Once burned, sun-burned

When the lovely new umbrella I bought in Equatorial Guinea broke its first spoke before the end of the afternoon and crumpled into ragged plastic fabric hanging from meaningless metal spikes a day later in Cameroon, I took a holy oath not to buy another until we reached Europe. My enchantment with the collapsible umbrella, despite its brevity, had been quite keen, and I felt the betrayal of its unexpectedly final collapse just as keenly. So, I stubbornly continued to use the flimsy rag-draped spokes against an African summer sun that stubbornly continued to suck the life out of anything it touched. Pride kept me from admitting that I had been had by the wily umbrella merchant of Malabo, and that pride won me many friends across Cameroon and through northern Nigeria- right up to the unfortunate (David would challenge that adjective) day when I left it behind in a share-taxi crossing the border to desert Niger.

Thus umbrella-less, I wilted in the scorching Saharan sun for the rest of Niger, fending off David's exhortations to buy another with the once-burned remark that I had been down that road before, thanks very much.

After we crossed back into Nigeria, however, an umbrella in Kaduna managed to catch even my jaded eye. It was a kiddie umbrella, tiny and blue with a bootlegged image of Mickey Mouse over the auspicious words, "Little World". To open it, you pushed a little plastic button and pop! Mickey Mouse waved at you upside down in the shade interior. When I saw the toy plastic whistle attached, I was sold.

Not so sold I would pay another six dollars for it, though; whistles are all well and good but, as I explained to the umbrella-man, there was absolutely no way I was gonna pay more than about a buck-fifty for something that would barely make it through the day.
"It won't break," he tried to insist.
"Yes, it will," I decreed with bitterness aged like a fine liquor, and bought it for $1.50 (220 naira).

He was right. I was wrong. It did not break on the first day, it did not break on the second, and by the third day of continued use I was ecstatic. I discovered other uses for it - poking other people, smacking things, twirling in the air - that considerably heightened my appreciation for the umbrella even after my excitement over the whistle wore off. David, devoted lobbyist for an umbrella-purchase and chief broker of the sale, began to regret his former advocacy.

I was not in the slightest discouraged by his diminishing support, for it was replaced by random passersby. As we traveled south, I began to get comments about the umbrella - "Ooh, that's a nice umbrella" - from strangers that confirmed my convictions about how great it truly was. And, as I was to discover in an Abuja motor-park, I had apparently gotten a pretty good deal.

A bit loopy after four hours' unsuccessful wait for a share-taxi and sick of seeing the same hawkers again and again, I realized that if you can't beat 'em... The next man who wandered my way to offer me a SIM charge-card, I instead jumped on him and asked him whether he wouldn't like to buy a great umbrella.

The vendor was surprised but not deterred, and after sizing it up carefully, asked me what it would cost him. Naturally I had no real intention of parting with such a magnificent umbrella, but it was the only thing I was holding and I deemed it imprudent to bandy about suggestive offers about clothing.

"A thousand naira," I loftily declared, convinced this was far too high a price for him to do anything but scoff and walk away.
Scoff he did - "Ah!", the short, high-pitched Nigerian squawk of disapproval - but walk away he did not. He was highly entertained (as were most of the other hawkers, herders, and vendors lounging in the lethargic motor-park) but more than that, he willing to negotiate. "200 naira," he offered.
Now it was my turn to squawk. "Ah! I paid more even than that when I bought it." I went to walk away, but the umbrella had now caught his eye, too. "Come down," he insisted, referring to my absurd price tag, and when I joked that even 800 might not be worth it, he instantly jumped to 500. From there we stale-mated - it was too dangerous at this point for me to even joke about going down to a reasonable price - and I began to maintain a more vigilant clutch on my umbrella against David (who heard the N500 offer with glee, and was more than willing to make a 250% profit). By the time we had finally left, the hawker had edged up to 550 without any encouragement from me, and I discovered a lost calling if I ever chose to live in Nigeria.. umbrella merchant.

The umbrella, for its part, continued to serve me well, even to the point of making (oh how melodramatic) the ultimate sacrifice in Lagos. I was walking that morning along the edge of the road, watching a BMW back towards me at high speed. I believed, with inappropriate confidence in the driver's mastery of basic safety principles, that he would stop or at least slow down before he got close to me. I was, after all, hardly the only obstacle along the side of the curb, it was a pretty quiet street, and he was moving backwards. By the time I realized my mistake the sedan was about five feet away and closing fast, too close for me to retreat from and too fast for me to dodge, and it was time for an urgent decision. Even in the moment I had a fleeting regret about sacrificing my umbrella, but my arm couldn't reach far enough and by the time it did it wouldn't be the only bump he heard. So instead, I brought my umbrella down hard on the trunk several times. Success; the driver lurched to a stop a few inches from my hip. I walked forward past the driver's window and snapped rather crankily at him, "You could have killed me!" before stalking on my way. It was unnecessary; the look on his face showed he had come to the same conclusion.

The umbrella (the true victim) came away from its battle better than I expected, as the bludgeoning side, though bent, had not snapped at all during the barrage it rained down upon the BMW's bumper and trunk. That event was to mark the beginning of the end, however.. though I refused to admit it at first, the damaged spokes couldn't sustain their share of the fabric, and it began to slip off. Furthermore, our first real rain in Benin revealed that my umbrella was apparently not meant for adverse weather, and within minutes of getting wet the pole began to rust. Still I clung to the umbrella, using the lubricant for the water filter pump to revive its opening ability (and that delightful push-button pop). David began to agitate for another umbrella purchase (I think it's just the buying that he enjoys), and when we saw another umbrella just like the first in Togo - this one was purple, with dancing green dinosaurs and yellow goat-things - we bought it on the spot. David doesn't know it yet, but I'm actually only using purple-dinosaurs to extend the lifespan of little-world a bit longer, and far from chucking it, have got it stashed away inside my suitcase. (Small as it is, the suitcase is yet smaller, so the curved blue plastic handle and whistle poke out of it at one end, but I have confidence that it's still safe from damage.) As it stands now, I am (dare I say it) cautiously entertaining hopes of little-world making it through the next two months to end-point Dakar, in which case it will definitely be among the six (6) items I have that I ever want to see again after this trip. (And to give perspective on the priority there, the first is my passport, and the second, my camera.) Wish little-world luck!