A thunderstorm in Lagos

I’ve been to Lagos more times than I care to mention, but I’d never experienced a Nigerian thunderstorm.

And then this morning the heavens let rip.

The lightening didn’t just flash, it flickered like a faulty fluorescent tube-light; violently, vigorously, almost like it was vomiting out the thunder that predictably followed.

The skies were the most foreboding shade of grey; ominous, prescient; threatening more flashes and more noise; menacing and daring anyone to step outside – at their peril.

After the lightning, the air was pregnant and you could almost feel the shrinking back from the impending clang, even before it happened.

Then it came: the largest boom you’ve ever heard.  

The windows shook, and it even felt as if the floorboards trembled in the wake of the almighty bang.  But not just one bang, a battalion of bangs – almost a mini 1812 Overture in a burst of thunder – the divine canons roared and with them the rain spewed down.

Pelting and pouring, the rain gushed earthwards, taking no prisoners – I was half expecting to see Russell Crow announcing the coming of the second flood, ready to escort us with emergency lighting to the ark’s cargo bay.  But obviously, that didn’t quite materialise.

So I slurped down my last drops of over-brewed coffee and headed back to my hotel room before heading to the office.

As I walked down the corridor, which despite the lighting, was dimmer than a potholer’s cave, a new sense of malevolence came over me and I was instantly reminded of the hotel corridor from the film, The Shining.

I quickened my pace, illogically.  As I walked down the long corridor – I was right at the end ( of course) – the faces of African heroes, whom I’d gazed upon so many times before in this hotel – seem to lose their smiles, and take on grimaces and growls hurrying me on to room 106.

Julius Nyerere, Wole Soyinka, Patrice Lumumba, Kenneth Kaunda, Obafemi Awolowo, Hugh Masekela, Jomo Kenyatta, Ebenezer Obey….all glaring…..in monochrome solidarity with the turbulence outside.

Their faces leapt from the photo frames and I felt their eyes piercing my back as I scuttled to the sanctuary of my room.

The storm once it passed was only a memory, but one that lingered – and the tinnitus-like ringing from the bangs of thunder and flickering bolts of lightning were kind of still with me.

I knew most things in Nigeria are bigger, bolder, louder than elsewhere - now I can add their thunder storms to the list.