Warri-town

We were in West Africa, and we came to see Africa. We wanted the realness of it all. We came to bring awareness to ourselves, to the real African experience among real people and real conditions of an underdeveloped society, of the life preconceived within the frame of Nigeria and beyond. Nigeria, Nigeria, Nigeria. I caught myself repeating this and Eric Esplin did as well. We looked at one another and chanted as if caught in a trance. Nigeria. Together, Eric and I, and a few others ventured into the masses of Warri-town.

It was a night open, and the atmosphere riddled with the sense of something new, something alive. A select group tasted this, felt the need for adventure, and so from our plush Wellington Hotel, we left the automatic doors and the gated entrance and met the real world of Nigeria and its Delta streets.

Just as it is with Cambodia, and India—and Nepal among others—Nigeria is real, it is raw, and it is dirty in the sense that they have been utterly besmeared by all hands of humanity. And having traveled from Lagos to Benin City, meeting up with twenty Nigerian delegates, and together moving further from Benin to Warri, it becomes just that: Warri after dark.

It was what all advisors warned against, including our own leaders and our own delegates (some of them from the metropolis itself). The traffic, the madness, the exodus of humanity returning home with the closure of shops at six and the subsequent road-ban of motorcycles at seven due to the recent regional unrest. The jam was a river of creosote-stained logs, spinning in a whirlpool of rusted industry.

But what intrigued me most was the sheen of the skin, its black gloss. It cast a mellow glare like hot candle wax, while the headlights reflected like sandblasted glass through the rising dust. Men's bald heads, their lanky necks and broad, ram-boned shoulders; women in color, a rainbow of woven crystals magnified in the haze-ridden beams of night traffic: two aspects of male/female clashing, and they crash into one another with a meager quality of production and care, prosperity and concern. Their heat infuses in the mass of ground movement and the airborne ether of the atmosphere. Again, it was dark; a thick black held in a global container of humidity. There were no stars, only the few burning through the layers. And we were crossing the "Danger Zone" as our Nigerian delegate, Nicholas Ijabor, announced in the midnight of the bus's cabin.

"In the mid '90s, even at the turn of the century, this was the battlefield."

We nodded. We stared. There was nothing but black and brown night beyond the thin panes of glass. Our bubble felt small, insignificant.

"This junction is the line, the line of property both Ijaw and Itsekiri battled for." Nicky continues with his smooth talk, informing us, though stirring fright with the ease of his assurance.

I know what we were all thinking just then. First, the reality of being in Nigeria: Nigeria, Nigeria, Nigeria. In a peculiar way, we are all familiarized by now, but at the same time, we know we never would be. We were Americans in Africa.

Okay, second: the US State Department specifically advised on its website to not travel to the Delta State. This surfaced immediately. Our minds spun with the cars, mottos, lorries, and people outside. The bubble felt even smaller.

We were in Warri; Warri-town, Wassi, the Oil City of Humanity. And here we were, each independent persons with distinct experiences, lifestyles and perceptions creating a personality; each with a unifying soul with similar intentions and similar goals. All independent, yet all together, joined as one with our unique qualities and skills. And there, with the earlier preparations in Seattle, Lagos, Benin City, and now Warri, we felt completely insane, yet utterly alive. Here it was; the grassroots diplomacy with an organization called Global Citizen Journey, free and willing to create and be the change we wished to see in the world. That’s why we were there—to be together and become aware of our ability to be citizen diplomats, taking the reins of our life and society and transforming it to meet all needs. We were in Nigeria. We were in Warri. We were in the Delta State about to embark on a journey down the Creeks to the village of Oporoza.

The feelings, the facts—our rationality—compiled. I come to our third carriage of thought. The Security General reported his own personal concern to our delegation: Do not travel outside Lagos, Africa's 2nd largest city, without a trunk-full of AK-47s and a MOPs squad for escort. Hmm…all thinking froze.

Suddenly, there was space for reflection. The churning seas parted and we saw those as professional words, used by professionals for those very professionals. That's what he's there to do. Cogs and bolts were greased, and the mind’s movement continued like a steamship across calming waters.

Now a fourth and final respect: our own leaders, one of them Joel Bisina—a local of Warri-town—warned of the adverse potentials after nightfall. Looking out the windows again, blinking, and making sure what we saw was real, we wondered whether our bus with its government plates was a paradox. All we saw was that black night, that deep brown of raw earth. There was only a steady darkness within our minds.

Being white, we seem to relate with what is white, or so it is as the commonly accepted notion. Therefore, the only visibility we could perceive from our air-conditioned bus was the eyes and teeth; a clear, clean reflection caught in the glare of weary headlights. They reflected like moonlight on a pond, soothing us, yet it was an oasis midst a midnight dust-storm. Our eyes remained wide, our thoughts pondering the "adverse potentials" as we crossed the "Danger Zone", and we played nervous finger games among ourselves while the bus surged through any opportunity for space. We crawled towards home— another bubble behind air-conditioned walls. This was Nigeria, a West Africa we came for. This was our level of desire, coming to bring awareness to ourselves, breaking down the fears of others. We were freely caught in the chant: Nigeria, Nigeria, Nigeria.

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