object and her mother raises her hand and says, “Jo, please.”

The driver slows down over speed bumps and turns up the air conditioner. They pass Church of the Ascension and a sign that says, “Welcome to Lagos, a place of aquatic splendor.”

The city is shrinking, or perhaps it is just more crowded. It is rainy season, which makes Deola wonder why she ever called this time of year summer. The streets are waterlogged. Some of the sights along the way are new to her, like the organized labor mass transport vans, but most are familiar. There are yellow taxis and vans, buses with biblical messages like “El Shaddai” and “Weep Not Crusaders,” lorries dripping with wet sand, unfinished buildings and broken-down cars. People are crossing the median of the highway and rams are feeding in troughs. The stalls in Oshodi Market look like prison cells and the skyline is cluttered with billboards advertising shippers, banks and computer colleges. Smoke rises behind a bush of palm trees. On one end of Third Mainland Bridge is a cluster of houses, and on the other is the University of Lagos. The edge of the lagoon is crowded with canoes and fishing nets.

“Are the street lights working now?” Deola asks her mother.

When she lived in Lagos, Third Mainland Bridge was a deathtrap at night. Drivers used to just slam into stationary vehicles, even with their headlights fully on.

“Nothing works,” her mother says, in a tone that approximates smugness. “We thank God if we’re able to get from A to B.”

“How are the plans for Daddy’s memorial going?”

“We’re keeping it simple. Otherwise, it’s hopeless. In the morning, we go to church. In the afternoon, we have lunch. That’s about it.”

“What about Aunty Bisi?”

“Bisi? Bisi is busy with her husband.”

Aunty Bisi is her mother’s younger sister, who spent holidays in their house when she was in university. The guestroom was hers. She taught Deola and her siblings songs like “Ruby Tuesday.” Once in a while she saved them from punishments. Her mother paid for Aunty Bisi’s university education and training as a chartered secretary. Aunty Bisi must have felt indebted from then on because she was always around, helping with Christmas parties, weddings and other family functions.

Aunty Bisi is in her fifties now and for years has been involved with one of her clients, who is known as an industrialist and philanthropist. She is not actually married to him. He is a Muslim and has other wives. She has a son by him, and he supports her financially.

“What about Brother Dots?” Deola asks.

“Dotun?” her mother says. “He’s fine. He’s flying in on Saturday. Why?”

“Nothing. I just wondered.”

Her father was married before. Brother Dots is her half-brother, who grew up with his mother. He is an engineer and he works for an oil company in Port Harcourt. He was a huge Jimmy Cliff fan in his teens. He had her and Jaiye playing backup singers and choreographed their moves.

As they drive into Ikoyi, Deola notices the oil-stained pavements bordering the road. It is Sunday, so the road is less congested, but there are hawkers and newspaper vendors. There are also beggars, who will become peripheral once she becomes habituated. Signboards are perched on buildings that were once residential: Phenomenon Clothing, FSB International Bank and Sherlaton Restaurant.

“Na wa,” Deola says. “Ikoyi is practically commercial now.”

“You have no idea,” her mother says.

There was a time Deola could walk down the main road here. She ran errands for her mother at Bhojson’s Supermarket and got her cholera inoculations from a Lebanese doctor whose practice was across the road. She would stop for a banana nut sundae at the ice cream pavilion in Falomo Shopping Center further up the road. Sometimes, late in the afternoon, she rode her Chopper bicycle to Victoria Island on the other side of Falomo Bridge. Victoria Island was mostly anonymous streets and unclaimed plots then. Now it is as cramped and commercial as Ikoyi.

They get home and the driver waits as the watchman unlocks the gate. A Pentecostal church has occupied the house next door. Someone has painted “Jesus is Lord” rather sloppily on the wall. The church is in the middle of a Sunday service. Deola hears a man (or woman) singing off-key into a microphone, “Oh Lord, my God, how excellent is your name.” There is a chorus of electricity generators, which means there has been a power cut. Her mother has complained about the noise from next door, but she never thought it was this raucous.

“What is this?” she asks.

“The born-again Christians,” her mother says. “I told them, ‘The Bible says love thy neighbor. Is this any way to love thy neighbor?’”

Their original neighbors were an elderly French couple who owned a yellow Citroën with a sunroof. They returned to France and a succession of Nigerian businesses has occupied the house next door. The first was a hair salon and the second a boutique. For a while, the place was vacant, then it was an art gallery, which folded before the church moved in.

The pastor of the church has had the front yard cemented and the back of the building extended. If anyone complains about the increase in traffic caused by his congregation, he shows them his planning permit and invites them to join his church. On Tuesday evenings, he holds a spiritual clinic and on Thursday evenings, a revival hour. The family that lived on the other side of the church couldn’t tolerate the caterwauling, as her mother calls it. They moved away. ...