The narrator combines photography and simple descriptive words, in his telling. He is stunned, by the level of corruption he stumbles upon at the passport office in New York. He hadn’t envisaged it, not in New York of all places. Corruption was supposed to be an African disease, especially his home country Nigeria. But here he was at the passport office in New York, witnessing for the first time since he left home, instituted corruption. This rude awakening, paves way for his journey back home.
Even more shocks await our narrator, from the deplorable condition of Nigerians and Nigeria to the deplorable behavior of Nigerians, Lagosians. He is dismayed by the complete absence of normalcy, in every sphere of our lives, even more irritated by the nonchalance, the air of surrender, as though to say everybody had come to realize what we have on ground was the best we could have.
Religion seems to be the only striving industry. He gets early morning drills of call to prayer, from the nearby mosque and other times, it is the loud musical instruments booming from one of the many fast rising Pentecostal churches. Just as power cuts depicts normalcy over here, so does mob action, shortchanging and bribe.
He visits the National museum and he is hit by a wave of disappointment. He describes it as; “sycophantic, inaccurate, uncritical and desperately outdated.” But even in all the hopelessness, he manages to find a glint of hope. He finds a reader of Michael Ondaatje inside a bus. Again he is taken aback, in all these turmoil and charade, he least expects to find a reader of a literary work as concrete as Ondaatje’s. There is yet hope, as he visits the Musical Society of Nigeria (Muson Centre) and finds the organization and structure of world standard. But even that might be too much hope, as a Nigerian teacher who studied at Peabody Institute or the Royal Academy is paid at a much lower rate than any white piano teacher.
The incongruity smirks. Two commercial flights goes down within six weeks of each other. Bellview aircraft that crashed barely three minutes after takeoff, killing all one hundred and seventeen passengers on board. Sosoliso aircraft goes down a few weeks later, killing one hundred and six people, mostly school children and there is a single survivor. Protest by parents of these children is met by tear-gas and that ends the matter. Two hundred and twenty three persons perish within a period of six weeks, because the fire department had no water to put out the fire that engulfed the aircraft, because someone brought in tokunbo airplanes that are well over 30years old; yet, there are no reparations, no retribution, no one is held responsible?
Prior to his departure to the U.S. we get a whiff of the sour relationship between our narrator and his mother, which deteriorated further after the death of his father. Eighteen years would pass, yet no contact between mother and son. Plagued by malaria and a conglomeration of societal and governmental ills, his cravings for home is soon extinguished as he finds his way back to the safety of the U.S.
Teju Cole opens our eyes to the obstinacy that has engrossed this country. The clogs, the abnormality, the grave lack in the midst of plenty, the greed, the shamelessness, the stench rising from the institutional rot, are all directly or indirectly the blunder of the Nigerian government, that “great bungler.” Published as far back as 2007, the conditions portrayed in this narrative, have either degenerated further or simply remained the same.