You can't be a Sissy in Africa

Courtesy: Google Map

I started travelling across Africa in the early 90s. Not quite following Dr. Livingstone but, most certainly before most people in the world found out it wasn’t one country.

For my sins, or my forefather’s perhaps, I ended up travelling the length and breadth of Sub Saharan Africa and names from distant history and geography lessons came alive to me.

I found myself in exotic places – from camping in the Kalahari with only moonlight as company, to eating succulent prawns in Maputo dipped in hot Portuguese sauce and right down to Mombasa to conjure up images of Sindbad and his trips across to Zanzibar.

It was business that took me – that too, the business of developing insurance and investment opportunities; to work in conjunction with the venerable World Bank to provide support on mundane matters such as capital market reforms, budgetary disciplines, banking regulations and pension funding. In the land of the blind I had been told that the one eyed man was the king. Perhaps that’s what attracted me to the African savannah? Only to find out that there were quite a few kings already. Some ruled the roost through manipulation, some quite clearly through cleverness, while most through ignorance and exploitation.

Coming as I did, fresh cut from India, I felt at home. So much disparity, so much nepotism, so much poverty, so much talk and no action. So little, yet people were happy, eager, adaptable, pushy and completely disorganized.

Déjà vu for me, as I gleefully converted my hard-earned experience of managing chaos in India into a magic touch on the unsuspecting many; most of whom felt that I had learnt the ways of Africa quickly, little realizing it had actually taken a lifetime in India already!

Traffic in Nigeria (Photo: Akintunde Akinleye / Reuters)

One city that captured the essence of my being and put me in the biggest comfort zone was Lagos. Yes - Lagos. The much maligned ,teeming city of 16 million people and the capital of Nigeria. There I found spirit akin to the streets of Mumbai, the vigor of a nubile virgin and the patience of an octogenarian, all rolled into one.

The place is best described as a riot. Not built but under construction all the time by its millions of inhabitants – not necessarily built brick by brick, because there aren’t enough to go around anyway (BRICS notwithstanding!) but shack by shack, sweat on sweat, body upon body.

The city epitomizes the Nigerian nation: proud, independent and self-fulfilling. It is a magnet for Nigeria’s millions of homeless and hopeless to find solace and be relevant.

You see it in the streets as you wait in one of the many interminable traffic jams.
Bright, sharp youngsters hustling everything from chilled water bottles to Kenny Rogers CDs to the Seven Habits of Effective People and, most certainly, the latest Nollywood movies.

Yes, Nigeria is home to a thriving movie industry and produces more movies than Bollywood and which are followed right across the continent!

Without exception these street hawkers are well dressed – torn, maybe, but clean and ironed, hair brushed, shoes shining and their eyes not pleading but penetrating. Behind each of those eyes are tales of hunger and despair - hidden beneath the sparkle of hope that they exude instead - and a simple message of ‘work with me’ not `help me` written all over them.

I was told in one of my early trips that a Nigerian doesn’t want anything except respect. He is tired of being misused, misinformed and misruled for generations. He can accept it all - but not disrespect and patronization.

In so many ways Lagos is nothing but a microcosm of the developing world. Where the issues of the inner cities are the same and the story around failed leadership is uncanny in its replication. Yet the pyramid and its dreaded bottom keep pushing up.

Any company wishing to sell anything to the consumer in Nigeria must try it out in the streets of Lagos. Distribution and logistics work on the principle of reaching out - like anywhere else. Except in this case it’s being reached out through many faces, carrying wares on their heads and pushing people to pull down their windows in busy traffic to sell. A SUPER market of ideas and innovation - not a supermarket of floors and uniforms though.

An even more potent access point into the masses in Nigeria is through its millions of slums and boat homes. Out there you will find neatly stacked shops, clean and organized, with products ranging from second hand clothing to used steering wheels to gear boxes to thankfully unused soaps and condoms, even simple medicines and cell phones and all being hawked under MTN umbrellas or Coca Cola banners in small packets and sizes, even selling detergents by the spoon, soaps by the cut and hopes by the millions.

The real deal is there - to be able to penetrate those markets and those minds - and give them what they need at a price they can pay and at a quality they can trust.

It was into this city of mayhem and humaneness that my Operations head and I had the fortune of bringing our well-heeled Botswana colleague one day. My Operations head then was a young, German-South African guy whose naivety of youth coupled, perhaps, with my persuasive skills had already made him a serious Nigerian fan. He travelled to Lagos almost every month - and was particularly keen on eating out in the many nice places Lagos does have and then finishing off an evening with a trip down to Lagos’s noisy and busy night clubs. Both of us had become brave and regularly took a cab at night, paying the driver to wait outside and partaking in the music and dance of the quintessential Nigerian beat until it was time to go back out to the cab and be taken safely back to our hotels.

But our dear Botswana colleague - having been pampered all his life in a prosperous Gaborone - was not quite sure if coming to Lagos with these ‘mavericks` was actually that hot an idea after all.

A street in Lagos (Photo: Getty Images)

Since one of his travelling companions was his boss- he obviously wasn’t voicing his reservations too loudly but did manage, under the pretext of work, jet lag and flu to have stayed away from joining us the previous two nights. But that was the third and final night and we were adamant that he came out with us.

His natural curiosity by that time had been ripened, his fears had been somewhat reduced seeing us every morning at  breakfast safe and sound and his manhood had been challenged by non-Africans! So, he agreed and we went out to have a splendid time till that moment of truth when we came out of the night club and couldn’t locate our taxi driver.

So off we went, with alcohol-led fearlessness and belief in our destiny to look at each and every cab to find the one we had asked to wait. The street was dark, quiet and infested with cab drivers and pimps. Our poor friend followed, as he had no choice, until we eventually reached the corner of the street and finally found our cab driver.
The relief was palpable.

But before we could get in, my German man decided that the street corner was ideal for him to release some of the pressures of beer and asked if we would join him. Our Botswana guy was livid and excused himself by saying he was scared of mosquitoes and malaria and hence would not like to go near the drain that was pointed out to him as the `nearest place of relief` in true golfing style.

So he waited in the cab, alone with the driver, very pale and relieved in a different sense and ready to go home.

When we returned, my man from Germany however, began to rain down choice expletives on the driver and proceeded to tell him that ‘next time’ he wasn’t going to pay the cabbie if he went missing and was irresponsible and deviant. He wasn’t stopping his rant anytime soon and ignored the driver who kept saying, in his usual polite way, that his phone battery had died.

Finally, our Botswana friend had enough. Hours of pent up anxiety, aggravation and fear and now this tirade on the one guy who would take him home safely?

He screamed, “Guys - stop this!! I don’t think it’s a good idea to take this guy on, what if he pulls a knife or something or throws us out here!?”

There was sudden silence.

And our white, diminutive German, all of 5 foot 5, glared at the 6 foot, 120kg Botswana African - and I with my small Indian frame and conciliatory approach tried to move in between.

He looked at both the driver and my good friend from Gaborone and quietly said:
“Africa is not for sissies guys - if you can’t take the heat, don’t come to the kitchen”
Amen…

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.