Looking for Transwonderland (15 page)

The first dog, a boar bull called Razor, casually urinated during her inspection. Thoroughly amused, the crowd cheered as she and her owner paraded past them afterwards. Razor was followed by a pit bull terrier that I'd seen fighting with one of the Alsatians earlier. The extremely po-faced owner of three fat rottweilers brought his dogs up for inspection, one by one. A more serious dog handler, he had trained his pets well: each of them stood still for several seconds in the correct pose. But as the man walked his trio around the field, one of them, a mean-looking mutt called Tom Cruise, broke free from his leash and ran towards the crowd. Two dozen people turned and fled towards the cricket pavilion.

‘I beg, don't run, o!' the MC implored down the mike. ‘The dog will pursue you if you run!'

Thankfully, Tom Cruise's owner caught up and brought him to heel before he could ‘mingle' with the crowd. After the rottweilers, a long-tailed American pit bull completed his corpulent trot in front of the audience before the MC introduced the first Alsatian.

‘These are known as “police dogs” in Africa,' he said. ‘If you've been to Heathrow or Gatwick Airports, you'll know they use these dogs to sniff Nigerians.' Wry laughter rippled through the crowd. People were familiar with the humiliating drug inspection at British airports.

‘This dog is very clean, cleaner than most of you,' the MC joked,
announcing a small terrier. ‘This dog baths every day . . . more than those of you who don't have running water in your house!'

Two orange-coated mastiffs paraded around the field, followed by a small shitsu, which had the crowd cooing in admiration. ‘It's
so
cute,' a disembodied voice sighed from behind me. Cute? This wasn't the Nigeria I knew.

‘People in Ibadan are getting crazy about dogs,' Tobi enthused. ‘Many of them have never seen these breeds before.' He theorised that this dog-loving was down to the American and British films and TV shows on satellite television. All around me I witnessed people indulging this strange obsession: a professional dog breeder handed out fliers and let spectators peruse his
Dog World
magazine while he informed a friend that ‘dogs are not used as a method of security in Ibadan banks'; three young children pored over a veterinary lecturer's copy of the
Encyclopaedia of Dog Breeds
. And over to one side, a small crowd jostled to stroke a tiny Alsatian puppy on offer as first prize in the raffle.

After the interlude, the organisers resumed the proceedings by announcing the discipline segment of the competition. Everyone quietened down. We watched the white pit bull with a curly tail jump through a rubber tyre held by its owner.

‘Audience, what do you think of this dog?' asked the MC. The audience had been granted a 40 per cent share of the vote in this section of the show.

‘Yeeesss!' everyone cheered.

A man entered the field with a tiny terrier. He tossed a ball for the dog to fetch, but the miniscule animal couldn't retrieve it because the ball was too big for its mouth. For a full minute, the dog tensed its legs and ground its little face against the ball, struggling to wrap its jaws around it. The crowd fell into a concentrated silence and willed the terrier on. Its owner swallowed with anxiety. Finally, the terrier succeeded, and scuttled towards its owner with the ball in its mouth. The crowd roared in congratulation.

Next up was the aggressive pit bull, which held up its paw for an uncharacteristically friendly ‘handshake'. A friend of its owner then baited it with a stick and ran towards the crowd. The owner let go of the leash and allowed the dog to chase his friend. The snarling beast sprinted towards my section of the crowd near the judges' table. I mentally prepared myself to dive behind someone. Others stood, tense, ready to flee. But seconds before the pit bull ploughed into us, its owner suddenly commanded it to stop. It did. Nobody was impressed. The crowd, shaken and disapproving, remained silent, unable to muster even the laughter of sweet relief.

‘Audience, what do you think?' asked the MC. We responded with a smattering of uncomfortable applause.

