I write this with my left eye throbbing. For the third time this year, I may have to visit an ophthalmologist.
The first time, I walked into the wire net surrounding the football pitch at the spot I play. I was texting and walking when a loose strand stabbed me in the eye.
The second time was a month later, at the same pitch. I dribbled past another player and he flung out five fingers, catching me square in both eyes. I couldn’t open them for ten minutes. When I finally did, the whites were tomato red.
All things considered, my ophthalmologist is a very happy woman.
(I also discovered I have glaucoma, same as my mother, but I figure it won’t be a problem till I’m 60. Stay tuned.)
On Friday, the 12th of December, I headed to Ilupeju to host a QBall game day — a pickup football game. As my Uber drove in, one of our customers called me.
“Henry. How far? Where you dey? Some guys want to chance us” — to take our spot, bully us.
Obviously, I found this ridiculous, as we’d already paid for this spot, and we had been doing so for the last few months.
I walked into the venue and noticed two teams on the pitch, one in red and one in yellow. The parking area overflowed with cars, and a dense crowd occupied the bleachers on the side. People gathered around the pitch to watch, drink, and smoke cigarettes. Hell, they even had a DJ.
But as the stubborn, self-assured bastard that I am, I put the whistle around my neck and went in search of the manager on ground. I shot a text to Ibidapo, my co-founder, to let the pitch manager know we had a situation.
People pointed at me from the stands as they figured I was the one representing the interests of my group. As I got to the pitch, a man in a grey jersey said he wanted to speak to me. Of course, I knew what he was gonna ask — I’ve seen this script play out a thousand and one times.
They wanted to play two games: a semi and a final. I told him, in the clearest English I could muster: “I can’t give you 15 minutes, or even one minute. I have paying customers, and I can not disappoint them so you can play another match”.
Besides, their time was up anyway, so I didn’t see what there was to argue about.
I walked onto the pitch and blasted the whistle a few times. I waved my group onto the pitch, expecting the people on it to leave… I was wrong.
Within a minute, a crowd of roughly 30 people surrounded me, and they all wanted to talk. They all spoke at once, and I couldn’t tell who said what.
“Ah, guy why you dey do like this now?” (Why are you acting this way, guy?)
“You be woman?” (Are you a woman?)
“Omo na our place be this o, no do anyhow” (This is our area, don’t act out of order)
At this point, I realised I wasn’t talking to people but instead a group of agberos, aka area boys.
Two of them tried to push me off the pitch. After my initial confusion, I spun out of their grip and asked “Wetin you dey do na?!” (What are you doing?). I tried to move and create some space around me, only to bump into one of the agberos each time. With only about 7 of my guys having arrived at this point, I could feel the sweat on my neck.
The air was getting tense and I knew I had to manage the situation or it would get ugly. In the back of my eye, I saw the on-pitch manager also surrounded and pleading with them to leave. A man lunged at me from the crowd, squeezed past another in his way, and jabbed a finger into my left eye.
Now, I was both angry and confused. Who pokes a hand in another person’s eye because they asked them to leave after their time ran out? Where the hell was the manager?
Roller, one of my guys, had already realized who we were dealing with and decided to let them play. I acceded, though a part of me wanted to go scorched earth—cancel the whole thing, sit on the pitch and get a refund later.
They started their final game. I put a call through to Ibidapo to let him know the situation and to send me the pitch manager’s phone number. I had some choice words for him. Ibidapo called back later, saying the manager wanted to speak to me and that “his car is behind the stands.”
Apparently, the manager had been there the whole time.
I spoke to him. He said he’d been trying to call the police in case things got ugly—he even showed me the missed calls. But then he realized they were his people; area boys, “stakeholders” who act like they own the land.
He felt he didn’t have a solution other than letting them play both games. This would have meant waiting till 6 p.m before we started, and by 6.30 p.m it would be dark and hard to see. I told him and their representative in the grey kit that they had to be out by 5.30 p.m, and not a second later, which we all agreed to.
Throughout this, one of the agberos had his arm wrapped around my shoulder. I wanted to toss it off but decided against it. As I walked back to the pitch, he prattled on. He didn’t agree with his guy poking my eye, he said, but I “deserved it” for not talking to them first.
At 5.30, they finished their match and fucked off. On his way out, the eye-poker mumbled an apology that sounded more like telling me to go fuck myself. It’s not like I needed an apology anyway, it’s worth nothing in the market.
I doubt this will be my last time dealing with a mob. There’s no point in focusing on whether I was right or not, as it’s possible to be right and hospitalized. I happen to like my face — you would too — and do not want it rearranged by some drug impaired maniac.
Show them “respect”. Talk to them, act like you care about their words. Politely state that they can go fuck themselves.
Avoid inciting the mob. You’ll usually have more to lose than they do. Is whatever you need access to at the time more important than your future? No? Why bother fighting?
Don’t speak English. I realised too late that I wasn’t speaking to normal people, as such I was spitting the Queen’s (King’s?) English, which pissed them off even more. Don’t be me. If you’re gonna tell them to fuck off, make sure they can understand you. Also, don’t tell them to fuck off?
Code switching is a skill. Learn it.
As you can tell, human interaction is not my strongest skill. Yet, I do believe that if this happened in 2023 I would be writing this from a hospital, or worse.
My eye should be fine by Monday, and if not, my ophthalmologist will have a lovely Christmas.