Looking for Transwonderland by Noo Saro-Wiwa

lying).
    Annoyed by these frequent disruptions, I kissed my teeth and harrumphed and sighed and stamped my feet, hoping that these raucous spectators would get the message. They were oblivious to my irritation, and I ended up losing the plot of the play entirely. Audience participation can be a beautiful thing, and call-and-response is one of my favourite aspects of African culture. Nothing is more powerful than watching an audience replying to a speaker’s words, emoting between his or her phrases and amplifying the sentiment (the singer Erykah Badu’s live version of ‘Tyrone’ is a form of audience participation at its most sublime). But to do it during a sombre stage play? It didn’t seem appropriate to me.
    A second, portly lady in a front-row seat was anxious to let the rest of us to know that she had figured out the plot in advance. ‘She’s their half-sister!’ she cried out, pointing to the maid character on stage. ‘It’s her, now.’
    Two minutes later, the play reached its climax when in the final line, the housemaid confessed to being the illegitimate daughter of the deceased politician: ‘ He was my father .’

    â€˜See, I told you,’ the portly lady commented as the lights dimmed, pleased at her foresight. The cast took a bow, the audience clapped, and my anger imploded into resignation. There was no point hoping for quiet. This was the Lagos way of watching a play, and if I ever wanted to enjoy the city, I simply had to get used to it. In Nigeria, every diamond, even Victoria Island, was fashioned with rough edges.
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    Across the water from Victoria Island was Tarkwa Bay, a sheltered beach along Lagos Harbour. It wasn’t the prettiest of places, but it was a diversion from the city, singled out by my guidebook for its mere existence rather than its attractiveness. In Lagos a trip to the seaside – with all its debris and harsh views of Lagos’s industrial harbour – represented a break from the hustling multitudes and non-stop irritation of city life.
    After the play, my okada man took me to the western edge of Victoria Island, past the foreign embassy buildings and the armed soldiers idling on chairs beneath a grove of trees by the water’s edge. At the jetty, I saw a shaven-headed man with a goatee wrapped around extremely shapely lips. He was sitting at an outdoor desk. As I watched him stand up and walk towards me, I could tell he was a hustler right from the start. Obscuring his shifty eyes behind dark sunglasses, he homed in on me with a swiftness that made his motives clear. He worked in the office near the boats, he told me, helping people apply for visas to the US. Though this bore no connection with the boats, he acted as an intermediary between me and the man in charge of the water transport.
    â€˜My name is Sam,’ he intoned smoothly, extending his hand to shake mine. ‘I can show you around Tarkwa Bay.’ His intentions aside, I couldn’t help being impressed by his cool, laconic demeanour. He led me to the boat and tried to charm a free ride from the boat man, but the old guy was having none of it.

    â€˜You’re a thief,’ he jibed at Sam, a stern glint piercing his smiley eyes. Sam begrudgingly paid for a full-price ticket.
    The motor boat took us and a quartet of Italians through Five Cowrie Creek and out to the Atlantic. We cruised beneath the flyover bridge separating Victoria Island from Ikoyi, and headed into the choppy blue waters. Lagos’s industrial sprawl extended into the lagoon, filling its blue surface with oil tankers and oil pipelines that stretched above our heads. A group of hardened white expats, embracing the industrial aesthetic, sailed among the tankers on their yachts and jet skis.
    Once at Tarkwa Bay, everyone waded onto the beach, except me. I stayed on the boat, adamant about keeping my shoes and legs dry. Sam gallantly lifted me up in his arms and carried me onto