Going Down by Elizabeth Obadina

I stood at the head of the stairs and looked down. Empty halls stretched behind me lit in ominous green from corrugated roofs. A flickering neon tube spluttered light over the heads of the weary shuffling down the steps to join the processing queues below.  There was silence, and darkness wrapped around tired men, women and children who had arrived in the still hours before dawn. It wasn’t hot, somewhere an air conditioner hummed its faltering tune, but then it was never really hot in the early morning and almost never really hot in August when it rained. I faltered on the top step and the sergeant in military fatigues took my bags and said, “Follow me Ma’am.” Here I was again and a wave of memories washed over me and, not for the first time, I took a deep breath and went down.

 July 1979

I had said my farewells to my parents, to my friends to my old life that morning and that evening I paused for a few moments at the top of a flight of stairs wondering at the newly opened building, so different to those I’d been through previously, so modern, so European, so full of promise. I trotted down the steps following cheerful yellow reception signs to join long queues of weary people who were slowly processed and passed on to the outside.

Outside a wall of intense heat and humidity hit me and I searched for a known face in the crowds but only saw pleading faces and felt hands grasping for my bags. I hung on to them grimly, desperately seeking salvation, which came with a familiar voice, then a face and from his companion the instruction, “Follow me Ma’am,” as the unknown companion took my bags and all together, we set off into the suffocating dark.

 June 1980

Those steps … those steps presented me with a problem. My bags this time included hand luggage, a carry cot, a pushchair and a six-week-old baby who would not lie down. It had been bad enough at Gatwick, but at least there had been a trolley to balance my bags, baby and baby paraphernalia on. Then the British Caledonian air crew had been singularly unhelpful during the eight-hour flight, and they had all left the plane in a cloud of laughter and anticipation of the pleasures awaiting them in their five-star stop-over hotel. My baby and I were alone. The plane’s air-conditioning was switched off, and the lights had dimmed and the heat from outside began to seep in.

Then saviours in green overalls arrived – the cleaning crew. “Ah Madam, wetin! See as di pikin fine. Why dem leave am alone? Make we help you. Follow me.” Scooping up my bags, the folded pushchair, my baby, the carrycot and me in a wave of smiles and concern they swept me through the vast, green, echoing arrivals halls. It was a long walk. The new travellators had stopped and not just because I was the last off the plane. According to my rescuers, ‘These things no dey work again,’ and it had been like that a while.

At the top of the steps, they could go no further. Airport Rules. And I honestly can’t remember how I got through immigration, luggage collection and out into hot night. There would have been a trolley, operated by a porter and a handsome tip would have changed hands. But all I remember from that trip was being abandoned by British Caledonian and the green angels who saved me. 

 1980 – 2003

I have lost count of the times I have stopped at the top of those steps, with babies, toddlers, then young children staggering under the weight of huge backpacks filled with books and toys for those were the days of travelling before wheelie bags made life easier. I would stop at the top of those stairs to do a head count, a bag count, to gather my energy before going down to the arrivals halls. A blur of memories fused together under the 30-degree heat of malfunctioning air conditioning and the weight of lifting 30kg suitcases from broken luggage roulettes whilst trying not to lose my children in the crowds. We were once the last people to leave the arrivals hall as one son had purchased a fishing rod in Bridgnorth and insisted on taking it with him to fish in Lagos. The fishing rod never made it through from Birmingham via Amsterdam to Lagos. Enquiries were made in Birmingham, Amsterdam and Lagos but the rod had vanished, and the boy was very sad and the father waiting outside Arrivals was very worried thinking that his family had vanished enroute. Those were the days before mobile phones.

 August 2023

This was last time I stood at the head of the stairs and looked down. Nothing much had changed but everything seemed smaller. Over six million passengers each year passed down those steps and now, just as in 1979 when I had been one of the first, I was now going to be one of the last, for Terminal One of Murtala Muhammed International Airport would be closing in a few weeks’ time for refurbishment. A new Terminal Two had opened bringing the airport into the twenty-first century. It's a badge of progress and hope for the twenty million residents of Lagos and beyond  – but then so too was Terminal One in 1979 – a colossal improvement then on the dusty, fan whirring colonial airports I’d been through in the early 1970s. I have yet to pass through Terminal Two and as I stood at the top of those steps wondering at the millions of feet who had gone before me, I silenced my irritation at arriving at this terminal and not the brand spanking new one down the road. It seemed right somehow. Closure. The sergeant sent to steer us through Arrivals was a Godsend I would have welcomed in years gone by. We started down the stairs passing under the yellow sign sending a cheerful light into the gloom.

It read, ‘Welcome to Nigeria.’

Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Terminal One, August 2023