I grind for mine/ Dime for dime/
ya’ll dudes hatin’ but you know my lines rhyme for rhyme/
They tryin’a pepetrate….
How you gon’ hate and you a fan?/ My shit poppin’ like bacon in the pan…
Just had to get that off my chest. Now let’s get back to another night in the streets. In this case, it was actually an afternoon… My memory about my age is pretty foggy with this one but I remember I was around 13. Quite young. Yet that afternoon, as I was walking around in my neighborhood.
Or to Americanize a bit, as I was chillin’ on the block with my homies. You know it goes, doing my regular hood shit with my boys. One of my dogs came up with this gangsta plan.
You knaw’mean, cuz we was some thugged out youngn’z back then, na’mean and that’s what thugged out kids do, gangsta shit.
Ok, that’s enough. As I was saying, one of my peers came up with the brilliant plan to… rent a taxi, and get the taxi driver to teach us how to drive. The amazing thing is that he actually claimed that he already knew how to drive! Because he had driven before with
les vieux pères du quartier. Of course, I had no idea how to drive; I couldn’t even tell the difference between clutch, brakes, or accelerator. And I wasn’t even trying to learn. We were all too young! If you were to put us in the drivers seat some of us would barely even be able to see the road properly. Yet, these friends of mine were going to give it a try. I remember that my cousin was with me, another guy and my friend Makaveli, who as we all know, knows how to run when it’s time to(a previous post).
Despite the fact that these guys “had connections” enough to get us a taxi, it took some serious negotiating skills to actually get the driver to accept our proposal. Makaveli had to do the negotiating. A skill of his that would come in handy in the future… After a lot of back and forth, the taxi driver accepted to rent us his car for an hour for 3000 francs cfa. That’s $6!!! $6! When I think of that all I can say is damn this inflation!
So off we were. I figured that even if I’m not going to try to drive today, I might as well join in just for the fun of it. So I joined them. The first guy who stepped to the plate was the noisiest and most confident about his driving ability. Of course, he had to sit on a couple of pillows just to see the road properly before he could even start the car. Unfortunately for him, his attempt at moving the car was a lot like a certain activity that doesn’t go as planned. You get in full of confidence, things start moving forward and you anticipate having a lot of fun and next thing you know, inexplicably something happens and everything just switches off… And you have to start all over again...
Il a callé moteur! He stalled the engine (get your minds out of the gutter!). Something that was pretty embarrassing because it showed that you couldn’t control the car (no seriously, get your minds of the gutter now). Fortunately for him all he had to do was switch the engine back on and try again. But he stalled, and stalled and… stalled, until the driver lost his patience. (lol) So he got bounced (wow I’m just realizing that this post is full of symbolism). He had to go to the back seat and let another one of us try.
When asked if I wanted to try, I smartly declined because I was well aware of my limitations. I was content with just being in the car. So next up was my friend Makaveli, who actually managed to start the car smoothly!
Off we were! We were driving! Makaveli not only was able to start the car smoothly, but he also changed gears and was able to make a left at the corner! We were all excited. Little did we know…
This left took us to a road that actually had cars on it. And we were too high off our friend’s success to realize the challenge that was ahead of us. We were only driving for about 30 seconds but it felt like an eternity, especially since it took us like 15 minutes to get the car moving in the first place.
The thing about this road was that on the left side of it was a
maquis, which is kind of like an outdoor restaurant where people hang out and drink. None of us was smart enough to realize that there was a chance that these people in the maquis would actually see us... Meanwhile, my friend was handling himself well with all the other cars on the road. He managed to stay on his side of road, he was driving straight and he even managed to stop, without stalling, when the car in front of him stopped. Wow, what a good driver!
But now he had to accelerate when the car ahead of him moved forward and the road we were on was a bit of a slope. Anybody who has driven a manual knows that starting the car uphill is not easy, even for a seasoned driver. And to spice things up we were literally in front of the maquis.
Pressure… or as one of my boys would say prejaw (lol Nigeria stand up!)
Unfortunately for Makaveli, the pressure was too much and he stalled. And he stalled again and again. But being that he was pretty savvy, he had the brilliant idea to tell the driver to get back in his seat and drive the car out of the trouble zone. So after some maneuvering in the car, he found himself sitting next to me in the back seat and the driver slid from the passenger seat to the front seat. I luckily was sitting on the passenger side, and remember, the maquis was on our left.
Despite all the savvy and the smarts, by the time the driver got to the wheel, a lot of people in the maquis had noticed us and some of them were actually walking towards the car. I guess they had seen the whole thing unfold (so much for trying to be slick). Before you knew it, an angry mob was walking towards our cab.
Trouble
Very soon one of them was at the window.
_
Tu n’as pas honte? Des jeunes comme ca tu les laisse conduire? Regarde comment ils sont petits!
And another one added :
_
Tout ça à cause de l’argent, salaud!
By then Makaveli, next to me was very adamant that I should open the door so we could make a run for.
_
Toi tu es bete ou bien, ouvre la porte on va fuir!
Idealistic me :
Ah toi aussi, on peut pas le laisser seul. C’est à cause de nous qu’il est dans problemes.
_
Ouvre la porte keshia meme!
Yup since I was on the right side and the mob was on the left side of the cab. I had all the power to open the door and free us from this imminent danger. But I felt really bad for the taxi driver especially since we were partly reason why he was in this mess.
Then something crazy happened. One of the members of the angry mob reached in the Taxi… And just PUNCHED THE DRIVER!!!!
To hell with idealism! That was my cue to open the door and start running. Soon all my friends were besides me running for our dear lives. I just remember this must have been one of the funniest scenes ever. Because one of my friends was in such a state of panic that he ran into the wall of a house under construction. It looked like a scene straight out of looney toons! I guess he was trying to climb over the wall.
Not to be outdone, when we got to a bushy area, another one of my friends (my cousin actually) tripped over himself and fell. And to make it transition nicely, he decided to stay there and hide under the bushes like he was on some type of battlefield.
So in the end it was just me and Makaveli left running together and we decided to stop and come up with a strategy when we were safely away from danger. We didn’t want anybody to see us or even talk to us. It was not a good time to be in Perles that day.
The situation was very tense, every time a taxi would come by we would scamper to the nearest house under construction and hide behind the walls until the taxi passed by.
Finnally we ran into someone in the neighbourhood who was around our age.
_
Vous la, vous avez chaud! Ils sont en train de botter le taxi metre. On vous cherche là bas.This was too much. We had to leave the neighborhood and lay low somewhere where we wouldn’t be seen. And of course we couldn’t use a taxi. So we just decided to walk to the nearest neighborhood, Aghien. Aghien was not too far, except we decided to use a very exotic path so that nobody would run into us. It felt like I was at a summer camp in the forest or something.
So we chilled there for several hours and only went back home when it was getting too late to be out. I went directly to my house without talking to anybody, and was very relieved to see that my mom was chill, she obviously wasn’t aware of the adventure that I went through that day. THAT’S ALL I CARED ABOUT. I think for me, getting my mom upset at me was a lot more dangerous than facing an angry mob.
Later on that night someone came to my house and briefed me about the events in the neighborhood. Apparently someone finally had mercy on the guy and they let him go… with a few bumps and bruises. Apparently this guy paid the taxi driver what we were supposed to pay him for renting the car and now was asking me for the money back. Yeah right! But I paid him anyway and shooed him away before my mom would come and investigate at the door. That night, I went to bed for some much needed sleep.
That incident taught me a valuable lesson: stalling the engine can lead to uncomfortable situations…
