₦airaland Forum

Tales at the Pump

4 May, 2015 in Fiction / Literature
by Kunladi Olagunro / Nairalander @Kuzaku

It was Mama Ada who told you to go and buy fuel to keep at home, because everyone was saying there would be scarcity. The next day, you took a small five-litre keg and trekked the dusty road to the filling station. When you got there, you were surprised to see how people thronged in, pushing and shouting, and clutching kegs. Sometimes, in their rush, they swayed to one side, sometimes to another. Before you joined the long queue of keg-clutching hopeful Lagosians, you marveled at how much it looked like a brightly coloured caterpillar.

The man in front of you smelled of sweat and engine oil. He had a brash energy, monitoring lines and shouting orders without leaving his line. He shouted at the fuel attendant—a dumpy lady with small eyes and pale lips—to stop selling for people who were not on the queue because they paid her extra—did everyone else not have one head?

He turned to you, and told you that he had been looking for fuel for close to a week now. You stared at him, surprised. You did not know that the fuel scarcity had been going on for long. You did not know that people had been clutching their kegs and their hopes to filling stations everyday… and each time the gate was closed and the attendants shouted that there was no more fuel, they returned home, kegs empty, hopes deflated.

He told you that he had a wife and three children who attended private schools. He told you he was a bus driver, and that he got his bus in January, from a man called ‘Alhaji London’. He paid his money in installments every week. But for three weeks now, he could not deliver money to Alhaji London. Because of the fuel scarcity. Two days ago, Alhaji London had sent one of his daughters to come and ask for the money, and the lady had rudely shouted at him to, “Get up and find a way to pay my father’s money! Or else.”

“Those ajebo pikin no get manners,” a woman said behind you.

You turned to look; you did not know she had been listening to your conversation. She said she had been looking for fuel since yesterday. Two days ago, and the day before, her husband came home with empty kegs. They could not switch on the generator, and even NEPA light was bad, and was it not such a shame on ‘those people’ who had sold their right to good governance for a yard of ankara and two DeRicas of rice?

There was an agitation to her demeanour, with the way the pidgin English flew out of her mouth. One hand irritably brushed off the sweat from her plump cheeks, while the other tightly clutched a yellow ten-litre keg that read ‘Gino Vegetable Oil’. She was angry at something intangible, something more powerful than her. And because she was unable to release her outrage, she kept it bottled inside. Until it started to seep out, and collect on her skin, the way droplets of water collect on cold bottles.

It was a moneyed-looking man driving a sleek Honda that she finally vented her anger on. The man, tall and neatly dressed, did not ease his car into the long queue of cars that stretched past the gate. Instead, he drove in and parked a few metres beside a man who sat on an okada, gloved hands resting on his cheeks. You watched as he came close to the attendant and whispered into her ear, before crumpling a few thousand naira into her palm. You watched, too, as the attendant smiled widely and nodded, before removing the nozzle and extending the hose to the man’s fuel tank. You were used to this, this buying of privilege by those who could afford it. But what you were not used to was the outburst of the woman behind you.

“Tufiakwa!” she shouted, and rushed forward, her huge bulk pushing through the human caterpillar.

Prompted, others began to shout, to throw kegs and say, “Lai lai! You cannot sell for him!”, “Does he have two heads?”, “Shey na because we no get Honda?!”, “Corruption cannot leave this Nigeria!”, “Imagine!”

The woman sat on the tiled bottom of the pump and said, “You go sell for me today oh! Shey na because say I no drive car, abi I no give you extra money?”

The attendant stood, one hand at her side, the other holding the nozzle, unsure of what to do. The man stood too, his fuel tank open, his eyes darting around behind his glasses. Finally, he locked his tank and collected his money from the attendant. Then he got into his car and glided away, just as some people began hitting their jerry cans against the smooth body of his car, hooting and laughing, shouting, “See am. Ojoro man, yeye somebody.”

You joined in the laughter too, amazed at how Lagosians can find humour in every situation. Beside you, two women and a man were talking. One of the women said she bought “black market” fuel beside her house for ₦150. The other woman shook her head and said her husband could no longer drive his car to work, because fuel was too expensive and scarce. Now he boarded okadas that charged too much. The man said less customers came to his barbing salon since the scarcity, and that he was forced to charge high prices because, “Black market in my area costs ₦170 and one haircut costs ₦200 at least, so where is the gain?”

It was late in the afternoon before the attendant attended to you. As she put the nozzle in your keg and filled it up, you watched the meter carefully.

That day, you had become one of the hopefuls here, people who were flattened by things beyond their power, people whose hopes rose and fell, whose tomorrows depended on the whims of fuel attendants. As you clutched your keg and walked out of the filling station, you heard a man in a loose blue shirt telling someone how he could not visit his parents in the village, because the bus fare was enough to buy a whole goat. Outside, new people who wore their hopes like face powder, trooped in with jerrycans and new stories.


Source: http://enaijize.com/blog/2015/05/04/tales-at-the-pump/

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