ĄT was beginning to dawn 
outside. But only outside 
and not for the mass of hu- 
A d e n i 
Dapo manj t y , sprawled all over - 
y' on tables and desks, over 
benches and mats and just 
about everywhere - in assortments 
of positions. A 
marvel to those not accustomed to 
this way that the long hours of night 
could be passed in, for some, virtual 
stooping postures. 
Then echoes of the dawn gradually 
percolated into the vast tout's 'office'. A tout 
stirs awake, and this great Lagos suburb 
rumbled, whispered through broken louvres 
and air sleeves that its brief midnightly slumber 
was over. 
More souls awoke out of sleep but a 
few persisted. A soul in particular with back 
pressed to the wall whose heavy snores served 
to contest the evidence of all the gathering 
light that the night now was indeed far spent. 
Underneath the vast office table 
emerged the registrar himself who briefly 
exercised, rinsed his face outside and took 
his position voluptuously behind the table and 
now busied himself writing up receipts and 
filling in empty columns in his huge books. He 
looked up from his enormous task with great 
pain as each intending traveller on the Great 
Highway was ushered into his presence, 
gave the fare which he counted with practised 
ease. 
The office insisted on all the dignities of 
an international travel centre inspite of its 
atmosphere - low, even strikingly diminutive 
travellers' seats, stained oil-painted walls and 
air scented by heavy acrid smells. Receipts 
detailing destinations and perhaps main midway 
stopovers and outsized registers all 
seemed to me a part of the general psychingup 
process. 
I found Mokaila outside, by the motorroad 
wiping the dew off the long stationwagon 
car that I soon discovered was to be our 
vehicle. Mokaila, the driver's assistant betrayed 
a slight Ghanaian accent which was 
reassuring since, afterall, the sign placed on 
theroof of the Peugeot was explicit, 'Lagos to 
Accra'. There was, I thought also, Accra 
inscribed in his facial features, an amazing 
resemblance of the youth illustrated in pen 
and ink on the cover of Peter Abraham's 
book, Tell Freedom. 
I lamented to Mokaila about the jagged, 
nearly wrecked body of the car but he chuck 
led, promised to show me worse car body 
works which invariably all braved the distance. 
Fellow wayfarers whose luggages had 
found accommodation in the heaps and heaps 
now filling the vehicle to bursting waited 
patiently under a canopy on the other side of 
the road, its legitimate owner only managing 
to run her business on one edge dishing out 
bowls of rice and stew to school pupils and 
touts and assistant touts and all who cared for 
an early morning snack. Voyagers included 
traders who reserved carrier-bags, veritable 
'hand-luggages' to be sure, which held spillovers 
of assorted articles of trade - venus body 
lotion, air-tight snuff, toiletries -whose larger 
bulks were fed into the car, in some cases, the 
day before. 
A woman who grew increasingly talkative 
amongst other chattering friends reordered 
her pack surveying a toilet soap destined 
for export ro Accra and complained 
about the recent slow-drag of business. Sale 
in Ghana drops, she says, because of the 
reputation of Nigerian manufactures as fake. 
'They are all feek', she concluded. 
Tongues varied and fluid switching of 
tongues very usual. Multilingualism had become 
the ubiquitous trait of all who frequent 
the great highway. French to English, Yoruba 
to Hausa, Twi and Ewe. Twi, I found, was in 
employment during banters within the towns 
of Benin and Togo. 
And then there was the enigmatic Alhaji, 
a famous denizen of major world highways 
who though had no real grasp of languages 
beyond his mother-tongue, Yoruba, and English, 
had perfected the art of survival and 
immovability in linguistic jungles. He sat patiently 
under the rice seller's stall glaring into 
the day s newspapers. Gray-headed, hair 
shaven nearly to the scalp and thickset neck, 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORA ...
his solid forehead thrust into the open 
pages presented an almost, comical 
demeanour, which attracted me to him. 
Alhaji revealed that he had plied the 
road regularly since 19°0, has travelled 
widely in Europe and the Far East. 
His passport, defaced with stamps said 
it all. Throughout all the misfortunes of 
this particular trip he kept assuring me 
that the highway was preferable to airflight 
or the waterways. Alhaji at some 
point wagged his finger at me and said, 
he once ventured beyond the farthest 
ends of the great highway and reached 
up to Spain. 
