The Walls of Benin were a combination of ramparts and moats, used as a defense of the historical Benin City, formerly of the now defunct Kingdom of Benin and now the capital of the present-day Edo State of Nigeria.
It was considered the largest man-made structure lengthwise and was hailed as the largest earthwork in the world. At 16,000 km of earth boundaries, they are 4 times longer than the Great Wall of China. Earliest construction began in 800AD and continued into the mid-1400s. The Benin Walls were ravaged by the British in 1897. Scattered pieces of the structure remain in Edo, with the vast majority of them being used by the locals for building purposes. What remains of the wall itself continues to be torn down for real estate developments. (Wikipedia).
So these walls have been called the largest single architectural phenomenon on the planet, which is why we should have been suspicious of the two girls Winston and I met at Bottles on a Wednesday night who said they were from Benin state.
I guess I should have been equally skeptical of a Mexican restaurant in Nigeria. Turns out it's all Tex Mex. Wooohooo! Fajitas and nachos. Barf. Anyway, back to the two girls from Benin State. After a few overpriced margaritas and some idle chit chat, for most of which they were 1/4 paying attention to me and 3/4 paying attention to their phones, I asked them about the great walls of Benin.
"Never heard of them," they both said.
"Seriously? They were 4 times longer than the great wall of China," I responded. "They were in your state, where you are from, and you don't know about them?"
No interest. I guess when the colonizers erased most of Africa's history, they also somehow took away any desire to rediscover that history as well.
So the girls engage in more tappy tappy on their phones. After some more chatting and me finally getting the cute one to look up from her phone, I am finally able to engage her in some conversation. Most of which revolves around her 'sister' who is too glued to her phone to notice me making fun of her.
Winston joins in and we continue the conversation. More competition with the phones. We are mostly losing. At some point, which in the back of my mind, registered as the point at which the prospects of better offers for the girls seemed to diminish, the older one started paying attention to me suddenly.
It was like she went from disinterest to sudden interest for some reason. I was too buzzed to see the warning signs. The cute one was fully engaged with Winston and seemed to be having fun. Eventually we got to that point where it was time to move on and/or try to sleep with these girls. I was sober enough to think that perhaps we might have to pay for these girls; a proposition I was not ready to agree to.
So I asked the cute one, "So if we take you two home with us, are you going to make us pay?".
Her look of shock tricked Winston into giving me frantic 'these girls are not hookers!' look and hand gestures from behind the cute one.
She replied, "I don't know, ask my sister."
But based on Winston's reaction, I figured that if he believed so much that these girls were not prostitutes, that maybe I should also, so I decided to drop the question.
We walked out of the bar and for some reason my girl walked out way in front of us, not with us. Looking back I realize it was because she didn't want to be seen walking out with a man. The bouncers actively prevented working girls from entering the bar before 10pm.
Anyway, so back at the apartment, things are going well. We open a bottle of wine and are all laughing on the couch. It becomes apparent that the wine won't be necessary so we all quickly retire upstairs to the bedrooms; Winston in his, me in mine.
My girl starts taking off her clothes almost instantly and puts a hair net on to protect her weave from the upcoming activities. You can't imagine how unattractive a hair net is. I'm not sure why the Anglophone West African countries have not realized how unsexy a hair net looks. A Francophone hottie would not be caught dead in one. They always tie a brightly colored cloth on their head, which is so much more attractive, even sexy. So anyway, the clothes fall off, the hair net goes on and she runs off to shower.
I am lying naked on the bed when she comes back in. I'm not sure if I started sobering up or if the shock of the complete transformation of this girl who looked so cute in the bar to how she looked now, woke me up. But wow, she looked terrible. Her gut was hanging out, her face looked bloated and plain, there was not one thing attractive I could find about her.
Shit, too late, she jumped on top of me and started rubbing herself on my penis. She must have noticed the look of horror on my face because she stopped and said,
"What?"
I said, "Listen, I don't want to do this."
She said, "No problem, but you will give me my money anyway."
"What money? For what?" I asked.
"You took me out of the club and brought me here, you have to pay me 20,000 Naira."
Bam, reality crashed down on me hard. I push her off of me.
