The heat didn’t arrive all at once. At first, Pere noticed it in small ways—bread that cost a little more each week, bus fares that suddenly increased, the quiet disappearance of things people once took for granted. Lagos had always been loud, crowded, restless. Now it felt strained, as a drum stretched too tight, one good strike away from tearing.
He clung to a different story. “This is the year of double,” Pastor had declared back in January, sweat shimmering on his forehead as the choir’s voice rose behind him. “Double portion, double favour. This administration will favour you and your family. Confess it. Say only what you want to see.” So Pere did.
Each morning, he stood in front of the cracked mirror and spoke the words over his reflection. “Ah, this administration will favour my family and me. Things are getting better.” He watched his own lips move, as if the certainty might one day reach his eyes.
At the printing shop, the generator coughed before catching, rattling like an old man’s lungs. Fuel prices rose so often that the new figures on the board felt temporary, like someone could come in any moment to wipe them and write another. The boss spent more time with his calculator than with customers, punching buttons, frowning, sighing.
When clients stopped printing party flyers and wedding programs and came only for CVs and affidavits, Pere noticed. When they started saying, “I’ll collect it next week, I don’t have the money yet,” he noticed that too. He noticed the way the boss’s eyes drifted to him, then away, like a man rehearsing bad news.
But noticing was different from naming.
At home, the adjustment was practical. Less meat in the soup. More water. Rice stretched for one more day. Seiyefa, his younger sister, began calling her hunger fasting, even on days when there was nothing particularly spiritual about it. Their mother stopped talking about “what we’ll cook tomorrow” and started saying “we’ll see.”
Everywhere, small shifts. The fan stayed still all afternoon. The landlord’s voice, losing its friendliness and keeping only its firmness. The neighbours’ generator that once hummed cheerfully at night is now silent more often than not.
In the evenings, when the power cut out and the room sank into darkness, Pere would lie on his mattress, heat pressing down on his chest, and replay Pastor’s words like a recording. Say only what you want to see. This administration will favour you. Things are getting better.
One night, the landlord came and spoke to their mother at the door. The conversation was low, but Pere could not miss the throat-cutting word: arrears, others waiting, cannot continue like this. When the door closed, Pere looked at his mother’s tired face, at the way she avoided his eyes.
“We’ll pay,” he said. “God is working.”
She nodded, slow and automatic, as if the gesture belonged more to habit than hope.
The next morning, Pere lost two workdays. “You’re not fired,” the boss said. “We’re just reducing the work days, for now.” On the bus home, squeezed between bodies that smelled of sweat and frustration, Pere watched Lagos slide by: women under sun-bleached umbrellas selling less than they used to, men standing idle where queues for work once formed, billboards with smiling politicians promising “Hope” while potholes yawned below.
He whispered under his breath, “This administration will favour me. It will favour my family. Things are getting better.” The words felt like a thin sheet held up against a forest fire.
At home, the air was thick and still. Seiyefa lay on the floor, where the tiles were marginally cooler than the mattress. The pot on the stove was small and smelled mostly of Maggi and pepper. There was no meat at all. Pere washed his hands at the plastic bucket, took his plate, sat, and began to eat. No one asked, “Is that enough?” Silence did that work for them.
Later, as darkness folded over the house, the three of them sat in the heat. Outside, someone’s radio tried to sound cheerful, crackling with a presenter talking about growth figures and reforms. The generator in the next compound started, groaned, and stopped. Pere lay back and stared at the ceiling he could barely see.
He thought of the church, of the pastor’s smooth suit and shining shoes, of the polished floor and cold air conditioning. He thought of the words: double, favour, breakthrough, harvest. He thought of his own voice in the mirror, insisting that things were getting better while everything around him shrank.
The strange thing was not that life was getting harder. It was how natural the hardness had begun to feel. Each cutback made the next easier to accept. Each small loss made room for a bigger one. Less food. Less work. Less sleep. He told himself he was strong. That he was enduring, that to complain was to confess defeat.
But lying there, sweat gathering at his neck, the darkness buzzing with mosquitoes and distant generators, a different thought edged in. What if calling this “favour” did not change what it was? What if all his declarations were not shields, but blindfolds? He did not say it aloud. He did not dare. The habit of “right confession” was strong, a rope wrapped tight around his tongue. Yet the thought stayed. He had accepted each new degree as normal. He had baptised every discomfort with hopeful language until he could no longer tell faith from fear.
It occurred to him that he had not been climbing toward anything. He had just been sitting very still. Like the metaphoric frog. In water that had been heating for a long, long time.
