Esther

I hid my excitement when I interviewed Esther for she might have thought it bizarre that an oyinbo (foreign) lady found her intriguing. Esther was from the Niger Delta, a region I read so much about and longed to visit. She was my sister in height and the sort of lady who looks away to giggle while calling your name when you make a joke.

I got to know Esther for the one and a half years that I lived in a city called Abuja, the capital of Nigeria. She worked as a member of the 'maintenance' crew of the school I led. When we launched the Vital Links program to help our more elite students understand how the 'real Nigeria' lives, Esther was the first I called upon to speak - and boy did she speak! Our little giggling Esther summoned up the immense power of her spirit to rock our entire hall. 

Compared to most Nigerian cities, Abuja boasts of luxury and the availability of foreign consumer products. However, for the average Nigerian like Esther, Abuja is a hub of cruelty. Esther does not have the comfort of living in a gated compound and has to travel for an hour or more to get into town, squashed like a sardine in one or two rickety buses, to earn roughly $100 per month. This is in a city where the aggregate cost of living is higher than any European city, with no government safety nets. Like they say in Nigeria, "You are on your own!"

Esther and most others in her rank of employment live on the border of another state just to be able to afford a small dimly-lit 2-room apartment where she and several other family members may shield themselves from the elements and share something of a family life. Esther has children of her own and those who belong to her sister to feed, clothe, educate, go to court on behalf of, and buy medicines for - all on her paltry $100 a month. Yet a large chunk of this money goes on daily transport where she must suffer countless indignities as a woman with no personal space amongst other men.

When people like Esther get to work, an elite employer who straddles in an hour late might penalise her for the few minutes she might be late, even though her own lateness might have been due to the growing strain on her back or legs, or a sudden government order which affects buses on her route.

There is no such thing as notice for government orders in Abuja. You just deal with them as they come, and if bus restrictions happen to come during the rainy season, making you walk for an extra half an hour in the mud with your load to get to a bus, catching pneumonia in the process, "you are on your own!"

Esther is a woman of faith. She prays every day and fasts for redemption from her living conditions. She prays with her family by the light of a lantern hung from the ceiling and she prays at the night vigils her church organises regularly, because people like Esther can only have faith in God. No one else seems to hear their prayers.

Esther would change her clothes after work into something glamorous, as if she was about to hit the town for a social night out with her lady friends, when all she was really going to do was take the bus home. Playing a bit and taking joy in the little things was what she had to do to keep her head up. I would often tease Esther that she looked so fine that she made me look like her grandma. She would look away, giggle and call my name.   

Recently, bombs have started exploding in "motor parks" where people like Esther take their buses to work. Bombs do not usually discriminate, but in Nigeria they do. In Nigeria, bombs succeed in killing only those who are poor; only those who toil each day to provide a single dim light by which their children might study; only those whose native lands have been poisoned or stolen by elite companies and politicians; only those who have migrated to seek a better future for their children, only those labour and markets rebase the country's GDP to rival South Africa's.

Esther, I miss your giggles and pray you are safe!