Water Baby

by Chioma Okereke

Genres: Coming of Age; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

She's the Pearl of Makoko and the world is her oyster.

In Makoko, the floating slum off mainland Lagos, Nigeria, nineteen-year-old Baby yearns for an existence where she can escape the future her father has planned for her.

With opportunities scarce, Baby jumps at the chance to join a newly launched drone-mapping project, aimed at broadening the visibility of her community.

Then a video of her at work goes viral and Baby finds herself with options she could never have imagined - including the possibility of leaving her birthplace to represent Makoko on the world stage.

But will life beyond the lagoon be everything she's dreamed of? Or has everything she wants been in front of her all along?

Release date: April 11, 2023

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 416

Sample

There’s an old tale where we live about throwing a newborn into the lagoon.

If the baby drowns, it is illegitimate and the mother must be banished from the community. But if it floats, the infant is embraced by all. They say fathers used to celebrate their child’s birth with this test. It must have been a trick, though, as everybody knows that all babies float.

I was born in the water. That’s what Papa says but it’s a fiction. I wasn’t born in a hospital or on land; most of us in my community weren’t. We drew our first breaths on Adogbo, though according to Papa, my first moments were almost in the lagoon itself. Makoko is what the outsiders had originally called our settlement hundreds of years ago, due to its abundance of akoko leaves, and the name stuck for the community on the Lagos coast just across from the Third Mainland Bridge. To strangers, it’s a slum, a metallic and wooden eyesore built over a stinking bed of ever-mounting sewage, spreading out across the smoke-filled horizon. For the government, it’s the impediment between even larger coffers for them and prime waterfront real estate. But to us, who are from here, Makoko is simply home.

The Nigerian government likes to pretend that we don’t exist, but we’ve been here for hundreds of years, our wooden houses resting proudly on their stilts above Lagos’s charcoal-coloured lagoon. We’ll remain here for some time, no matter how many attempts they make to push us out.

Mama had plenty of babies in her belly before me, but only a few of us stayed. That’s not only an issue with the women in our family, as she’d explained, but with life here on the lagoon. There’s a high rate of maternal and infant death among those living on the water, which is strange considering that we all originally come from the womb having been surrounded by liquid. Still, many women lose their children – although there’re plenty to go around – as there are very few doctors here to speak of.

So, Mama had some false starts before Dura came and then many other miscarriages before it was my turn nineteen years ago, followed by Charlie Boy five years later. I was fearless, Papa used to say. It’s why I was able to be born.

Mama had been visiting her best friend when I announced my early arrival, pounding hard on her stomach and pelvic bone. Auntie Uche had protested that it was too late for her to leave. Having had more babies than Mama, Auntie knew I was well on my way into the world, but Mama had been insistent. She’d wanted to return home to have me in her own bed, so they’d stepped gingerly into a canoe for the short ride back. Papa wasn’t even there but claimed Mama’s labour was so painful that he’d heard her while he’d been far out fishing with the other men. Mama’s voice had travelled across the water and spooked the fish, which rushed to their nets, delivering them a glorious bounty!

As I’d inched through her passageways, Mama rocked the canoe so much that they’d almost fallen overboard. Auntie Uche could only look on in fear as she prepared to rescue Mama from the filthy waters, but then something odd happened. A mighty invisible hand had reached out from within the lagoon and pushed her upper body firmly back in place. Mama let out a heavy cry and then slid to the boat’s bottom so that Auntie Uche could row her home before I slipped out through her legs from underneath her wrapper. We’d stayed in the boat tethered together by our cord while my aunt screamed for help and our neighbours went to fetch the other women.

Papa was astounded when he came home later that evening, covered in sweat and scales. His eyes were large and his mouth even wider when he saw what Mama had produced. He said I looked like one of the fishes he drew out from the water daily, in shock from being extracted from their natural habitat, their eyes big with fear as their cheeks contracted from struggling to take in the air out of the water.

