MASTER DRUMMER OF AFROBEAT - Duke University Press

I was even driving from around the age of thirteen. But the way I
started is a real story! You see, my father specialized in automobiles, and
he used to have jobs at home sometimes, because people would bring
their cars to him instead of taking them to the workshop, where they
knew they would be charged much more for the workmanship and the
materials. So this particular day, one guy was supposed to come and collect
his car while my father was at work. And because the kids were on
midterm holidays, I was at home. My father gave me the keys to the car
and told me that if this guy came, I should give him the keys so he could
take his car.
On that particular day the car was right in front of the house, and the
sun was really hot. But there was a big tree right across the street, in front
of the Catholic school. So this guy from the neighborhood who was kind
of like a big brother to me—I was thirteen and this guy was maybe like
twenty- five—he came to tell me that there was too much sun on the car
and that I should move the car under the tree. I didn’t know anything
about driving cars, nothing at all. But since he was a grown- up and I was
only thirteen, I couldn’t think quickly for myself to ask, “What the fuck
is this guy telling me? The car is not suffering!”
So I just took the key and opened the door to the car. I thought I would
start it and then try to put it in gear. But it was already in gear! The car
took off, and there was no way I could control anything. I was just lucky
that there was no oncoming car. I was able to cross to the other side of
the street, but the trunk of that tree was right in front of a gutter, and I
went toward there. I meant to stop under the tree, but—no way. And at
the same time, there was a woman with a baby coming out of the maternity
hospital that was just down the road. I brushed the woman with the
car, and she fell into the open gutter with the baby in her hands. And the
baby was just one week old!
Luckily for me, there was this guy pushing a hand truck or street cart,
what we call omolanke. They used to use it to carry heavy loads on the
road. The guy took off running, but he left his omolanke sitting there, and
when I hit it, that was what stopped the car. Meanwhile, the woman was
lying in the gutter with a one- week- old baby and a broken leg. They called
for an ambulance and took her to the hospital. And then they called the
traffic police. And of course the guy who told me to move the car had disappeared
completely, and he didn’t come back to the house until twelve
o’clock in the night! The police came, parked the car properly, took me
to the police station, and phoned my father. They couldn’t put me in the
Right in the Center of Lagos 25