A series of explosions in Nyanya area

There was a series of explosions in Nyanya.

Her foot was inside the house as soon as the front door opened. Bag laid to rest on the dining table, and shoes kicked off as her body connects with the sofa. There is a bottle in her hand.

Habitual instinct — I paint the picture for the others in the house. It takes a few minutes, but they gather in the parlour. Perfect timing for her, she’s sat up to them like she called a meeting.

“Did you hear the explosions?”

The green bottle of dry gin comes to the table. I know to bring the shot glasses. I hear their voices from the kitchen. A tanker carrying about eight cylinders of gas bumped into a car, offsetting the balance the older cylinders had been tugging from however far under the hot sun.

I wonder if it’s speculation. No news has come of it yet. There must have been talk on the road — you know, the average Nigerian is an expert on many matters.

It was around closing time. The roads were packed — cars, buses, people hopping on and off. A junction. She had just gotten out of a car, a little up the road from where it happened. People who weren’t affected kept moving — some trying to drive past, others reversing in panic.

All eight cylinders went off.

The first thing she did after the ordeal was request a cold bottle of beer from a kiosk seller under an umbrella — to feel okay again, she said.

This is the second time there has been an explosion in Nyanya. They say it begs the question of whether there are spirits in the ground to be appeased.

I count that I have enough glasses when I return, and burrow into a chair to hear the rest of it. My aunty takes the bottle in her hand and opens it. She pauses with a distant stare, “There was a man they managed to pull out of a burning car. He kept saying that his wife is in the car. If she was, she was long gone.”

“How do you know?” I ask

“There was no scream.”

She begins pouring into the glasses. “When there has been an accident and we make it out whole and okay, we open a bottle and thank God. And even if the accident was ghastly, the car tumbles and crashes, even if we land in the hospital,” she’s smiling now as she looks about our faces, “we open a bottle and thank God.”