He retold this story many times when I was smaller. I used to ask him if I’d been slimy like the catfish that we ate in the past, which the lagoon used to be full of when it was teeming with fish. He’d reply that I was, but that Mama had cleaned me up, so by the time we met, I was dry but naked and as beautiful as a mermaid.

He said I was practically born with one foot in the water and that Mama had been helped that day by the deity Yemoja herself.

It’s why they named me after the water spirit, though everyone calls me by Papa’s pet name: Baby.

*

Papa used to say I was his mermaid because of the way I arrived. Not just because of Mama’s near accident, but owing to the state of Auntie Uche’s canoe, its plenty holes as I lay at Mama’s feet, the first thing my lungs would have experienced was Makoko water. It’s clearly a nonsense, but he liked to tell the story and I loved to see my small self in his pupils as he retraced our history.

Most of Makoko’s fishermen believe in mermaids, although they’re difficult to see here because of the colour of the lagoon. But sometimes when they’re returning home from night fishing, they claim to hear the maidens playing under the bridge. It’s easy to depict us as mermaids and fishermen because of our existence over the water, but I think we’re closer to dragons. Creatures that are also associated with water but are highly accustomed to breathing fire, unlike visitors to Makoko. The moment outsiders step off the deck and cross the murky lagoon, the thing that stays with them isn’t only the stench but the ever-present smoke hanging over the water. Our lungs are long accustomed to the black smog created from preparing fish for generations, but it’s a shock to many newcomers. As if the city air is anything to write songs about!

It’s never quiet here but there’s peace. And like the rest of Lagos, there’s always sound. Generators belch diesel noisily all day and night and boat motors roar by angrily, stirring up otherwise calm waters. Loud, happy music erupts out of household after household in each community. Everywhere, children are jumping between canoes, women clapping and singing at home and in church, and fishermen casting their nets out over the lagoon like Spider-Man spreading the web from his hands in the picture on Charlie Boy’s faded T-shirt.

Official counts vary about how many of us are living here, but it’s easily in the hundreds of thousands. The government isn’t wanting to count us as it’s easier to pretend as though we don’t exist. But every year, more people are coming from other sites they have abolished. Houses are spreading out further and further over the water, and our home is developing like any other settlement.

There are a couple of people looking for taxis across the lagoon as I near the jetty in my canoe. At this time of the day, one can be pressed for customers, so I give thanks for the blessing. Plunging my oar deeply into the water, I draw its length through what resembles black ink mired by rubbish upon rubbish. I spot hundreds of discarded plastic bottles, carrier bags and part of a tyre among the top pile of floating refuse in my wake as I steer around them in the narrowing waterway.

I love the weight of this implement in my already leathered hands, the motion of the canoe as it skims the surface of the water like a dolphin, the burn of sulphur and shit high in my nostrils as the sun beats down on my bare shoulders. I’m the captain of my ship. Or rather, my river taxi.

‘Good morning, where you wan go?’ I ask as the woman waiting for a ride gesticulates wildly for my attention. Her black trousers and blue button-down shirt make me think she’s a bank worker or perhaps has a government job on the mainland. She removes her hand from over her eyebrows, her makeshift protection from the glare of the blazing sun.

‘Carry me to Dr Ofong’s hospital,’ she points off into the distance, dislodging the large handbag from her shoulder.

‘Okay, enter,’ I respond before she steps down into my canoe, followed by two women wearing dresses in the same pink diamond print. Looking around quickly, I inspect my domain through her eyes. Thankfully, despite my hectic sailing in a rush to get here, the seats are dry. The floor of the canoe is empty apart from my ever-present sweat cloth on the seat next to me with my bottle of water.

‘Go quick quick, please! I’m late for an appointment,’ she begs before shooting a bullet of spit into the dark water. Even if I wanted to linger in the hope of another customer, I now can’t for fear of losing her.

