In October 2008, in the first month of my undergraduate programme at Hull University, I accidentally set my Hall of Residence on fire.
That night, I was frying sausages in the kitchen at Ferens Hall Block G, and I wandered away and got distracted by football. It was a Champions League night and I was still getting used to the novelty of having an internet connection that was rapid enough to permit live streaming video. About 10 minutes later, the fire alarm went off and everyone poured out onto the centre courtyard thinking it was a drill.
That was when it fully hit me for the first time, that I not only came from a third world country, but I also had a third world mindset that I needed to completely and absolutely unlearn
Next thing we knew, we saw thick black smoke coming out of the kitchen and we realised that this was the real thing. In one horrible moment of clarity, I realised two things. First, that the fire was my fault — I had left the sausages on at full heat on the electric cooker and got distracted by Steven Gerrard scoring a wonder goal for Liverpool against Marseille.
The second was that everyone else seemed either completely horrified by the spectacle or oddly enthused by it. A group of girls was locked in an embrace crying, and some dudes were taking a video of the whole thing because apparently, a house fire was such a foreign thing to them as to be a complete novelty.
We think we’re normal, but we’re not.
I didn’t want to become known as that guy who set the hall on fire because Liverpool FC was more important than the sausages he left on the fire, so I grabbed someone’s keys and ran back into the dark, smoky building — which is exactly what you are NOT supposed to do. I dashed upstairs and into the choking black smoke in the kitchen, where I felt my way to the cooker and yanked the power cable out of the wall outlet. Then I grabbed the pan and ran outside with it, dumping it on the grass in the courtyard.
The crowd went absolutely wild. Wow, what a guy! He ran into the building like a comic book superhero and ended the fire by himself! Of course, the adulation quickly turned into laughter when I shamefacedly admitted that it was me and my sausages that created the entire situation to begin with, but I can still see the faces of that group of white girls holding on to each other and crying, then looking at me with pure wonder like I was a creature from a Dr Strange universe, as I emerged from the ‘burning’ building.
Later on, I came to understand that what I did was probably the stupidest thing it was possible to do in those circumstances. A large number of those who die during fire outbreaks are not burned to death, but rather starved of oxygen as the fire takes away the available oxygen and replaces it with unbreathable thick smoke. That is the reason the Fire Service expressly forbids people from running into burning buildings, even when there is no immediate fire risk.
I, on the other hand, coming from an environment where dysfunction and madness were my everyday realities, saw absolutely nothing special about literally running straight toward death and grappling with it in a fool’s errand, just because I did not want my social reputation at Ferens Hall to suffer. I had a similar realisation some weeks later when crossing the road in town. In typical Nigerian fashion, I looked left, right, then left again before dashing across the road during a break in traffic.
When I got to the other side, I noticed a group of folks looking at me the same way you look at a lion roaring in its enclosure at the zoo — a mix of fascination, fear and sheer popcorn value. I could not for the life of me understand it, until I saw one of them reach out and push a button under the traffic light. Instantly the light changed to red, stopping vehicular traffic, and this group of people ambled leisurely across the road. When they had crossed, the light went back to green.
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Mass trauma — An unwanted superpower?
That was when it fully hit me for the first time, that I not only came from a third world country, but I also had a third world mindset that I needed to completely and absolutely unlearn. We all have it, even those of us who imagine we grew up different, because we were in Lekki or Banana Island. As long as your everyday reality involves dodging potholes, sitting in interminable traffic for hours everyday, seeing policemen walking around brandishing AK-47s, powering your house with a generator and getting your water from a borehole, you are traumatised. You just don’t know it yet. You probably won’t know just how traumatised you are until you leave the country.
On the flipside, this trauma is also our unique superpower that gives us a competitive advantage outside Nigeria. Ever wondered why a Nigerian who achieved absolutely nothing in Nigeria might travel abroad and totally transform their lives within a few years?
It is because when you are used to surviving amid daily trauma, once that trauma is removed and you keep on working at the same intensity as before, you will be untouchable. Surviving in Nigeria is like constantly running with a car attached to your back. Being freed from Nigeria’s constraints is like suddenly having that burden cut loose — you might literally fly past your contemporaries who have no idea what living without electricity or witnessing horrific acts of violence everyday is like.
This by the way, is not in any way a glorification of the suffering and torture that Nigeria puts Nigerians through. I’m merely pointing out that if Bruce Banner could turn The Hulk into a fluid entity to be turned on and off at will, perhaps we can find a way to channel our Nigerian trauma accordingly. From a safe distance, obviously.
“You wanna know my secret? I’m always traumatised.”
