One Danfo Way Home - By Onyinye Ihezukwu
So this evening I'm chewing gum and gazing out of the danfo window, caught up in a bumper-to-bumper file on Lekki-Epe expressway. It's hot. Really hot and I'm squeezed between a snoring old man and the bus window, slightly frosted from exhaust fumes and dust. I have short tubes as legs, but I still have to stretch them once in a while. Hah! I leave behind one wahala which is work, to meet another wahala, this Lagos traffic.

Now I study the face of the young man in the next lane driving a sleeping oyibo man in his car. He is carefully watching the traffic. His eyes are serious. Studious. He looks more pathetic with his air-conditioning than I look with the hot fumes from other cars blowing into my face. I look at the faces of the young people hawking water, la-casera, plantain chips and popcorn and wonder how much of that they are going to sell to make enough money for painkillers to sleep well, let alone enough to live by. I watch them run after cars and buses, picking their money and handing out change, dodging okadas with feet clad in slippers and the fierce heat on their backs. I chew my gum harder. By now I feel a headache coming but I resolve to keep my jaws moving, something to do to take my mind off the oppressive atmosphere. A child before me starts crying and his mother tries to hush him. He cries and frets till she takes off his tee and starts to fan him with it. The child's chest is riddled with a rash. The rash climbs up the child's neck and spreads across his shoulders. He calms when she fans him and when she stops to rest he resumes crying. A man behind folds his newspaper and starts to fan the child, making cooing sounds to distract him from the biting heat. "Thank you, oga" the woman mutters gratefully to the man. The child calms a little and even smiles at the man. Then he rests his head on his mother's neck and closes his eyes.

I study the angry rash on the child's body. Na wa. We are bound to die with this traffic. We and our children. Every now and then, a newly bought car is added to these Lagos roads, to this same traffic, to this same confusion. And the knot grows tighter and tighter. I imagine tires in motion starting to scrape against one another. I watch the dirt-rimmed lagoon and wonder about alternatives to road transport, about trains, about commercial commuter ferries, about a government that ought to be busy creating options that are meant to be solutions. Shalalala…timdutiti…I start to hum a note. It's not even supposed to be musical. Or is it? I feel my chest squeezing in on itself. I lean out of the window still chewing. The danfo driver switches off his engine and the bus coughs to a stop. We wait. The heat goes up. The child wakes and starts to fret again. "Wait the bus will soon start moving." His mother says to him. The man behind has stopped fanning the child too. The child squeals at his mother and she starts fanning again. I can see the cars ahead starting to crawl. Our danfo driver kicks his engine to life and starts crawling ahead too. The other lane is moving and the oyibo man's driver drives past. His boss is still sleeping, his thick head bobbing gently against the seat. The car moves away from view. It's a Toyota Camry 2007. I am still staring at the car's ikebe when our danfo slows to a halt. Another car pulls up on the other lane. We wait. This time, the driver in the other lane is a woman with two children sleeping in the back seat. She has her hand fastened on the steering, clenching and unclenching her fingers. The children have their faces to each other and I can tell from their clothes that they are both girls. I watch their bodies rise and fall with their breaths. The old man sleeping beside me butts his nodding head against my shoulder. I shift in irritation and that wakes him up. He mutters something and settles back to sleep. I turn away still chewing. Too many sleepers today.

Hawkers whistle past, sticking their items in people's windows. A girl walks past with a tray of groundnuts on her head. A woman seated behind me calls to the girl. "Ei groundnut!" The girl stops and the woman buys some. "Please I take God beg you." The driver says without turning his head. "The person wey dey chop groundnut make im no use am spoil ma motto oh!"

"You suppose get dustbin for dis ya motto." Says the boy with earphones plugged to his ears. He is sitting in front of me, beside the woman with the fretting child. The driver says nothing. The about-to–eat-groundnut-woman he is referring to says nothing.

"Conductor make I no forget ma change for ya hand oh." The woman with the crying child says as she keeps fanning her child.

"Madam I never get hundred naira. Abi you get hundred collect two hundred?" the conductor says.

"See leave that thing you are talking and watch that woman eating groundnut in my bus." The driver says to the conductor in Igbo. "They buy 20 naira groundnut and make my life miserable with it. Keep an eye on her."

"Leave this groundnut thing." The conductor says in irritation.

"I say you should watch her!" The driver says. At this, the about-to–eat-groundnut woman who obviously understands Igbo starts to bark: "And what do you mean by that? If you keep a dirty house I don't! Look at this man oh. You should look at people before talking. Eh? You have no respect for your mother's age!"

"Madam dis no be issue of mother." The driver says in pidgin. "As you dey chop your groundnut, just dey put am for your bag. I take God beg you." Now the woman goes berserk, "Shetop ya mout! Is it this dirty useless bus that you bought from being a tout that you are making so much noise about?! Another word from you and I will call my son to come here and give you frog jump now! You are a useless ordinary tout and that is what you have been doing all your life!" I turn my face a little to the right like I am trying to stretch my tired neck and look at the woman's face. Her face is bloated with rage; her bleached skin is the colour of an angry boil. The curly weave-on on her hair is bouncing as she talks and gesticulates. Some passengers in the bus are giggling. The conductor is looking out of the window. The driver stretches in the heat and leans back in the chair. "Heh! You mean say person go miss dis match today?" he says to cheer himself up.

