We meant to stop for coffee. Six days later, the laundry on the line was almost certainly ours.
The plan was to pass through. Lagos is the kind of town that looks, from the train window, like a reasonable place to change buses. It is not. It is a trap set by sunlight and cheap wine and a particular quality of stillness in the afternoons.
We arrived at eleven in the morning and found a café with good espresso and a table in the window. We sat there for four hours. This is how it begins.
By the second evening we had found a room above a hardware shop, run by a woman named Filomena who charged us an amount that felt wrong in both directions. We had found the restaurant where the daily fish comes in at noon and sells out by two. We had developed opinions about which beach.
Travel like this requires a willingness to miss something else. We had been headed somewhere. Probably it was fine.