#6 Nnobi Street

The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of them all-Walt Disney Company, Mulan

Lagos

The number did not mean much

The house was not much itself

A bungalow of ten rooms

Five on each side of the poorly lit hallway

Cold rough cement floors

Someone forgot to make smooth

One bathroom and one toilet

Was all it held within its modest compound

The paint peeled and peeled in many places

Smudges of grit, grime, and neglect

shone in too many places

The walls desperately begged for a new shine
A fresh coat of paint

But no one cared

So #6 stuck out like a sore thumb
The stone the builders rejected

On each side of the fence

Were its wealthier neighbors

Those unaffected by the ravages of war

A townhouse to its left

A block of four apartments to the right

Yet house number 6 Nnobi stood taller

Than them all

For you see, within her bowels

It had given refuge to victims of a war

Succor for many who needed a landing strip

Before they could reclaim what was theirs

Ten families in all, as I can remember

All from east of the river Niger

Struggling to get their lives back on track

Browbeaten by a 30-month civil war

The year was late 1970 to 1971

And I was eager to start my future

I do not know its former tenants

Or why the present ones sort refuge at #6 

In this city

This metropolis called Lagos

Named after another in distant Portugal

Where these tenants

Warriors of a lost cause had once stood tall

And lived in better bigger apartments

And owned their own houses

Then the war happened

 And they became

The wretched of the earth

A people scorned and despised

For daring to speak up

And fighting for it

Today,

Many oceans away

My mind takes a trip

Rummaging the past

And Pays tribute to

#6 Nnobi Street, Ikate, Surulere