Today is Black Friday in America, a day most Americans and immigrants go hunting for unusual bargains in the stores. Prices are slashed to the barest minimum, and to avoid grabbing leftover trash you must set forth at dawn - ala Soyinka.
Until my first experience, friends and family members would come back with great tales of how much they saved, but nobody really told the true story. One year, I decided to benefit from this benevolent American tradition, and go get a DVD player
On Black Friday 2005, I set out very early in the morning to queue at Wal-Mart. I undermined the unforgiving cold, which was re-mapping my African lips. I braved the howling wind stiffening my ears like dried antelope meat. Setting forth that early reminded me of my visa hunting days at the American embassy on Eleke Crescent in Lagos. You see, every past experience in life comes back to enhance a present one. I had some cookies aka cabin biscuits and water in my winter coat. The winter can have a better part of me, but definitely not hunger, I thought.
The line was still bearable when I got there at 5am, I joined and quickly an old lady of about 75 years old got behind me. Her coat was not as thick as mine, but that is because she was Caucasian. I wanted to initiate a conversation with the old white lady, but she had this mean look of "don't talk to me, if I don't talk to you." So I said to myself, fine...be like that if you want. And honestly, she looked like a retired no-nonsense consular officer in the American Embassy in Lagos.
As I dusted off the last bit of cookies on my jacket, the door to Wal-Mart opened partially and a store attendant who looked like a gbogbo-nise seller at Ibadan came out with a megaphone to announce that the early bird sales would soon commence. At that, I felt a slight shove behind me. I turned around with a questioning look but this old woman (definitely a veteran of many Black Fridays) plastered a permanent stoic look on her face. If I were in Lagos, waiting for Molue bus, I would understand and prepare myself very well, because of the inevitable stampede. But I told myself, this is America - the world of the civilized, well behaved, queue-maintaining, self-respecting citizens and decorously democratic society; a first world country where everything is insanely organised. But, I was dead wrong. Even when the Wal-Mart doors swung open and I saw the man in front of me bulldozing his way forward with his shopping cart, I still maintained my peace. Because it is not very hard in America to say it was a black man that caused this or that which led to this and that.
Barely had this thought left my head, I was flying in the air. The old lady behind me had jacked me so high and I saw Oshodi and Ojuelegba swimming before my stunned eyes. I was trying to break my fall when more shoppers lifted me further into the air like a rock star ending a sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden.
Two things occurred to me in mid-air, that I was in trouble and that bargain hunting actually means hunting in the right sense of the word. I eventually landed on my black butt and desperately tried to find my feet, but there was no longer space on mother earth for me to stand. I quietly surrendered myself to the jostling and brutality of experienced bargain hunters.
By the time I got inside Wal-Mart to get the $20 dollar DVD player (which annoyingly was neither Sony nor Samsung, but one of those unknown Chinese dudes trying to break into the American market) I had also acquired a black eye and a few bruises.
I later tried to rationalise the whole episode. Was the bargain from this so called Black Friday mayhem worth it? Not only is one subjected to ear-stiffening cold, but a mad rush that could cost one his life - and for what? As for how come none of my friends or family ever told me their ordeals, I understood perfectly the African philosophy of hunting, a hunter never narrates his ordeal in the forest; all he shows is the result of his expedition.
My 2005 tribulation never dissuaded me from bargain hunting year after year; because marketing people in America know how to make Eskimos think they need ice more than they already have. And since I am not in America this year for Black Friday, I am going to relive the thrill of past experience from a distance by watching our lawmakers give themselves black eyes and bruises in Abuja over our budget. Bargain hunting comes in different shades and who said it is child's play.
Reader Comments (22)
post a comment
* = Required information