"Why you no put Brilla fm make person dey hear wetin dey happen small?" says the ear-phone boy.

"My radio don spoil." The driver replies him. "Na only cassette e dey play. Mmtsheww! Even sef I wan comot the radio so I go fit put video for here." He indicates the flip side of his visor. He rummages for a cassette tape somewhere and slides it into the player compartment of his dashboard. Osita Osadebe's osondu owendi fills the air. He starts to sing along. The now-eating-groundnut woman is silent and is eating her groundnut. Maybe he's disturbed further by the continuous cracking noise of the nuts because soon he starts to talk again. "Just no leave the groundnut fo my bus oh."

"Shetop!" The woman yells again. "See me see trouble oh. Groundnut I bought with my own money enh? I paid to enter this bus with my own money as well. Which kain wahala be dis now?"

"Driver you don dey find trouble" Some passengers murmur.

"Which kain trouble?" The driver is amused. "I no go suffer myself because of yeye groundnut oh. Na my own I dey talk so."

"But you suppose get dustbin for your bus na." They say. At that he says nothing.

"Infact, for dis tin you dey talk, I go spoil dis bus well well…" the woman says. "And if you tink say you sabi crase make I come down drag you down for dat ya seat deal wit you. Everybody here go run. Yeye man. No let me tell you word wey go make you go hang yourself today!" Some people laugh. Traffic starts to loosen and the driver moves the danfo ahead.

"Conductor make I no forget ma change oh," a girl in tight blouse that offers up her breasts like oranges in a saucer calls out.

"You get hundred collect two hundred?" the conductor asks. She says, "Heh! Abeg no ask me." The conductor continues looking out the window. As our danfo craws along, I notice a commotion ahead, by the side of the road. A little crowd is surrounding a car and an okada rider. Everyone is talking at the top of their lungs. A man is shouting into the face of the okada rider who is waving his crash helmet in his hand and shouting words in Yoruba and English. The shouting man is the oyibo man's driver. He is gesturing wildly and is short of beating the okada rider up. The Toyota Camry has a smashed rear light. A sweating policeman is wagging his finger and he is trying to be heard. Words fly about. Pay … don't tell me … abeg no be so … it is today … come with us … the wind tosses the words about and I just content my self with watching as we drive past and I see their mouths working furiously and silently like a movie with the volume turned down. A few people in the bus make commentaries and curse the hand that made okadas and their riders. This morning, on my way to work, I had seen another fight. It was between a conductor and a tout, one of those who claimed they worked for the Local Government Task Force and had a right to collect duties from buses that plied that route. The men were squeezing each other's necks and scuffling on two planes- dry land and a puddle of stagnant water. Their legs were splattered with grime ….

I chew harder and watch the sleeping boy with the rash. All this madness. It's what my colleague at work calls the Lagos aggression. Every man, woman, dog, ant… everyone is mad at something. Lagos does that to you. You don't have that madness; you don't have the Lagosian spirit. Everyone is on a different wave of aggression; it's like a subtle cult where the leader stands afar off and waves a wand at will, reveling in his handiwork. Now the traffic gets thicker and our driver swerves off at a junction into a road on Victoria Island . He plunges blindly along the relatively free road. Then another traffic jam is in our face and we wait. The sleeping child is up again and starts crying. His mother tries to calm him.

"Driver abeg reduce the volume of your music. I dey try hear wetin dem dey talk for match. And I no be Igbo, so I no dey hear wetin your music dey sing." The driver laughs. "Ah! Just enjoy the music. Dis na mature music for white head. So even if you no dey hear wetin im dey sing, just dey shake ya head like this…" he begins to nod to the tune. The boy scowls and fiddles with his ear piece. The traffic eases and the driver picks up speed till he turns at a bend into a relatively unclogged street. He speeds down the street and bursts out at an expanse of sand filled land close to Oniru Beach . He begins to wind his way through the sand till he arrives at an assortments of bends. He weaves his way through more bends and we are just grateful for the alternative to the traffic jam. The driver pushes ahead, speeding past other buses in the sand till we get to a bifurcated diversion. The driver takes left. I notice other buses are taking right.

"Why you no dey take the oda road, driver?" some people ask. The driver just whistles to his highlife music and speeds on. Now the sand ahead of us gets thicker and thicker and the driver's grip on the steering starts to shake. He starts having difficulty navigating. He fires on. The bus screeches and wobbles along as it pulls its weight. It dances and does several boogies. Passengers start making a racket.

"Small small oh!"

"Na wa oh! Who say make you come follow dis road now?"

"You come take us do merry-go-round, you fo leave us fo dat go-slow na!"

"Off dat yeye music jare!"

The tires start to sink in the sand. The driver panics and fires the more. The tires sink deeper. Then the bus stops moving. It is stuck in the sand. The Osadebe music is still blaring.

