It was a good start to the beginning of a brand new month, I just finished having fun celebrating the Diwali festival with my colleagues at the office and I was given two days off work which I was really grateful because it has been a pretty hectic October. I and six other friends (all foreigners) of mine decided to embark on a 12 hours bus trip from Mumbai to Goa. I never knew I was going to have a nightmare experience there.
We arrived at Goa the next day (2nd November), we settled in our hotel and rested for a few hours before stepping on to the beach. I met a young 15 year old bartender, he asked me where I am from and after I told him, he asked if I knew about the fight between the locals, the Police and Nigerians which I said no.
He brought me a page of the newspaper (Herald Goa) where the story was covered. He informed me that I was the only Nigerian around and there was a police search on-going for Nigerians. I was pretty uncomfortable and a bit scared but I was there already so I hoped for the best.
Later that night, my friends and I all went out to an open bar. I felt so uncomfortable because everyone was staring from the outside but I felt a little bit better when I saw a black guy with dreadlocks. I noticed he was not so bothered and he was well known.
So that made me the only unknown black man on the street with over 3000 Indians plus foreigners. A few minutes later, the two policemen came on a motor bike and started talking to people in the bar. The bartender came up to me and asked me where I was from. I didn’t understand why he was asking (so as all Nigerians do) I replied him with a question; I asked him why he was asking. He said that the policemen asked everyone around. I just ignored him because I could not claim being from another country.
I guess the policemen couldn’t come to me because I was surrounded by foreigners so maybe they thought I was not a Nigerian.
But my tension increased so much when a man walked up to me while I was standing outside the bar with my Greek friend. He said: Yeah man, what’s up? (Stretching out his hand to shake me), then he came very close to me and said: with all due respect, a black guy like me was killed yesterday (i.e. illustrating the situation to me by touching my neck with his fingers folded like a gun).
Then, he started begging me for drugs and he was mentioning on sort of names; like “do I know this guy, do I know this guy”. So I told him that not every black guy you see, sell or do drugs. Immediately, I told my friends that the environment was not safe for me again.
We were about leaving Goa, and then we took a taxi to Mapusa Bus Park. Unfortunately for me, I was standing 20 metres away from a banner with inscription – Say no to Nigerian, Say no to drugs, in the midst of over 1000 Indians; all eyes were on me.
Luckily, I wasn’t alone so nobody came to me; after waiting for about two hours, we finally got on the bus heading to Mumbai. After traveling for 50km, suddenly, the bus driver stopped the bus at the Police Checkpoint in Patradevi (i.e. Goa’s border).
Immediately, the three armed policemen came in and told me to get out; they came in to bus to look for me because I guessed someone had tipped them. Even without asking where I am from, they just started harassing me. What surprised me was that, they didn’t ask the other foreigners for their passports or where they are from. They asked me if I had been arrested before. Fortunately for me, my boss who is Indian and my friends who are foreigners came to my rescue. I would have been victimized or even jailed because I am a Nigerian.
From this experience and from many more, it is now obvious more than ever before that the discrimination against Nigerians is getting too much especially in some parts of the world and things are going out of hands.
I am calling on those in authority to intervene with a view to stop this ugly trend. Let me also use this medium to reach out to my fellow Nigerians in diaspora to imbibe good culture of behaving themselves properly wherever they find themselves.
Odundun writes from India