'You boys! You've read in books 
but have not seen with your eyes. No 
experience! Beyond Mali, Sudan, when 
you reach Libya, you are ready to stretch 
your hand across the channel to your 
friend in Italy for a handshake.' 
After I confided to him that I was a 
journalist, he lifted his eyes and spied me 
all over, and said, 'if I were to write on 
this highway, oh! How I would write and 
write.'
Now Mokaila turned up on the 
heels of his master, the driver. The driver's 
voice had preceded him, and his orders. 
Mokaila swivelled in response to each, 
the last of which was 'get the car on the 
road!' And then the man whose straightbacked 
gait and overall demeanour was 
about to fetch him the name, General, in 
my estimation, turned on us and barked, 
get into the car!' It was difficult to resist 
his tone and the finality with which he 
gave the commands; like it or not, we too 
responded and began to trudge down 
the road, an unreasonably lengthy distance, 
beyond the filling station, where I 
felt he asked his boy to take the car to 
merely to prove who was firmly in charge. 
I had wondered when shown our 'international 
carrier' why only one place 
remained and yet none of those who 
turned up earlier bothered to secure the 
usual choice positions for themselves. 
Another lesson of this great highway-no 
position was particularly convenient. 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORA 
The car which ought to have held a 
maximum of seven, the driver included, 
took ten under the General's command, 
a horde of whimpering kids sandwiched 
between the women and myself in the 
middle seat. And when one of the babies 
would not be pacified, even with mouthfuls 
of drinks and tears-soaked bread 
pieces, it was in myverydirectionthathe 
turned and sprayed. Yet the General 
emerged with an extra baggage and 
insisted on tucking it underneath, exactly 
where my feet managed to find accommodation. 
Naturally, my protestations 
fell on deaf ears and so, I exploded, 
dismounted and asked him to refund my 
fare, knowing I had him against the 
barrel. The same long, tortuous journeys 
going through registers and cancelling 
receipts, would be followed before any 
refund would come through. But the 
General would rather not be stripped of 
authority; he kept his distance but refused 
to budge all the same. Bent on 
puncturing his inflated airs I flared, declared 
that I was through with the journey 
and insisted on the refund. It took the 
pleas of Alhaji and the other passengers 
to prevent further delays, Alhaji offering 
to switch positions with me. His space at 
the front seat however turns out much 
worse than where I rejected but peace 
was made in order that the voyage might 
commence.
It was an 'obstacle race' once we 
turned towards Seme, Nigeria's 
borderpost into Benin Republic, west of 
Badagry town. There was a checkpoint 
within every kilometre mounted variously 
by the Nigerian army, police, drug-law 
enforcement agency and immigration. 
What passed for 'checking' was in reality 
illegal toll-collection which was rendered 
mandatory. It seemed all you 
needed was a uniform and or rifle, and 
then you mounted your own collection 
point. And the greatest undoing of any 
vehicle was to be clearly marked as 
envisaging a multiple international border 
thrust, particularly if it was also 
visibly stacked to the roof as ours was. 
Great was my wonder to see the General 
dissolve at the very first of such encounters 
completely losing his grit, becomes 
supplicatory before the customsmen and 
soldiers, turned aghastatyetanother, full 
of complaint: 
'why you ask us to pay so much? A 
thousand. Five hundred! We no carry 
weapon, no fayawo!' 
Even so the private cars are generally 
waved on at the sudden roadside 
checks and even the borderposts reserved 
some measure of courtesy for 
them also. We had to disembark a quarter 
of a kilometre before the very 
bordergates and make the rest of the 
way by foot. The idea was to let each 
traveller sort herself/himself out with the 
multitude of viscious and rampaging officers 
manning the gates, as though into 
eternity. The more experienced knew 
where to offer the handouts, how much 
and where to bluff. Presenting valid travel 
documents saved you from only one of 
five desks, each with the powers to detain 
or prevent further progress. 
The gravest danger of all was to 
fall into the hands of touts who offer to 
serve as guides and advocates. In soliciting, 
they build fear into the potential 
customer, offer to take over the hand 
baggage and if there were hard currencies, 
demand to have them transferred 
under their safe keeping. It was the 
sensible thing to do before presenting 
yourself to the border officers. But once 
checking had all been surmounted, arguments 
would quite naturally 
erupt about the 
precise amount of hardcurrencies 
taken incustody 
and or vital contents 
of the hand-luggage 
has miraculously 
disappeared. 
