Abuja pace

9ja.
What has been going on lately?

Entrance to Millenium Park

Well, I've started to get my life into some kind of rhythm. Of course, it's not perfectly complete yet. But the essential bits are there. The congregation of birds that sing sun salutations from the trees outside my window, the rising but muffled call to prayer, the jangling beats shoe repairers drum out on their tool boxes to attract those in need of their services, the tapped horns of wandering taxis signalling vacancy, the drip of the leaky air conditioner in the office, the droning buzzzzzzzzz of the generators whenever the power's out, the more aggressive brrrrrrrrr of the community vegetable grinder who has his business just outside of my flat, the hiss of the gas pressure when I open the tank to light the stove, the click of the lighter, the whoosh of the flame. . .the thick silence of the nights.

I remember noticing, specifically, the sound of highway traffic from my bedroom window in Canada before I left. I was lying in bed around 3am (my usual bedtime when I'm at home) and I could hear transport trucks and cars speeding across the asphalt in that low familiar hum. The highway is more than a kilometre from my house but it made no difference.
I remember wondering if it had always been like that. If the highway sounded so busy at that time even 5 years ago? Was everyone always in this much of a rush to get somewhere else? The hum stayed with me until I woke (around 11am) and even grew to include the attitudinal wheeze of aircrafts forever landing or taking off.

Aso Rock at Sundown

Here, I love watching people sitting on benches behind corner vegetable stands. Security guards watching football all day sitting back, teasing each other, doubling over with the kind of uncontrollable laughter that makes it sound like something is caught in your throat. Girls and boys and men and women walking with perfect posture and balancing a day's earnings worth of peanuts or 'pure water' on their heads while they dodge in and out of crowds and stopped traffic. It really makes you reconsider the limits of willpower. I've seen someone accidentally brush shoulders with a girl carrying a giant tub of something and the girl was able to turn her head back and scold him without even the hint of a wobble.

It doesn't mean it's easy, or better or even more desirable necessarily. . .but it is a nice and eye-opening change.