Every Day Is for the Thief

The narrator runs an errand with Aunty Folake and Uncle Bello, a Muslim man who gets along with his devout Christian sister despite the family’s teasing him for his beliefs. They take the van to the city’s outskirts. There, the narrator sees that the area doesn’t have public waterworks, so a local man has run his own pipes and charges people for the water.

The conversation in the van moves to Ben, a young man working at Aunty Folake’s school. He’s Ogoni, a tribe that has been exploited for the oil on their land, but Bello asserts that the Ogoni are cannibals. The narrator protests, but Bello tells a story of his friend Constance, who is albino. He says that when she went to work on tribal lands, the people there tried to eat her, thinking that albino flesh was magic. They all laugh at the story, but the narrator recognizes how horrible it is to harbor such stories.

The narrator is concerned about the state of Nigerian air travel, as he’s planning a trip to Abuja. Planes crash frequently, leading to many casualties. After the most recent incident, in which many schoolchildren died, the mothers arranged a peaceful protest to demand improvement but were teargassed by police.