15 minutes of Nigerian fame
Hi BoBers,
My closest brush with fame came after leaving Abuja. Emmanuel is an overland cyclist like me. Unlike me (<3 you mum), he has a massive online following. He’s heading to the USA via Europe. I had met him briefly under blazing sun on the highway in Liberia. He happened to be in Abuja and contacted me just as I was leaving, so I stayed with him and we had dinner together.
He looked tired. He’d just had his European and US visas denied, despite clear evidence of his journey and following. Someone had also leaked his phone number and he was regularly getting calls from righteously furious fans, helpfully offering to harass the embassies for him. He was relentlessly positive, though. To keep the content flowing, he was planning to ride a motorcycle around Africa. At some point, he told me that he was posting five or six times a day. A real hustler.
I left early the next morning, keen to finally make progress. People started to recognise me and call out on the road. He’d posted a picture of us that morning. As I entered Benue, Emmanuel’s home state, the attention increased tenfold. People pulled up ahead of me, sometimes dangerously, beckoning me to stop for a selfie. Everyone wanted a little bit of my time. Two minutes per selfie with 100 people is over three hours - I had to ignore most requests. People were sometimes upset. It’s surely cultural, so no judgement, but Nigerians will raise their voice three or four times if they don’t get your attention. Regularly being yelled at from multiple sides with escalating volume triggered some primal stress in me, however unintentionally.
Crossing the Benue river was chaos. Boats crammed with people, motorbikes and even cars jostling and bumping their way across the river. I negotiated a boat across, despite the help of a local official who insisted on accompanying me and did nothing to prevent the drivers charging me five times the price. A local influencer hailed down my boat and got in. He’d seen Emmanuel’s post and wanted to guide me across - a bit late, as I was already mid-river. On the five minute trip, he spent most of the time on his phone. When I invited him to lunch after some pictures, he said he needed to return. Some poor child somewhere probably needed a good influence. The official then asked for a tip. For trying to rip me off. Bloody audacious.
I arrived in Emmanuel’s town late one evening and a crowd immediately formed. Someone offered to get me a beer but never returned. Another started rattling off geography facts. Impressed, I engaged - he returned ten minutes later with a handwritten résumé asking for a job. Endless requests for selfies. Tired and overwhelmed, I followed some guys in the dark to Emmanuel’s parent’s place. I was immediately swamped, phone torches in my face. The family were very generous, offering me some dinner and a comfy bed. My morning sleep in was short-lived though and I was summoned outside with multiple knocks on the door to present myself to all the people who’d come to welcome me. People preferred watching to talking. I ate my breakfast with a huge crowd, mostly in silence. I don’t want to seem bitter or unappreciative - there was no malice or selfishness involved, just an unavoidable misunderstanding. I gave a grand speech of appreciation to great applause and rejoined the relative solitude of the road with a big sigh of relief.
After Zaki Biam, I took a shortcut on a lovely dirt road, which, similar to before, had only very recently become passable. I rode through small, abandoned villages full of burnt-out buildings. It led me to Sai, where I stopped for a break. A crowd formed and the residents begged me to tell the world about their struggle. Bandits were burning their homes and kidnapping people. Videos were circling of young American missionaries with glistening smiles calling out the Nigerian government’s inaction. They clearly wanted the same from me, but it was too risky. I promised to spread the word instead. Some people’s lives are unbearably difficult in this country.
As I left Benue, my fame thankfully ended. I still had about 300km to travel and only a few days to get to the border.
The unfamous,
J&BoB
