She stood on the balcony of her 14th-floor apartment in Victoria Island. Below, the city roared: generators hummed, street hawkers sang praises to their goods, and a thousand Danfo buses coughed black smoke into the sky. It was a Tuesday. She had a video call with the London office in ten minutes.
The air in Lagos tasted of rust and gasoline. Ebiere knew this because she had just licked her cracked lips after a dusty okada ride from Ojuelegba. At thirty-four, she was a senior analyst for a multinational oil firm—a woman in a blazer who spoke with a clipped British accent she’d acquired at a boarding school in Surrey. Evi Edna Ogholi - No Place Like Home
As the city faded, the oil pipes appeared. They ran alongside the road like black pythons, oozing rust and crude. Then the flares. Even in daylight, they stained the sky orange. This was the Niger Delta. Her home. A place the world had come to for oil, but left behind in poison. She stood on the balcony of her 14th-floor
On the eighth day, her phone—charged by a solar panel—finally pinged. Seventeen emails. Three missed calls from London. Her boss’s message read: “We’re offering you the promotion. Head of West African Operations. You’d move to Geneva.” She had a video call with the London office in ten minutes
When the car finally stopped, the village looked smaller than she remembered. The church roof had collapsed. The primary school was a skeleton of concrete. But the red earth—that was the same. And the smell. Not the perfume of Lagos, but the raw smell of rain-soaked clay, palm wine, and smoke.