From the way she wrinkles her nose, it’s clear that she’s a visitor to the community. As far as the eye can see, there’s dirt from refuse spat out from the lagoon’s lips a million times over or pushed in via shipping lanes and kept here by the currents. We’re used to seeing the waterways filled with refuse; trash jam-packed under every house as decades of garbage bobs on the water’s surface like rising secrets that want to be told. The smell of Makoko is something we are long accustomed to.

‘This place go kill person,’ she mutters under her breath as we glide through a particularly pungent patch of the lagoon.

My oar slides into the water like a hot comb through hair as we push off from land towards Adogbo and I listen to the chatter of my two other customers, one whose laughter reminds me of Dura, most likely hawking fish at her stall on Better Life Market, her latest newborn strapped to her back. This journey across the lagoon is what I enjoy the most. There’s a bustle in the waterways and pockets of peace too, which are harder to come by among the houses.

A bead of sweat slides through my braids, and I shake my head vigorously to generate some breeze, but my executive passenger frowns at me as if I’m in danger of rocking the boat.

‘You’re safe, Auntie,’ I say to reassure her, to soften the ice block I’m ferrying towards the community, but she looks through me before closing her eyes.

On a good day, I’ll make half a dozen more trips like this before I go home to deal with my chores or to carry out one of my other side jobs. A person must have many other lives on Makoko in order to eat and sleep. But bobbing along on the water in the traffic jams created by the other boats or drifting far away with only the lights on the horizon for guidance is where I feel the most free.

Alone on the water, I can hear my own thoughts without the voices of others telling me what to do or who to be.

Many of us set our sights on the mainland, the furthest we can stretch our imaginations before they break. Parents dream of us leaving Makoko and doing better than they did for themselves, and eventually we dream it too, all the while knowing it to be an elusive fantasy. Not many of us have done it, yet that hope pulses within us like a beacon.

I gaze longingly beyond the mainland to the skies and in those moments that are solely mine, I’m free to fantasise about the future.

One that I’m actually wanting.

‘Don’t move your head,’ I scold Kemi, pulling on the end of her hair for good measure, drawing a yelp from her stupid lips.

‘It’s paining me—’

‘Let me finish abeg. If you continue fidgeting, we’ll be late for school.’

I complete the section of her hair I’m braiding and observe my handiwork. It’s not the best, but Kemi’s hair is now sectioned into eight braids to last her the week. With the two at the front stopping just in front of her eyes, she almost resembles a stag beetle. I briefly consider telling her that, but her crying will only delay us further.

We’re on the deck of the house; Kemi is nestled in the V of my legs. While I plait, I bark orders to Afo, who takes even longer than Kemi to get ready for school.

‘Afolabi,’ I call out his full name for emphasis. ‘If I call you again—’

‘I’m coming, Baby! I’m coming,’ he protests, rubbing sleep out of his eyes as he exits the bedroom.

‘Your shirt is inside out,’ I remark, spying the browning label on the collar of his margarine yellow and blue uniform. ‘Did you bath?’ I ask him, checking his face for any trace of a lie.

‘Yes,’ he says, reversing the shirt swiftly before tucking it into his overly short shorts in three moves.

‘And did you empty the bucket?’ I probe, wriggling my nose as if I can detect his waste from any others in the air around us. By the droop of his shoulders, I know he’s forgotten again. ‘Go and empty it,’ I order him as I wipe the last bit of grease off my finger and run it down the tiny spine, created by the hairstyle, in the middle of Kemi’s scalp. ‘We’re leaving now now.’

I go inside to put away the hair products in the turned-over plastic box that serves as a bedside table in our tiny bedroom. This is the space for the children; a collection of cousins, relatives bonded by circumstances and the closest of quarters. The floor is obscured by the two foam mattresses we share and the shelving which holds our clothing in one corner. It’s stuffy when we’re all inside, so sometimes I move out to the deck to escape Kemi winding her sweaty limbs around me or Tayo trying to kill us with fetid messes he never attempts to quieten, as if we’re trespassers on his private premises. Sometimes I sleep in the canoe, under the grey velvet of the night sky, the slow waves rocking me gently until my eyes close.