Afterwards, spectators were invited to photograph the dogs in the centre of the field while the judges deliberated on the results. In the end, they declared Samurai, the long-tailed pit bull terrier, to be the best dog in show. I walked off the field, back to my hotel, while the crowd poured onto the field to mingle with the dogs. As they stroked the animals and snapped their cameras, I envisaged a Nigeria where dogs were widely affordable, pet food was a billion-dollar industry, and people took their animals on leisurely strolls without fear of being hit by okadas or stumbling into the ubiquitous open sewage drains. I hoped the country would become like that one day.

For now, though, this dog show was good enough. It was the Nigeria I wished I'd seen in my teens, scenes of normality that poured sugar on the bitterness of military dictatorships and made the country seem a more sane place.

 

 

As a child, amusement parks symbolised everything that I liked about the West. My desire to spend holidays in the US centred around fantasies of a Disney-esque promised land that was lustrous, modern, kitsch and fun. Artifice impressed me a lot. I favoured rank hot dogs over tasty plantain, the smoothness of a plastic toy over the soft frond of a palm tree, the garish green of Kermit the Frog over the brilliant white of an egret. Creating these fake textures and colours – transcending nature – seemed the ultimate achievement. And Nigeria was distinctly lacking in this.

I'd long outgrown such thinking, but I still had a residual urge for Nigeria to ‘achieve' and be a place that people admired and want to visit; a credible tourist destination. So when Ibadan's Transwonderland Amusement Park was described by one of my outdated guidebooks as ‘the closest thing Nigeria has to Disney World', I knew I had to pay it a visit. I was intrigued. My perceptions of Nigeria had never really accommodated the concept of amusement park rides – our downtime usually involves sitting sedately on white plastic chairs, eating food and dancing a little; I couldn't quite envisage Nigerians screaming goggle-eyed in giant spinning teacups or roller coasters.

My arrival at Transwonderland's entrance vindicated those
preconceptions. In the car park a marquee was filled with dozens of well-dressed men and women sitting on white plastic chairs and chatting among mounds of jollof rice, a rice dish cooked in tomato sauce, with onions, vegetables and meat. Loud Nigerian pop music pounded the air and mingled with the screams of children who chased each other between the tables. This wedding reception wasn't quite the kind of ‘amusement' I was hoping for, but it appeared to be all the action I was going to get, since its vivacity contrasted sharply with Transwonderland itself.

Stepping through the turnstile, I was confronted with a forlorn landscape of motionless machinery. Rides including the ‘Chair-o-Plane', ‘The Dragon' roller coaster, dodgem cars, a Ferris wheel and merry-go-round stood rusting amid the tall grass. Only the tumbleweed was missing. A handful of people walked around the decrepit park, surveying the desolation. One of them, a quiet skinny man, approached me and asked if I wanted to go on any of the rides. Was he being serious? None of them appeared to be working.

‘They are working,' the man assured me. He led me to the Ferris wheel and ushered me into a seat stained with solidified bird shit. He switched on a button, and the wheel slowly groaned into motion, lifting me high into the air. Ibadan's small buildings undulated in all directions towards the horizon. A small crowd, including a middle-class couple and a trio of street kids in torn clothes, gathered on the ground below to watch me. Sitting alone on the empty ride made me feel self-conscious. Should I smile or look serious? I couldn't decide. Smiling would make me look a little foolish and deranged, but keeping a straight face made me look inappropriately solemn, if not
more
foolish and deranged. I think I settled for an embarrassed grimace.

Next, I asked the man to switch on the Chair-o-Plane, a ride containing spinning metal spokes with chairs attached to the ends that swung through the air in a circular motion, as if flying. Again, the same small crowd migrated below and craned their necks to
watch me. This time I couldn't help but smile as my chair swooped down towards the ground, my legs dangling dangerously close to the metal fencing on the ground. I saw flashes of the street boys' big, crooked teeth grinning up at me.