The driver switches off the radio and kills the engine. He hops off his seat. The conductor tells everyone to alight. People start to grumble. "Why you no take the road your mates dey take? You see others dey follow this side?"

"No mind am. Im no get sense. Na to dey jealous ma groundnut im sabi," says the groundnut woman. By now the driver is clearly upset. "Madam I no call your name now oh. Just respect ya old age oh."

"Who you dey call old?" the woman strides over to him and begins to hit him with her bag. Wack! Wack! Wack! The driver pushes her off like a pesky animal and she rattles off a series of curses. He enters the danfo and the conductor and some male passengers start to push the bus. The tires sink deeper into the sand. I look at my watch. 7:15pm. It's deserted where we stand. The cold air from the beach makes me want to make water.

"Driver abeg do carry us comot for here. Dis place no good oh. Before tif go come hijack us for here," says the woman with the crying child who is not crying at the moment. Other passengers say the same. The driver joins the conductor to scoop out the sand around the tires. Then pushing resumes. I spot a divine bush not far away and make a quick dash to relieve myself. With my head peeping through the bushes I watch the scenario. The men strain and push and the passengers urge the driver on.

"Turn hand go dat oda side, sand plenty pass for dis corner"

"oya hold hand well well, no shake oh."

"Turn hand go that side…no, no … yes, yes, yeees…" I look around. I think of snakes. I look down around my feet and pray this stream of water will cease soon. Then the air turns still. The breezy wind is at rest. I wonder at the silence. Strange. It is then I observe that the passengers aren't talking anymore. I look up.

Men clad in shorts and rolled up trousers loom in the distance. From where they have emerged, they spread and form a neat circle about the passengers, the driver and conductor. My heart stops. I sink to my knees in the grass and submerge my head. Thieves. Rapists. I can't think, don't know which it is. There is silence, and then the strange men are shouting orders. I hear wailing, then pleading. I see my snoring old-man-neighbour emptying his pockets and handing over the contents to the men. The ear-piece boy has his ear-phone yanked off his ears and I see him handing over his phone. The driver and conductor are lying prostate in the sand. One of the bandits has stripped them of all the monies in their possession. The woman with the crying child drops her child in the sand to turn out money. And everyone else is doing the same- producing something. Then I notice the groundnut woman. She is kneeling before one of the robbers, arms raised in supplication. She is in tears and is rattling some things in Igbo. One of them hits her on the face and tells her to give the money and shut up. She starts swearing there is no money. They can look everywhere she says. I see the bandits exchange looks and one of them in a rolled up trouser walks up to her and asks her to drop her skirt for him to have a look. She suddenly gets this look on her face and gets to her feet. Everyone else is watching. "Tell everybody to close their eyes make I comot the skirt" she says. The man yells at her to comply. She says that she cannot do it with everybody watching. The man advances in anger towards her and people around start to beseech: "Madam abeg remove the skirt na …" "Make una close eye!" she yells at them. "We no need to close eye, just comot the skirt …" some voices say. The groundnut woman starts to talk again but I don't hear what she is saying. I look around seeking escape. I clutch my bag and swallow the chewing gum. Damn. That conductor had my change.

THE PROBLEM WITH POST-COLONIAL THEORY:
Re-Theorizing African Performance, Orature and Literature in the Age of Globalization and Diaspora Studies - by Esiaba Irobi
POSTCOLONIAL THEORY, from The Empire Strikes Back through Spivak's Critique of Postcolonial Reason to Paul Gilroy's Postcolonial Melancholia is a reaction to Western imperialist history and intellectual ideology. It is a spirited engagement with the structures of thinking and actions that

facilitate the continued subordination, marginalization and exploitation of the intellectual resources and cultural reserves of the previously colonized peoples of the Western and non-Western worlds. It is also a subtle examination of the many and often conflicting strands that make up the postcolonial situation and identity. It seeks to dismantle the epistemologies of intellectual hegemony cultivated by the West via its academies as well as confront the ex-colonized with the options available for their critical redemption via alternative modes of discourse which may be different and antithetical in structure and content from those traditions of discourse fashioned by the West. In temperament, post-colonial theory differs from postmodern theory primarily in the sense that it often combines individual emotional commitment and outrage with a defiant optimism which is much more strident and activist than an acquiescent postmodernism. 1 We see this intensity in the scholarly work of Wole Soyinka, Biodun Jeyifo, Aime Cesaire, Franz Fanon, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Rustom Barucha, Augusto Boal, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Henry Louis Gates, Coco Fusco, Guillerma Gomez-Pena, among many others.

However, post-colonial theory's major linguistic currency is English language followed by French and other European languages. Its teleology , by this I mean how it conceptualizes time and history, mirrors and sometimes interrogates European and European diasporic notions of time and history. Its epistemological impetus i.e. how it defines knowledge, culture, artistic productivity, theatre, performance, also imitates or, contradictorily, questions what the West has already foregrounded. In other words, the agenda for post-colonial theory and the possible space for manouvre by any postcolonial scholar is over-determined or, to use a fairer word, circumscribed by a Western ontology and a response to this ontology. Why is this so? Abiola Irele explains:... Read More

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