Dogs of Tirana

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On putting one foot in front of another

In Tirana, there is an abundance of stray dogs. This is my wife’s observation three hours after we touched down. She makes these kinds of pronouncements matter-of-factly, slipped somewhere between silences. Paris and Bucharest have too many stray cats. Braga, too many decrepit buildings. Lagos has too many psychotic vagrants. She assigns Tirana its diagnosis in a taxi cab heading to Selekt Resorts.

We are heading to a festival’s Miami Vice-themed party. A week ago, this was not our itinerary. Even though she had bought early bird tickets, we had delayed buying our plane tickets. We paid a steep price for our procrastination — but as with every trip, it was the right decision as we wound around a hill in the cab, fending off the driver’s small talk. The driver had opinions. He honked at a car in front of him, pulled out and overtook, then cursed the poor driver, a lady. My wife flinched at his misogynistic commentary and at my soft reproach of his comments. I told the driver that maybe a woman likes to take her time. A woman (my wife) takes her time too, except she is on her schedule. We were in Tirana to see her friend, a DJ, billed to play at the festival. My wife hadn’t seen her friend play in some time, and the guilt of not supporting her friend inspired this holiday. And our wedding anniversary, too.

Her friend was opening the Miami Vice-themed pool party. There were scantily clad bodies everywhere. On lounge chairs. On barstools smoking shisha. Crowding the bar, ordering cocktails. The target demographic was Non-Londoner Black British youth. They were responding to the music. We found a stool near the pool, decorated with soap suds. We wanted a close view of the open DJ Booth. Her friend’s set had begun. I had heard her friend play once. She loved Afrobeats and played the music with both poise and passion. Her set today was tweaked for her audience. She played a rotation of Black diaspora contemporary music genres. A bit of Afrobeats. Some Dancehall. Bashment too, and cross-continental collaborations. She stirred the party into a good start. We were sipping 17 quid double gin and tonic on a hilly resort, attending a Miami Vice pool party, a pool separating us from a hype man in shorts that were too short.

The hype man was a character. He was charismatic, and his gaiety was infectious. He used the spaces between lyrics for hilarious quips, many of which were frontally risqué and misogynistic. The most memorable was something about not bothering your head about a girl that won’t give you good head. Turns out the hypeman also moonlights as a pastor.

The gift of public speaking has many uses. Clearly, the hypeman had the gift of garb and fine mic control. But I imagined a different career for him. I imagined that he was an aspiring Afrobeat musician or even a professional compere, the kind you encounter at a wedding reception in an ill-fitting suit, repeating every Saturday alongside some risqué jokes about matrimony. Not quite rid of his strong Nigerian accent, what was his journey? How did he land a hypeman gig in Tirana?

In the milling crowd, a good number of social media influencers had recently moved to the UK. Their TikTok spiel was to humorously interrogate the Nigerian immigrant experience in the UK. Family feuds, marital fracas, visa discrimination, pretentious behaviours- none of these were out of step for a two-minute visual treatment. Perhaps our hypeman was a social media influencer too. When his set ended, it became clear that others could not reproduce his infectious gaiety as the night progressed.

Earlier that morning, when our plane took off from Heathrow, I remembered it was September 18. Seven years ago, I flew into Heathrow from New Delhi to begin my life as an immigrant in the UK. Seven years later, I was flying to Tirana for an extended weekend holiday with my wife on a British passport. As if to bring everything into sharp focus, I read Manhood, an anthology of essays edited by Zimbabwean novelist Sue Nyathi, whose novel The Polygamist was recently adapted into a hit Netflix series. I contributed a personal essay, A House Full of Laughter, which addressed the emotional turmoil of relocating to the UK. It was the second essay in the book and one that briskly walked me through those dark corridors once again. Like all the essays in the book addressing masculinity, it was full of light. My essay was about many things, but it was also about my friendship with an older Nigerian man I met at a train station and the impact of his loyalty in smoothing my journey. It was fascinating that the word Matric was very popular among the essays of South African contributors to Manhood. I mused about reading South African essays in the morning and dancing to Amapiano punctuated with whistles at night.

After her set, my friend’s wife joined us to party. They were both joyous when their favourite Afrobeats played. They were upset when the DJ rushed through their favourite tunes. Travel takes you away from the usual tedium of your life and offers something different. In our case, it replaced consuming Nigerian takeout in front of an episode of 90 Day Fiancé with a night out in Albania bonding with an old friend.

There was a long queue at the toilet. The lady in front of me asked if I was Nigerian. I said yes. She asked where I was from. I asked her to guess. Then she asked me to pronounce Parallelogram. I did. She said I was Igbo. I told her I was Yoruba. She was confused. I told her I had served in Orumba North, which showed her I understood the peculiarities of Igbo enunciation. She told me she moved to the UK a year ago for a Master’s. She said she wasn’t finding it easy, but she was planting one foot in front of the other. I told her this was my experience too. I told her it had been seven years since I moved, and many good things had happened to me, including getting married. I told her it gets better before it was her turn to use the bathroom.

On our way back to our apartment, our taxi encountered a lone dog running on the road. It was unperturbed. Just going at its own pace. Oblivious of the car headlights in full beam. Of the blare of the car horn. The taxi pulled out and overtook the dog. I took one long look at the dog and its doggedness, which, strangely, reminded me of that of an immigrant.