The boys seemed eager to have a go, so I bought them tickets for The Dragon, a relatively gentle roller-coaster ride. I was surprised to see the middle-class couple hop on too. We lowered the metallic safety bars across our laps and waited for the man to press the start button. The carriage started with an ominous creek. My distrust for Nigerian machine maintenance, combined with my love of danger, was a thrilling combination – roller coasters are no fun if one feels 100 per cent safe. The Dragon ride wasn't particularly high, fast or convoluted, but it was exciting. We screamed as the rusting carriages rattled and plunged precariously along the ageing tracks. Each sideways jerk offered the tantalising possibility of catastrophe, but before my stomach had a chance to turn, the man brought it all to an end. Dismounting, the boys smiled and crouched to touch the ground, a local, traditional show of thanks.

The dodgem cars didn't interest me. I paid for the three boys to have a go, while I watched from the sidelines. The manager of the ride was a tall Muslim man who seemed oblivious to the pleasurable aspect of these rides. He directed the movement of the cars as if he were a policeman on traffic duty. Draped in a long blue djellaba, he barked impatient instructions to the drivers: ‘Reverse! . . . Turn . . . Turn around!' When one boy failed to extricate himself from a jam with two other cars, the manager mocked the boy's intelligence with a cantankerous tap of his own forehead. Cowering beneath this taskmaster's gaze, the boys drove the cars studiously and unsmilingly, flashing each other glares of quiet outrage whenever they collided. Because the old, overhead electric netting gaped with holes, the cars stopped moving whenever their aerials strayed into these openings. As the manager repeatedly stepped onto the platform to push the cars along, I wondered why nothing ever lasts in Nigeria, and how
institutions like Transwonderland kept going long after their economic viability had expired, like twitching corpses that refuse to die. The amusement park must have prolonged its wretched existence through the life-support of slave wages, power conservation and minimal maintenance.

The park had no facilities for emptying my bladder or filling my stomach, so I decided to leave. Towards the car park, next to the gates, I noticed a plaque that read: TRANSWONDERLAND NIGERIA LTD. THIS ULTRA-MODERN TRANSWONDERLAND AMUSEMENT PARK WAS COMMISSIONED BY MRS. MIRIAM BABANGIDA, NIGERIA'S FIRST LADY, ON 21ST DECEMBER 1989. Right in front of the plaque, a group of men were hand-washing clown costumes, making an unwitting mockery of the plaque's pretensions. Babangida was a comic Roman emperor too inept to provide for his people, yet equally incapable of offering them a long-lasting distraction from their poverty. And so the Transwonderland Amusement Park stood there, rusting and waiting to be gobbled up and strangled by the long grass of economic stagnancy. My childhood dreams of a modern, artificial Nigeria were stalled for the time being. But the key was not to rely on guidebooks written four years previously; change happens quickly here. Somewhere in the country, another amusement park will no doubt have been built.

I walked into the car park, aware of the sound of footsteps shuffling behind me. When I turned around, the three boys and two more of their friends were holding out their hands for food, or at least money to buy some. For the first time I noticed how bony their limbs were. Somehow the amusement rides had distracted me (and perhaps them, too) from their penury. Rooting around in my wallet, I realised I only had enough money for an okada ride back to my hotel – all my spare cash had gone on treating these kids to rides that churned their empty stomachs. Now
I
felt like a Mrs Babangida, the empress with confused priorities. How could I explain my situation to the boys? They spoke no English. All I could
do was apologetically give them my last
20 note, then rush to mediate as the five of them squabbled over the cash.

Stiff with guilt, I mounted an okada and asked to be taken to my hotel. As the bike sped off, the boys watched me, confused about why they deserved a ride on the dodgem cars but not a plate of rice.

 

The next morning, wobbly with sleepiness, I took an okada to one of Ibadan's main motor parks. Dozens of inter-city minibuses were lined up in rows, waiting for passengers. The merry-go-round of informal trading whirled about me: the man selling matchsticks to the woman who sells bananas to the person who sells candles to the matchstick seller, and so forth. Untaxed, unsupported with bank loans, unable to expand, this virtual bartering system – the lifeblood of the Nigerian economy – pins down the uneducated but ambitious trader. How they survive was a mystery to me. I imagined all their profits being swallowed up by the bus fare at day's end.