WORK IN PROGRESS: The Dark World by Omoruyi Uwuigiaren

It is cruel to negotiate some roads. One could spend several hours and who cares if you die trying. It is a silencer. It hurts. It could bring a man to his knees. The loser is a meal to the bald vultures. In the weakness, I was strong, tough and mean.

Regularly counting the cost of my valor has helped my poor soul to tread cautiously. My loss if I ever had any was taken into consideration because smart people draw strength from their fall. The cost of finishing strong and staying alive against all odds is mine to bear.

I drove through Lawanson road, an old narrow way leading off Itire and I had my first sight of the Palace of the Itire Monarch. It was old-fashioned. It was African with a fine red painted threshold. It was old. Things had changed. Here the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Every day is a journey. The day we close our eyes upon the light of the world, the journey ends. Most times, it is out of our hands to choose how we will embrace the next world. There are forces that rule in the affair of men but fate would place a man where he truly belongs.

Now I am on a journey that looks like a formality. Sadly, in this ever-changing world, there are no formalities. We only have change and challenges and a reasonable man must bend any circumstance to his favour.  

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The Lawanson road connects Oshodi-Apapa expressway. If you are in a hurry to embrace silence and get out of a third world misery, you are welcome to this part of the world. You can never have enough of the misfortune on this highway. Trucks queue on both sides, trapped in a constant battle to outsmart one another. There are dilapidated buildings along the road and their numbers scary.

Most of the buildings have no occupants because they are like a dead man bound by horrible tradition that made it difficult for his people to commit him to mother earth without any offence. The cost of maintenance and travelling back and forth from the buildings would leave a deep hole in any pocket. The implications are damning and grievous. Weight of which tied to a large man and tossed overboard a ship into the sea would drown him. Death has no joy.  

No matter how frugal, miserly or clever a man is, he can hardly recover all of the loss of wasting his time. You cannot live out your life in happiness in a city that is poorly organized. It is bad and tragedy to born in such a place.  

The beauty of the city is only a figment of some people’s imagination. The city is overrated. Bizarrely awkward and could cut any destiny short. It is delusional and fraud to put yourself where you are not. Paradise is arguably city of excellence. Is Lagos paradise?

Sanity is a very expensive commodity. You risk raising weak people. When weak people are more in number, they are powerful. If unhindered, they could also raise for themselves a leader. You will think like the people with whom you spend most of your time. The world will perish under the feet of the weak.

The gridlock never dies. The dark nights never end. There is no charity in the air. The cruel hands of fate snatched it. In those buildings are economic losses. Weakness is also borne out of stress. There is no point to prove. You can never live out your life in happiness and freedom in a city under siege. It is tragedy to train up a child in this creepy kind of place.

It is easy to be a prophet of doom when the young men emerging from the college after a hard five years were faced by a world indifferent to their enthusiasm and bursting knowledge. Results that is never palatable. Those who lack courage and a will to survive, leaves the troubled world behind. Others take to vices, which leaves them less human.

Trying to live at all cost, they end up paying the price. The cost of breaking the law far outweighs the price of obeying it. The horror stories of heartless and vicious people cannot be undermined. Tales by young people who managed to secure employment only make one hardened and embattled.

Some were just little bits of dirt to be starved and worked into the ground by the employers who are heartless. There is never a day off. Some to wash the car, dig the garden, feed the dogs, and push trucks and do family shopping for the boss. What about others who are forced to render services to keep their job? Many stretched beyond limit, broken and left for dead. No human is carved out of stones.