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Places, peopld and plants: a rant in three parts about Calabar.

I hate Satellite Town. Even more than I hate rain or midday sun that bites like a hundred invisible mosquitoes. The people are not to blame, neither are the houses—although they’re too uniform like the user interface of Diamond Rush, that ancient android game. My grouse is its labyrinthine layout—the streets branch out like veins on a pumpkin leaf—which forces me to confront my terrible spatial intelligence. Give me roads that form grids and watch me collapse into a 404 error. 

I’ve been to Satellite Town more than ten times; I’ve gotten lost on three separate occasions. State Housing is no different. Apart from less speed bumps, no kekes and smaller potholes, it poses the same problems. The streets are hashtags multiplied by hashtags, then further divided by the square roots of asterisks. If I don’t use Google maps, I’m in trouble. Nonetheless, I believe the worst, Calabar South, was designed by urban planners who based the road network on the patterns woven into a persian rug glimpsed in a dream. 

Marian, on the other hand, is Parliamentary with more restaurants and a few bridal shops that sell soft drinks more than wedding dresses. A corridor with glass doors that open and leads customers to overpriced or undercooked chicken or both. There’s always a shop under construction that eventually shuts down before it opens. It’s better at night because then it’s more difficult to see how empty it is.

On the outskirts of Calabar sits 8 miles—someone added an s to mile and it stuck; now saying it the right way feels wrong—where the residential areas are hidden behind markets or hills or roads meant for bikes to roam freely. Here, friends who live close are more likely to see people in town than those who live closer to them. It rarely allows for free navigation. 8 miles believes in distance, in socializing mediated by the internet. 

*

Calabar is a strange state: it is composed chiefly of undergrads and corp members. During ASUU strikes, the city opens up. Emptied of students, everything grinds to a halt, and the days lull as if trapped in an endless holiday. Young people who intend on building a career leave as soon as they sign their whites and defend their projects—there are no industries to attach oneself to. Even doing IT here feels a lot like self-sabotage. It’s strange but true. 

The thriving businesses are either food-related or fuel-related, which are two too narrow areas for thousands of graduates to struggle for. So, in a way, Calabar is a metaphor for Nigeria: the goal is to leave, japa is a must. And this shows itself mostly when anyone encounters an intellectual—what are you still doing here?—or a professional photographer, a dedicated healthcare worker or ambitious fashion designer even. The same question rears its head: What are you still doing here? Take your talent elsewhere. Staying here feels like installing traffic lights on a race track. Calabar has nothing to offer the ambitious; it is for those who are comfortable with being average, or who feel the moon should stay in the sky and humans on earth. The art exhibitions are lackluster, the music is negligible; the actors have only a few plays to perfect and perform. Why do people still stay?

One of the pleasures of living in Calabar is complaining about it; it’s our own version of small talk. Just like the Brits complain about the weather, the easiest way to build rapport with a stranger is to harp on and on about the city’s apparent inadequacy. Nothing like camaraderie fashioned from a convo about failed expectations borne on greed and political ineptitude.

The most successful class are the intellectuals. Maybe because all one needs to do to qualify as one is to engage certain concerns with intellectual rigor based on one’s understanding and ideas about the problem tackled. Pirated ebooks are free. Conversation costs nothing—except data, airtime and being well enough, not being depressed about your life situation etc. etc. etc. It’s a good place to be a writer, a terrible location if one hopes to get published traditionally. 

*

During my three week stay in Akwa Ibom, a stark difference that struck me—apart from the merlot kekes and minibuses—was the tally of masquerade trees that lined the central reservations. In Calabar, the flame of the forest trees queue along the pavements, from the highway to the backroads. Their crimson petals pastel the asphalt when the wind blows and sends them spiralling, an event that makes walking feel more magical that it should. The flamboyant tree speaks to the nature of the Calabar people—their customs (the dances, costumes, the rites and rituals)—and completes the other two primary colours that dominate the cityscape: the expansive, azure skies and lush green grasses. 

Apart from the jacarandas infrequently found in Unical and the blue porterweed that line the meadows that surround the city, one of my favourite trees to spot is the Musanga. Otherwise known as umbrella trees—I have a thing for umbrellas, read my stories and you’ll find them littered everywhere—the musanga does something I find mesmerizing: the leaves, when they jitter in the wind, give off a kaleidoscopic effect as they alternate between their glossy and matte side. It titillates me. The more violent the wind, the less allure the effect has; the breeze has to be minimal, as if flossing through the plains.

All in all, Calabar is a beautiful labyrinth that is the grave of ambition lined with beautiful trees that gives the notion of leaving a nostalgic fragrance.