The treatment 
meted out at the Benin 
Republic edge of the 
same gate was more 
severe or less, depending 
on the degree of 
the voyager's acquaintance 
with the way and 
ability to speak French. 
Unlike the Nigerians, 
the French-Africans 
wore no uniforms, 
gave sharp commands, 
from several ends at 
once, and were 
prompt with whistles. The more fortunate 
would be saved by the timely intervention 
of some compassionate officer who 
would help to fix a precise moderate 
sum, issue orders for your safety or provide 
an escort through, right into the 
centre of the stalls and motorpark where 
the basis of solicitation from touts altered 
to offers of taxi and snacks service. 
The passengers emerged one after 
another and collected under the stalls but 
there was no news of the General and 
Mokaila as yet, not until five hours afterwards. 
The food and snacks vendors 
with whom we found accommodation 
were Beninnoise Yoruba girls, school 
girls in fact, who served Guinness beer 
and Malta, poured into mugs. There I 
was joined by three young men, two 
Beninnoise and one Nigerian-born British 
citizen who conversed in English. The 
Nigerian-Briton narrated the tale of his 
adversities with the Nigerian immigration 
at the Murtala Muhammed International 
Airport in Lagos. They refused him 
passage into Nigeria despite his being 
in possession of all the valid papers. His 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol 2/No. 1 GLEN DORA
Beninnoise friend replied amidst his 
draughts of beer that it was much worse 
at the Seme Bordergate. 
'You cannot be right here. Not 
with the Narcotics agents in particular. 
They would make you eat bread and ask 
you to wait till you are ready to excrete, 
just to punish you and delay you.' 
The man from England, more angered 
than frightened returned, 
'They can't do that to me. They'd 
lose their jobs.' But the border tout inclined 
his head and downed the remainder 
of his beer: 
'They will tell you it is not their fault, 
it is order from abev.' 
General appeared at dusk, with 
Mokaila but he was never angrier. And 
it took a while for me to recognise that I 
was the cause of his tragedy. It was 
explained to me later that the Benin 
customs had frisked him and extorted 
from him far exceedingly upon sighting 
the glazing copies of Glendora Review 
in my baggage, charging him for importing 
'graphic'. Whereupon I wore the 
piteous, sympathetic look which hardly 
appeased him, rather he demanded for 
additional payments that came up to 
about half of the entire fare I had paid in 
Lagos. So that my sympathies metamorphosed 
into playing it deaf! 
The roadchecks re-emerged even 
in the francophone African territories. 
Through the cities of Benin and the Republic 
of Togo, terminating at the Ghanaian 
edge of the Aflao entryport. It 
seemed that the spirit of extraction built 
its throne in the Atlantic ocean, along 
whose coastline the Great Highway 
paved right from Badagry to Aflao. We 
peeped on the sea often, losing its track 
only momentarily and regaining it in a 
short distance. The rush of sea-storms 
and recumbent coconut palms however 
remained with us even at those moments 
when we failed to snatch a glance of the 
surface of the ocean. 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORA r 
The roadside Gendarmes in Benin 
and Togo were encountered rolicking 
leisurely in chairs, under tarpaulin or 
palm-frond canopies. Decked for the most 
in full military gear and appropriately 
armed, they were in actual fact fussless, 
especially as the driver knew what was 
expected of him: a rolled leaf of 500 
CFA disappeared between warm handshakes. 
When their patience was tried 
they resorted to the whistle which could 
be very threatening. 
Cotonou rose in full splendour from 
its very outskirts, dominated mainly by 
huge industrial complexes, its networks 
of motor-roads accompanied on the edges 
by rail tracks. The brilliant blaze of 
electric lamps distinguished this city even 
when small homesteads were glimpsed 
through the luxuriant foliage of fruit 
trees. Coastal windstorms sailed through 
the whole cityscape to an extent that, 
when occasion demanded that the car 
stop for a man to defecate in the bushes, 
before we rode midtown, buttocks bared 
to the wind, the turbulent storms nearly 
snatched my unbuttoned trousers! All the 
city sidewalks might have been swept 
glazing. The night markets complemented 
the beauty of the whole visage, patronised 
by non-sophisticated but cultured folks. 
