Shortest Flight of Our Lives (November 29, 2015, Benin)
Uche’s cousin (Ope) worked in a company that shared the same building as mine. It made things a lot easier for him. He would come to hang out at my workplace in the evening and then go back with Ope. Getting him out of security was often the hard part. Uche would sometimes turn up in jeans shorts and worn tennis shoes. It was only when he had a meeting with someone important that he would slap a jacket on. His choice of apparel often created a complexity with building security whenever Uche showed up. The complexities often heightened once Uche spoke with his “Oyinbo accent”. The traditional image of an American returnee was that of someone who looked and dressed like (s)he had “made it”. If there was anything that was certain, Uche didn’t get the memo on “How to look like a successful returnee”. He didn’t care. He was in his father’s land, and he would walk barefoot and bare-chested if he wanted to.
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During one of these hangout sessions in my workplace, I informed him that I would be going to do some work in a neighbouring country, Cameroon. He also mentioned travelling to Côte d’Ivoire for the weekend. I finished the project in Cameroon on Saturday night and then took a flight from Douala to Lagos on Sunday. While the upper part of the ticket showed Douala and Lagos, I didn’t realise there was a stopover. The Airk Air pilot announced a stopover in the Benin Republic to pick up other passengers who were bound for Lagos.
As the aircraft doors opened, passengers filed in. To my surprise, I saw Uche walk down the aircraft aisle in his traditional casual attire. We smiled on seeing ourselves as we discussed the irony of meeting again on “international” grounds. The aeroplane took off and we flew between Cotonou and Lagos on what was probably the shortest flight of our lives. When we got to Lagos, Uche found out that his phone battery was dead, so I called an Uber to get him home.
