Airport entertainment

A few weeks ago I was travelling from Abuja via Lagos. This involves flying into the domestic airport, collecting your luggage and then transferring to the international airport. 

After collecting my bag I was waiting for the airline transfer service. They asked me to wait a while, and as I was in no hurry I settled down to watch airport life. I chose a spot near to some trolley boys who were waiting for travellers, and I was quickly provided with some very amusing entertainment.

I noticed that the toilet attendant for the ladies toilet was talking very loudly and very animatedly to two girls (who I later realised were American) outside the bathroom. Now, Nigerians can be pretty loud and passionate and a lot of normal conversations sound like arguments, so I didn’t automatically assume they were fighting. However, I soon started to understand the situation via the trolley boys.

They had worked out what was going on and were discussing in pidgin English. While I might throw in the odd ‘how you dey’ or ‘no wahala’ every now and then my spoken pidgin is pretty limited (I just feel too awkward twisting English and I worry that I sound like I am mocking people!) but I can follow along with conversations held in pidgin / broken English. The trolley boys realised this at the point I started laughing at the story they were telling – it was just too funny to pretend I wasn’t eavesdropping.

It turns out that American girl number 1 had sat down on the loo and it had broken off the wall! Totally fallen off, water everywhere, big mess, probably a sore bottom. This would be pretty embarrassing at the best of times, but her situation got worse when the toilet attendant told her that it was her fault and she would have to pay for it! American girl number 2 was trying her best to defend girl 1, but was doing it quite belligerently (“we have a flight to catch, this is ridiculous, can we go now”) which seemed to be fanning the temper of the toilet attendant. A few airport staff had joined the circle, and people started to randomly join in the argument. Toilet attendant’s argument was that she had seen girl 1 standing on the toilet, causing it to fall off. This is quite amusing, but not as stupid as it sounds as you often find footprints on the toilet seats from users who are more accustomed to a hole in the ground. However, girl 1 was denying this, and I clearly heard the line “I do know how to use a toilet you know, this is not the first time I have used one!”.

Sneaky pic of the crowd forming

Girl 1 also queried how the attendant had ‘seen her’ standing on the toilet through a closed door, to which the attendant got down on the floor on hands and knees and demonstrated peering under the door! Obviously it’s fairly unlikely that the attendant was actually doing this, but it did make me wonder what the attendants get up to!

While the group of airport staff got bigger, and the arguments got louder I continued to be entertained by the trolley boys, who not only were discussing the situation, but miming the situation to one of the boys who was deaf. This in itself was highly amusing, like watching a pantomime. They got very detailed about what might have caused the girl to break the toilet off the wall, and despite miming to a deaf boy, they used a lot of noises to emphasise their story!

In the end the big airport boss man came along and said that of course the incident was not the girl’s fault, and that she would not have to pay for the damage. The Americans rushed off, the toilet attendant looked vexed, the crowd dispersed, and the cleaners mopped up all the water. Soon after that my transport arrived, and I set off for the international airport feeling like I had just witnessed something pretty special!   

Some aerial shots of Lagos