"Listen, there is no way I will pay you 20,000 to come to my house and do nothing. I will be happy to pay you for your transportation home," I tell her.
"You will pay me 20,000 Naira or I will call my friend who is police captain and he will come here and you'll have to pay him and me 20,000 Naira each."
I start to get pissed off now. "Get you clothes on and get the fuck out of my house," I yell.
"I am not leaving until you give me my money," she replies.
"You are trespassing, I am going to call the police and have you arrested," I tell her.
"Go ahead, I'm calling my friend at the police station."
She dials a number and tells someone that she is at 1004 Estates, block A1 with a guy who is making wahala and won't give her her money.
I am pretty sure that the call and the police captain story is bullshit, but there is also a possibility that she is banging a police captain who might actually show up here and would not take kindly to some Oyinbo "cheating" one of his fuck buddies. Shit.
"Fine," I tell her. "You can stay here, I am going to get security."
I leave her naked on my bed and take the elevator down to the guard post. I explain the situation to the two guards there with brutal honesty and ask for their help. They call for a backup to man their post and both follow me upstairs to the bedroom.
By this time the girl has her clothes on but is sitting defiantly on the bed. So this security guard, who I had seen before, many times, who had never uttered a word to me besides to wish me happy weekend in the hopes that I will dash him a few Naira starts talking to the girl.
I could not believe the words coming out of his mouth. He laid out the most compelling and organized argument for the girl to peacefully take 5000 Naira and go home that I stopped caring about the situation and started wondering if somehow this guy was Buddha, or Yoda, or the Dahlia Lama in disguise, or perhaps I was on the set of a surprise reality TV show.
Anyway, the girl softens just slightly. I was obvious now, if it wasn't before, that this girl was a hardened professional, who had been in this situation many, many times before.
I was wishing I was back in Ghana where I lived a block from the police station and was friends with all the police there. A similar thing happened there and I just called my buddy, and he and his friend came into the house with machine guns, arrested the girl for soliciting prostitution, and dragged her kicking and screaming outside my compound wall, where she had to pay them 50 Cedi to gain her freedom. I ended up paying my police officer friend 50 Cedi for his troubles, but he gave me a ride to work on his police motorcycle and I was happy to give him the money instead of to a girl trying to extort money from a drunk and unsuspecting Oburoni.
But I was in Nigeria, where I had only been for a few months, and didn't have the necessary support network to fix this situation yet. So the negotiations continued with my mediator, Mr. security guard who was normally more likely to be sleeping in his chair on duty than being some kind of savant hooker mediator.
Eventually an agreement was reached at 7000 Naira. I was about to give the girl the money, but I realized that she was still in my house. I told her to come downstairs and I would give her the money outside. At this point, Winston and his friend emerged from the bedroom, probably alarmed by the loud voices coming from the room next door. Winston was about to walk his girl safely out the door, when she saw the money in my hand and realized that her sister was about to get paid and she wasn't.
They both sat down on the stairs and refused to leave the house until we paid them both. By this time, it was close to 5AM and we both had to work in the morning. We were starting to get really mad. In this situation, the negotiation only exists because the girls know that we are too kind-hearted to grab them both by their cheap hair weaves and physically drag them out of the house, although the thought was seriously going through our heads at this point.
But then we would go from two guys who brought home some girls who turned out to be prostitutes, to two guys who beat women. Neither of us ever had or ever would beat a women, regardless of the circumstances. I have met many experts, especially the ones who have been in Africa for a long time who would have just dragged the girls out by the hair, but we are just not that jaded yet.
So negotiations continue. More yelling. My girl's watch breaks when Winston grabs her wrist to try to pull her out of the house. Then she starts demanding an extra 2000 Naira to pay for the watch. We realize that these girls are really crazy. Finally after about 30 minutes we coerce, pay, push, plead and otherwise do everything we can to get these girls out of the apartment. As they walk down the hall, I take the number off the door so they have a harder time coming back to harass us. We lock the door and both go to bed, exhausted.
Maybe the walls of Benin served multiple purposes. I wish I had one around my apartment now.
Chet Kameron is a caucasian who currently lives and works in Nigeria.