Caboose

I was sitting in the front seat of the minibus, so I had an excellent view as the motorbike veered across the road in front of us and we hit it. I saw the bike’s driver and passenger clearly in the headlights during their brief flights and felt the motorbike scraping under the front of the bus.

My immediate reaction was to jump out of the bus and check that the driver and passenger were OK but then remembered the VSO training and stories from expats: if you’re involved in any kind of road accident get out of there as soon as possible.

Thinking about it I think it’s fairly clear that your moral duty is to stay to at least find out the extent of any injuries and offer assistance but there seems to be an incredible fear of retribution among white people here. I’m not sure how much this fear is based on reality and how much is based on racism but I’ve allowed myself to become infected by it and allowed it to delay my actions last night.

I think a lot of the fear is down to fear of the “mob”, immediately after any accident people will gather and immediately start arguing about whose fault it was and what recompense there should be. Sometimes these gatherings become violent but I get the feeling that there is more fear of violence than is justified and that this is due to an ingrained feeling that “primitive” Africans are more likely to resort to violence. In fact I’ve found the opposite to be the case in Nigeria, people are less violent in general and there is little of the random (often alcohol-fuelled) violence we have back in the UK.

Fortunately both the driver and passenger quickly picked themselves up, the driver wheeled his bike off to the side of the road and the passenger was walking normally. In UK terms I’d say the fault was shared between the bus driver, who had been overtaking at excessive speed on a busy road, and the bike rider, who had no lights and tried to turn across the road in front of us. The people on the bike were lucky that it was struck low down and threw them off rather than scraping them along the ground or them bouncing off the bus windscreen.

(Not a very good diagram but my office computer only has Microsoft Paint for drawing and my laptop is unwell)

I hung around the outskirts of the argument for a while, decided that my involvement wouldn’t help anyone and hopped on another bus.

Harmattan was especially serious today, wandering around Kaduna the okada riders all seemed to have aged suddenly, the pale dust had turned their eyelashes, eyebrows and hair grey.

Important note for the semi-literate: The word “primitive” is enclosed in quotes above to indicate that I don’t agree with that idea (in fact I disagree strongly). If you’re going to send me poorly-written emails all in capital letters at least try to read and understand what I’ve written first. Thank you.