Yellow Says Ready
#nontransparentthings 020
In a few observable faces, they appear to be looking in the same direction or at the same thing. The two okada men, the girl carrying a baby, the women close to her; as the motorcyclist in the yellow face-cap, whom part of his face appears in the right corner of the frame, staring ahead at something. Too, are the other many faces of commuters. The woman holding a yellow jerry can seems to have abandoned this sport though, her face concerned about something beyond crossing the road — maybe not, maybe? I like the man close to that booth — he’s looking away at something. The woman carrying fried buns in a transparent bucket on her head looks in the same direction as him. Even the motorcyclist in the background (between the two women) has turned his back to look at something too.
The road is open as I sit in the back of a motorcycle with my phone, capturing scenery. I was returning from a short vacation in Abuja, back to Makurdi, in July 2023, and this was my view as we approached the so-called Food Basket statue. Now that I recall, this last lap of the trip should have been in the Sharan space wagon I entered along the Abuja-Keffi expressway at Karu. But the vehicle ran out of fuel just before we could cross the New Bridge. The driver got out, got a keg, and took a bike to get fuel. Impatient and tired from being on the road for hours, I too got out with my backpack and took a bike to continue home.
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I shall not dwell on what is significant in this image or if it means anything at all. What is now permanent, however, is that this view has changed since the beginning of 2026. A flyover is being constructed, displacing the Wurukum Roundabout and food basket statue ahead, making this image a sort of archival postcard for me. Yet when one looks here, one cannot miss the coincidence, or should I say, conspiracy, of yellow in this image. The motorcyclist’s cap, the put-forward footwear of an almost-hidden figure, vegetable oil jerry can wielded like a suitcase gun, that okadaman’s shirt, the trousers of the man in the background crossing the road, and the base of the food basket statue in the vanishing point. So is motion. People moving. People wanting to move. People contemplating movement. People just standing or waiting, doing the opposite of moving, but who will soon move. And the vehicles, the bus the cars the bikes, aiding movement. What is this thing we do when we wake up and start moving, migrating? I wake up every morning and I run, sings Obongjayar. “I run, run for my life,” he continues. “Everything is burning, look around you. You better run, run for your life . . .”
Nine-to-five, five-to-nine
Two-four-seven, three-six-five
I wake up and I shame the devil
I wake up and I get this cash
I don’t kick back, I never settle
[. . .]
If you don’t run, you’re in my way
If you don’t run, I’ll take your place
Everything is changing at lightning speed . . .
Mercantile dreams, the beat of existence, capitalism or not, love, passion, pain, joy, destruction, joy again — we must rise and run to or from or for something. When I look at this photograph, this is at the back of my mind. In a recently published short story of mine, I thought about how a place itself witnesses this activity we do: to move, to disturb, to awaken ourselves, to thrive, to subdue, and this is what I discovered, what place said to me:
The only thing you may see or testify about me are feet. Feet carrying the bodies of men and women and everybody seeking something. Going to something, being something, orchestral something, speech in feet motion.++
You can now Google the unique hashtag #Nontransparentthings, a photography writing project which you just read, to find out all the posts, stories, and reviews of it. Catch up here with this link to entries 1–10. You can read the last entry no. 19 (i) here, a one-long-sentence short story on the irony of the invisibility of beautiful women, or this series introductory essay here. It is only natural that my recommended reading for today is my short story “The Beatitude of Unknowability” already quoted above, published in LEAN.