Drawing the curtain savagely away from the window, I let daylight enter the room, making Tayo groan before turning onto his front to shield his face. I can hear Afo in the bathroom scrubbing the bucket with the toilet brush through the wall separating us.

‘Wake up,’ I tell Tayo, even though it’s of little use.

One year my junior and too stubborn to listen to anyone, including Uncle Jimi, I know he’s going to ignore me. Almost on cue, Tayo kisses his teeth before raising his buttocks off his mattress to dispatch one mess that smells like rotten fish. It’s enough to have me fleeing the room for the safety of the less pungent lagoon water.

I usher the small ones towards the canoe and we set off for school. Almost everyone has a boat on Makoko or access to one. On the water, Lagos is still Lagos, which means plenty of go-slow at various hours of the day. The waterways are only ever truly still in the thick of night.

In the daytime, the lagoon is as bustling as the city streets. Hawkers ply their trades as boats make their laps, piled high with food, soft drinks, clothing, even DVDs, calling out for customers that are always in high demand. Other boats are filled with fishermen or commuters making their way to work; women heaving baskets of fish to sell at Asejere and men heading to the sawmill or to dredge for sand. Little children without the means to go to school sit idle on decks or rent boats to try their hand as taxi drivers, splashing water on passers-by with their inferior piloting skills or drifting in circles, their laughter bouncing off choppy brown waves. Skilled oarsmen tut loudly as they navigate these habitual obstacles, some with their oars the length of flagpoles as they delicately ferry their assorted cargos.

Kemi and Afo giggle as we pass a large woman trying to navigate her exit out of a tiny canoe and onto someone’s deck. A few more metres away, a row of children defecate directly into the water, their aim precise and expedient before they re-engage in their game of chase. Further on in our commute, two small boys play in the water, one using a large plastic bucket as his vessel while the other travels in a fuel canister with the top portion cut off to allow his body access.

Afo and Kemi have been attending Whanyinna sporadically since the floating school collapsed in 2016. Theirs is the only remaining one on the water; the others close by are on land. There was plenty of excitement when the floating school first came here; its innovative shape, a three-story pyramid like a wooden house of cards kept afloat by plenty of barrels that were also used to collect rainwater, caught the eyes of the world. But sadly, it had been no match for Mother Nature and collapsed after less than a year due to heavy rains.

Before that, many many children didn’t have a chance for education. But the floating school brought us more than teaching; it had given us hope about what was possible on the water.

Now only one school remains, and even though tuition is free, many still can’t attend due to lack of money. There’s little help from the government, and what can you learn if there’s no chalk or no pens to write? Teachers are forced to charge a small fee for the children to keep the school running, but many parents can’t afford to pay the fifty naira daily fee required from each child. Many people, myself included, only go to school for a brief time to acquire some basics. One thing that life has taught us here is how to make do. Fortunately for me, as Mama used to teach, my education was more plentiful than for others.

Makoko is a fisherman’s village, which was how Egun migrants referred to it when it first appeared centuries ago. Now there are many more people from plenty places that have come to make a home within the community. From Benin and Togo, even Ghana, they keep coming, and of course, many of us have been born here.

So many tribes, living and working side by side, like the Itsekiri, who sell fuel and kerosene on the high sea. Who also work in the sawmill business, like the Ijale that smoke fish along with the Yoruba and Egun people. The Igbo, my mother’s people, smoke fish too, albeit mostly stockfish, as well as producing large numbers of cooked ukwa and fried groundnuts. The Hausa make very good tailors and also buy iron scraps to make and sell panels. You’ll hear different languages bouncing off the water; Yoruba, French, English and Egun, eking out of every shack, day and night. Everywhere you look on Makoko, you find workers, craftspeople, artisans making something out of less than nothing. Using whatever comes from the water and the ground beneath it. Repurposing things that have been thrown away.

