Reading: Uwem Akpan

Akpan's story is about a Catholic priest on his way to see his brother in Nigeria. After suffering great loss while living on the rivers edge, believes himself to be used to the tribulations of this country: "After an oil fire killed hundreds of my fellow swamp-dwellers in the Niger Delta, after the mass burials, after negotiating with the leaders of the scores of tribes that make up our church." As a priest, he is compelled to follow ritual and deal every woman, man and child their due respect. Lagos is going through great turmoil as the OPC (Oodua People's Congress) is striking, expecting they have the right to the land. In near every part of the world, a group of people will use a sort of squatter's rights ideal to demand land. "We were here first, we deserve the land." As history has shown, however, it is not who was there first, but rather who was the most convincing and most powerful.

Based on what the priest said, we are to assume this is a common occurrence. They are currently low on fuel and low on peace. With any scarcity of a major resource, anger runs rampant. This certainly is the case in Nigeria. The priest hopes his status as a priest will give him some slack with the Nigerians. However, it becomes pretty evident this is not the case when his first of a series of unfortunate events lands him a dead VW Beetle. "So? You Nigerian clerics just want everything free! You flash your status at every chance" says the Lagosian who had come to help him.

He is stuck with the very same Lagosian guiding him through the city. Runs over a corpse. Mugged by some policemen. Fears being kidnapped. Car, of course, dies again. Accused of highway pooping. More or less, everytime his car dies, something bad happens.

The most interesting part of this story, and likely the most important, is the well phrased setting images. Each description of setting so clearly constructs itself into the reader's mind.

My car dies again, in spite of my revs, at a roundabout. Half a mile down the road, there’s a petrol station. Cars are lined up in pairs, bumper to bumper, coated with a week-old layer of dust. Drivers lounge around, with no idea when fuel will come. The queue has formed a tightening noose around the roundabout, reducing three lanes of traffic to the one that contains my dead Beetle.

It leaves very little up to the imagination in one way, but makes load more room for the imagination in another. Rather than force our minds to draw our pictures of the scene, we can now clearly reenact it with such force that it pulls out our emotions, immersing ourselves in each changing scene.

-Mark