It was threedays to my departure to Cambridge for a much-anticipatedprofessional development opportunity, but offices, shops andairports were closed. The usually bustling network of roadsthat run like the veins of a leaf through the city of Lagos,Nigeria's commercial capital, were desolate. And every tickof the clock increased my apprehension over a careeradvancement opportunity that was swinging on the pendulum ofuncertainty. And so, early on that first Monday of July2003, I called Patricia, the officer in charge of thearrangements at the British Council, my sponsor. She was asoft-spoken, dimpled, and amiable lady who walked sorhythmically one would think she was waltzing to some ghostmusic in her head.

‘Hey, Nduka’,she responded on the other end, as if she had been rousedfrom a reverie. ‘I've been trying to get hold of the travelagents on the phone without luck. I hate to believe that theproprietress has switched off her phone on a day like this.Other workers of the travel agency I tried are alsounavailable.’

‘So what do wedo?’ I asked.

‘I'm not aboutgiving up, Nduka’, Patricia assured me. ‘I'll keep tryinguntil I get through. But then, even if I succeed, how wouldyou handle transportation from the mainland where you liveand pick up the ticket on the Island? I hear the roads arebarricaded and, besides, I understand the airport isdead.’

‘Just leavethat to me. Let's get the travel documents first. Youhaven't forgotten that as a journalist I am permitted tocover the strike?’

Patricia's loudchuckle on the phone forced a smile out of me – a relievingact at a time when laughing seemed like a luxurious exerciseunless, of course, you were a Nigerian, curiously describedby a UK-based research group, as ‘the happiest people onearth’. Indeed, Lagos could force one into believing thatclaim. Despite prevalent privations, the streets of Lagoswere a theatre of tragicomedies and melodramas. In thatinstant, a scene I had witnessed flitted through my mindlike a dreadful dream.