Although outsiders consider Makoko to be one unsightly mass, it’s actually six separate villages: Oko Agbon, Adogbo (split into sections), Migbewhe and Yanshiwhe on the water and Sogunro and Apollo on the land that surrounds the lagoon. Each village is also divided into smaller communities over the water and run by a baale, a chieftain who keeps things moving smoothly and makes decisions to ensure law and order. Our outside reputation is one of lawlessness, but the truth is that life in Makoko is very safe. A long time ago, there would be people who came here to escape the police, knowing officers were too afraid to venture to these parts. We were the perfect hideaway, but such things don’t happen now as they did back then. Our leaders don’t stand for any type of foolishness either. As the Igbo like to say: one finger can spoil all the oil.

In Adogbo II, our small shack floats alongside thousands of others, though we’re fortunate as Uncle Jimi’s place is built of ironwood, which is tough enough to withstand all the trials of the lagoon. Houses crowd together in shallow water the colour of Guinness while refuse accumulates under their stilts. Many tell the story of time passing via their crumbling facades and patchy repair jobs where wood has been replaced by bedsheets, corrugated iron, tarpaulin and fishing nets. There’s every kind of building imaginable on the water as households grow and struggle to utilise limited space in ingenious ways. It’s an endless quest for survival. We learn to do whatever we can.

‘Baby, where are you coming from?’ Papa asks as I pull the canoe in, even though he already knows.

‘From school, Papa,’ I answer meekly before preparing to heave myself onto our deck, but he waves down at me to stay put where I am.

‘Auntie Uche wants you to go help her smoke fish. Two of her girls didn’t show today,’ he explains as I fight to keep my face clear. I don’t like doing the smoking; I much prefer my time in the waterways, but there’s no point in re-litigating this matter with him. I don’t see how it matters what work I do so long as I bring in good money.

‘I meant to be working with Mama Ju—’ I start to explain before he cuts me off.

‘Then call her and explain. But go to Uche, please . . . I don’t have time for headache today,’ he replies dramatically before disappearing indoors.

Papa thinks I’m too old to be doing my taxi work, but the truth is, I’m better at it than most. It’s typically younger kids that ferry passengers between Makoko and the mainland, anything from six to sixteen, trying to captain their canoes, but I’ve got the skills.

I know how to keep my canoe tidy and how to avoid splashing too much water inside the boat, water that can make you sick and can cause your clothes to be stinking long after you’ve alighted. I’m an expert at steering away from the mountains of debris that share the lagoon with us, the sewage spreading out from underneath our houses together with the stuff pushed into our community from shipping lanes, and I don’t talk too much, which can annoy passengers just wanting to travel in peace.

It’s not plenty, but you can make some money from being a taxi driver. It doesn’t take too much to rent boats, which is why children do it; the amount they charge one single passenger to take them across pays for the day’s rental. And the price for passage doubles when it rains. Fisherwomen are charged a premium, paying for their wares which they need to take to the market. Some carry as much as four baskets of fish each day, so that’s ₦800 alone, not including the customer. It all adds up as there is plenty to pay for; Kemi and Afo’s schooling, rent for the house, fuel and food. Not much remains for the pocket.

Although there are many ways to make a living in Makoko, there’s little in the way of prospects. I grew up watching Papa with the other fishermen, mesmerised as they departed to cross the greasy water and cast their nets before returning many hours later. I’ve since learned that a woman’s place is smoking or selling the fish here, not to catch it. No matter how good I might be with my canoe.

If schooling’s the only way out, it explains why so many of us remain where we are. Without education, there is no real way to leave. It’s almost impossible to complete any kind of education, like becoming a proper teacher. Luckily there are trades, not that anyone truly becomes rich from them.

