Gentlemen of the road
This morning he walked along the road – the big tarmac road that was long and broad and had no beginning and no end except that it went into the city. Motor cars passed him. Men and women going to work, some in the settled area and some in the shoe factory, chattered along ….” That was a quote from Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s famous novel, Weep Not Child. This passage poignantly brings to mind what goes through my mind everyday when I pass through Lagos roads.
If you are a bit philosophical like me, I am sure you will agree with me that our daily activities as human beings are pregnant with meaning, they are highly symbolical of life itself. A typical Lagos road is life itself while the drivers are human beings struggling to realise their dreams or achieve their goals. On a typical Lagos road, you encounter all manner of drivers who are too much in a hurry to care about the next road user. There are drivers who move from one lane to another in a bid to ‘out-drive’ another drivers. Like some reckless drivers, some people are in hurry to be successful in life.
At this point, I could recall, the character of the Man in Ayi Kwei Amah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Amah opens his novel by describing an old choking commuter bus arriving at a bus stand, on the bus the conductor is careless and uses abusive language to both the passengers on board and the driver. He uses the bus to symbolise the state of Ghana soon after independence-corruption and disorderly and immorality in the system.
As the writer builds up plot of the novel; he carries corruption as the main theme of the book. Poverty which is the main problem of human beings is also shown by the writer as the real problem facing the Ghanaian people despite being free from colonialism.
Although the affirm that only the masters (leaders) changed but the situation remains the same. The black masters are not different from the white masters during colonialism. He also uses the general filthy in the environment to describe how corrupt and evil Ghana is after independence. And the main character, the Man represents the society who are poor as compared to leaders like Coomson who are rich and they live in luxurious estates.
Enough of that story. Now, back to the gentlemen of the road. Just as there are fast-moving driving, there are those who move at snail speed. They seem not to be in a hurry to get to their destination. They move at their own pace or is it the pace at which their cars allow them? Some may not be bold enough to drive on top speed like others for fear of accident. Like life, this category of people love to move at the speed which life allows them. They are not in a hurry at all to get to their destination. All they want to do is do things their own way. Some of them are slow moving for fear of trying out new things such as increasing the pace at which they travel. Some others love to move at top speed but the brand of their cars or the condition of their cars would not allow them.
There people who are in-between these two groups. They are neither slow nor too fast. Sometimes they accelerate at times they slow down when necessary. They want to arrive their destination at the right time without sustaining any injury.
Life is all about metaphor. It is about beautiful and ugly sides of life– corruption, starvation and vices of many generations that constitute a compassionate vision of modern Africa and the magical heritage of its myths. A relationship between history and contemporary social and political threads mired in confusing perception of realising the self and the nation.
FUNKE OSAE-BROWN