That kylian Mbappe 2nd goal was superb, but then the Senegalese goalie was supposed to show why a football heavyweight club like Chelsea bet on him at some point in his career
Where the Tracks Used to Be
My mum came back to Nigeria after a decade. She was so excited to get to Nomeh, to see family, breathe the dusty air of village life, feel home again.
As we drove in, she asked me: "When did we pass the railway station? I didn't feel the bump."
She was waiting for the tracks. That little jolt that always meant, we're here, we're home.
There was no bump. There are no tracks.
I grew up making train journeys across Nigeria, even fonder memories of the train rides from Enugu to Nomeh. The station, we simply called it Station; was the heartbeat of the town. Women, kids hawking okpa and cold drinks. Travellers leaning from windows. Noise. Commerce. Life. Nomeh was busy. Nomeh was connected.
But even after the train stopped running, the tracks now overgrown with weeds, reminded us of something familiar.
Then one day, and people in the town still remember this, men came with lorries and police escorts, claiming to be from the Chinese company tasked with reconstructing the rail line. They removed the tracks and loaded them onto the lorries and drove away. The local boys took what was left, the stones from the sidings, and sold them to builders in town.
The station building is still there. Hidden behind thick bush. Like a secret the town is ashamed of.
Not a stone remains on the ground.
And my mother sat in the car, quietly realising that the place she remembered, the bump, the hawkers, the sound of trains, exists now only in our memories.
Some things you can't explain about this country. You just feel them in your chest.
I have heard talk of a new rail line, same narrow gauge, to continue from Aba to Enugu, and up to Maiduguri.
But for now; We have no tracks. Where exactly are we going?
The last slide taken from the window of my truck in 2017.