Banji

Lagos is a wild animal.

And Banji has missed everything about it.

But he would leave in a heartbeat.

He would have taken that contract too, the architectural contract for a greenspace on his old college campus in Ottawa. A good acquintance he had made; an old college professor from his first year Structural Systems class, had hooked up his firm with the contract specifically mentioning that Banji's expertise would be highly apreciated. But he had to turn it down, allowing his partners in Canada captain the project instead.

Why?

Because of Mumsie, after all the woman had been through with that bastard of a husband; his father. The useless man had finally died and now she had to deal with property disputes with his three other wives. So he was staying to make sure that she got her fair share of the Banjoko estate, he had hired his friend Junior as their lawyer.

He had been back almost two months and had been consumed almost completely with work. He figured that while he was in Lagos indefinitley, he might as well try to set up shop, meeting up with and talking to different pontential investors interested in setting up a Lagos branch of the architectural firm of which he was a partner. He had quickly fallen into a routine; wake up, eat, drive Mumsie to check up on her shops in Island Mall, work, eat, meet with one of his many half siblings or Junior for drinks, work, eat with Mumsie, sleep, wake up.

He would have been bored, if it had not being for the unreliability of everything in Lagos. Lagos is a wild animal, hungry and unpredictable and if it isn't NEPA or obscene dieseil and petrol prices, or maddening traffic, or housegirl and gateman palava, it is his mother harrasing him about being to thin.

Ofcourse he was thin, he was already stressed, but he wouldn't have it anyother way, he was a bit of a workaholic.

Then there was Anu, he had thought about her a few times in the last five years, but they were passing thougts, memories of alnighters they had pulled in the library together or parties they had crashed triggered by old songs or pictures. He hadn't actually thought of her face or the way she looked, just the things she said, or colors and scents he asociated with her, But then he had seen her at Junior's father's thing and she even though she looked a bit different- she was rounder, thicker, that dress she wore; she filled very nicely- the way her smile unfurled when she saw him, the feeling he got, the way the air around her carried her scent, the same scent, the look on her face. Exactly the same as he remembered.

The had talked, leaning against the fence, while she and Junior shared a cigarette. They had talked baout nothing really, just the usual what have you been up to? You haven't changed at all. So you're back to LasGidi abi? Welcome home, welcome home.