Rail-lines clambered up bridges and 
crossed pedestrian and motor ways without 
frictions. The masses of people went 
as swoops of fireflies on motorcycles in 
the night, women also, in wrappers, 
riding leisurely and fusslessly, since, 
much unlike in Lagos, traffic-lights were 
heeded here and rights of passage 
acknowledged among road-users where 
due. 
Alhaji was however the least impressed. 
Asked why during one of our 
brief stops where the General went to 
present his police offerings, he explained 
that there was such remarkable neatness 
in Cotonou and Lome because the people 
had battered their brains to France in 
exchange for a similitude of development. 
He took one final disparaging 
glance at the enormous parliamentary 
buildings of Benin, awash with glows 
from archlamps, and hissed: 
'You see, the French did all their 
thinking for them!' 
We grew friendlier, as we walked 
the passage through the borderposts 
between Benin and Togo at Hillacondji. 
The fuss was generally less when moving 
between two French-speaking territories 
and Hillacondji was quiet, even solemn 
both night and day. Here Alhaji declined 
to present his passport for stamping, 
I figured as yet another expression of 
his condescension for the francophone 
Africans. Besides, his regrets for not 
having a chance to pour his anti-French 
expletives directly into my reportorial 
notebooks came to the surface again: 
promptly shifted into the role he had 
clearly rehearsed and envisioned himself 
in for sometime; he grabbed my 
hand before the Togolese immigration 
and proudly introduced himself as my 
boss, you know, coming along with his 
boy all the way from the Daily Times in 
Lagos!
The accuracy of his gauges, of 
Togo's size, as with all else, was legendary. 
He had campaigned vigorously, 
even before we set our eyes on Cotonou 
that we pass the night at Hillacondji 
which caught his fancy for no obvious 
reason, assuring me that the distance 
between Hillacondji and Lome-Aflao was 
a mere thirty minutes. I believed him but 
the General paid no heed. It turned out 
that more than three hours separated 
between Hillacondji and Lome, and a 
further two hours and half between Lome 
and Tema-Accra. 
No one pierced the borders at 
Lome after dusk, just as in Seme and our 
arrival in the midnight meant that we 
were able to present ourselves at the 
immigration building first thing in the 
morning. But we were not alone. Sharp 
on the dot of 6am. (7am. Nigerian time), 
a huge crowd, mainly of pedestrians and
traders which had accumulated before 
the gates, made their rapid dash for the 
borders. The few Togolese officers who 
tried to hold them back with batons and 
whips almost fell over backwards in the 
face of the surge. But the Ghanaians 
waiting at the Aflao edge seemed better 
prepared, maintaining order with their 
own small-sized whips and upheld belts. 
The way paved into two, one for those 
with valid travel papers and the other for 
those prepared to earn their passage 
with unofficial (but well acknowledged) 
sums of money. Those who could hardly 
afford the prescribed fee made up with 
pairs of second-hand children's shoes or 
clothes, extracted from amongst their 
articles of trade. Even so, valid papers at 
W e c o u I d n't w a i t f o r the 
AFRICAN OUARTEEY ON THE ARTS 
the other side needed augmentation with 
the one thousand cedi note 
The General's luck has since improved, 
after his initial encounters at the 
Nigeria-Benin border; in less than two 
hours afterwards our car was heading 
fast for Accra. We all now were in the 
cheerful mood, the General inclusive; the 
women behind burst into songs, inspired 
apparently by our progress towards 
Accra. The Alhaji could think of no other 
way to express his pleasure than to make 
one more descent on the French. This 
was at the moment when, thirty minutes 
after departing from Aflao we happened 
upon the Volta river. The Volta bridge 
was the traditional border between the 
old Gold Coast and Togo, he revealed. 
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That was before the Republic of Ghana 
pushed the borderline backwards to 
Aflao. Muttering more to himself now, he 
wondered why Ghana had notyet thought 
it fit to over-run the entire of Togo and 
annex it! Togo more than deserved this, 
he reasoned, because of its small size. 
The way left and right of our advance 
was far from densely forested; the 
endless stretch of sparse vegetation 
nearest to the savannah without the 
grass but rather isolated squat trees. 
Thereon our visage was interrupted only 
by tiny, tiny human settlements, up until 
we emerged in Tema, the harbourtown 
outstrip of the capital, by midday, twentysix 
hours after our departure from 
Lagos. GR 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 1 GLENDORA