Papa thinks I should marry and have children, that plenty of my age-mates have married a long time ago, but it’s not the thing I’m wanting. Still, I’ve known from a much younger age that life doesn’t always give a person what they desire. Dura, for example, and there are plenty more.

*

Even before I enter the canteen, having spent all morning with my face over fire with my auntie, the smell of onions frying in palm oil assaults me and causes my eyes to prickle. Tomatoes gurgle as they hit the pot and a cook barking orders behind the curtain obscuring the kitchen area plays his spoons and pans noisily. As I glance through the premises, I spy Maureen holding court at a table surrounded by a few other girls and push my way through a couple of men drinking beer. One has feet so dry and hard it’s as though his soles have converted into slippers, a feat in a settlement over water.

I arrive at the tail end of her story as fits of laughter erupt all around. Squeezing in beside Idunnu, she quickly whispers what I’ve missed. Idunnu is technically my age-mate despite gapping me by seven and a half months. Maureen is only one year older than us, but we’ve all been best friends since primary school.

Idunnu was an accomplished street hawker before she got a job inside the Platinum Star hotel in Victoria Island, while Maureen sells fish and works at the canteen to save up for some studies to apprentice with Iya Lola at her tailor’s shop in Sogunro. Efe is probably the smartest despite being the youngest of our foursome. She’s either working at the hair salon or teaching the children in school. Like Whitney Houston, she believes that they are the future. But her real passion lies in technology. Computers and finding a husband, whichever comes first.

In between bites of crisps, Maureen tells us about Osagie finally posing the question, despite their families arranging their pairing since they were children. While the others shriek and sigh during Maureen’s story, it’s only Idunnu and I that keep quiet. Maureen glances at me and I arrange my face quickly before she accuses me of being jealous. I’m not envious of her proposal at all, far from it. We’re all familiar with the ever-afters of these unions, but many girls still consider marriage a fairytale. What I’m wanting is a story that nobody has yet written.

‘Anyway, enough about me. Soon it will be your turn.’

I look up to find Maureen waving a cloth in my direction. Her other friends have scattered, and Idunnu is off in the corner, shouting into her cell phone.

‘What nonsense are you talking?’ I ask, making a face as she sits down beside me.

‘About Samson,’ Maureen laughs, digging her fingers into my rib. I want to be annoyed, but this always tickles me somehow.

‘You’re not serious—’

‘I’m plenty serious as is he! Better prepare yourself. I don’t know what you’re hanging around for. Samson is a catch.’

‘Please!’ I hiss noisily. ‘Then let him go and catch somebody else!’ I reply to her amusement.

‘Baby! I’m telling you he’s really—’ Maureen starts before I interrupt her.

‘On this day you pronounce you’re officially to be marrying Osagie, a future leader of the community, that you are concerning yourself with us small fish—’

‘You . . . Keep talking your gibberish,’ Maureen scolds me with a quizzical shake of her head. ‘When Samson picks someone else, don’t come and cry for me,’ she shrugs, popping the last crisp into her mouth.

*

Some days I take the canoe really far out, so far that I no longer imagine I’m close to the city. Where there’s no visible line between the lagoon and the sky. It’s all one place.

It’s there I sit and wait for drones to appear in the sky.

I dream of flying through the skies over Makoko like a bird, with the passage of air over my skin, so high up that the people down below resemble ants. Seeing all the houses reduced to the size of matchboxes while canals and waterways are as skinny as veins. It’s what I’m wanting. To pilot the drones, the next best thing to flying. But Papa says no and there’s no changing his mind once it’s set. It’s like amala left in a pot. Very quickly, the soft brown paste turns to stone and you need all your might to try and shift it.

Reminding him that I was a mermaid didn’t get him to change his mind and many years had passed since he’d last called me that.

As a child, I’d asked why no women fished the lagoon. Papa explained that men were suspicious and believed that women were bad luck. Water sirens become jealous and don’t bring fish to the boats. Those mermaids must have been . . .