Encounters: 'If I speak it, it happens'

Deep in the thrum of Lagos, Lindokuhle Nkosi met a self-styled prophet and/or criminal ...

"Lagos is about sincerity. If you aren't sincere, if you don't live your real life, the system will chew you up and spit you out into the lagoon." - Jude Anogwih

Sound is a vibration. A series of compressions and rarefactions on a longitudinal wave. Music is the method of that. Patterns of ideas and thoughts layered one on top of the other.

In Lagos, the strata are multitudinous. Each has its own vibration, a particular tremble. The air hums noisily. The unrelenting timbre of five million generators - myriad miniature helicopters rotating electricity into life. The sky opening in faint pats - tiny droplets tripping the light fantastic on aluminium roofing.

So soft, so consistent that it almost isn't there.

A rooster in the distance. A squawk up ahead. A loud call from across the road at 6am. A hazy sheeting of water channelling off the walls and into the streets. This is the sound of many. Of a billion "hurry up and waits".

He stares ahead as if to walk straight past the table. Suddenly, he comes to a halt, swivels on his heels and pulls out a sun-bleached, stained chair. A tight white T-shirt contrasts with his matt, mahogany skin. Ill-fitting baggy denim tunnels out into a pair of blue rubber slops. Greetings are exchanged, protocols observed.

He hitches up his blue jeans, browned by dust, and takes a seat. "You see this." His face is turned downward, gravity tugs at every muscle, etching a scowl. "You see this." He forces his tongue out of a gap through his clenched teeth, pointing at it. "This thing here is prophetic. If I speak something, it happens. With this tongue, it happens. As God is my witness, if I tell you, it shall come to pass."

I'm at a hole-in-the-wall in a hole-in-the-wall. VIP Room on Obalende, opposite the market. Rows of one-roomed structures line the road, jostling for space. A mouth with too many crooked teeth. Each with a massive speaker in the doorway, facing streetwards. Star Beer and palm wine in repurposed water bottles.

The room illuminates blue from a tiny screen mounted on the wall. "That's why I no say too much." He's glaring now, beating his chest. "I just watch now. I just listen. I just laugh."

It's hardly much of an empire. Just dense experiences spilling out from the ground, hustling for existence. For space to breathe. The air is diesel. Fish roasts on an open grill - spices somewhat masking, somewhat co-mingling with the pungent smell of urine. A goat crosses the road, narrowly missed by an okada zig-zagging down the path, dodging potholes, writing parentheses into the dust.

He introduces himself as David, offering a tattooed fist, all knuckles and knobs and sinew. David is a marshal, but not the military kind. His ogas occupy the table adjacent. There are three cut-crystal glasses on it, and a bottle of wine wrapped in a plastic bag.

"You have to be careful with words. God spoke life into flesh. With just a word, he made you breathe. So be careful what you say. The things that I speak are ordained by the most high. The Most High."

David is high as a motherf***er. He's speaking around me, the only woman at the table. His words, his eyes fall on either side of me, never landing as he hurtles head-first into a religious soliloquy, breaking out of character as quickly as he tumbles into it.

The first few bars of Mafikizolo's Khona buzz and croak out of a speaker. He springs to his feet, momentarily forgetting he is a soldier of God. "This is your song now, your language. Come I show you how to step." Shoulders are jerking. He rolls his hips, hands chopping the air, so smooth, so cool. Now down and around, circles forming spinning tornadoes.

He smiles. He sits. Legs astride, hands gripping at the table. His attention is on the ogas. "You see the man there." He softens his voice, whispering conspiratorially, but his words are harder than before. The edges are crisp. The consonants clipped, ragged cliff-edges.

The man is dressed in a gold lace top, formal pants and square-toes. He decants the red wine from a white bag into a glass. A watch winks in the moonlight from under the hem if his sleeve. "That man is my boss. Here, he is The General. He runs all these."

A prostitute strides through, loudly proclaiming something or the other about her nyash being surrounded by Baba Sharo. David waves her away with a flick of the wrist. "Me, I am still getting my stars." He rubs his shoulders, dusting off an imaginary lapel, polishing the stars he is yet to achieve. "I. I am an armed robber. Sometimes I carry a gun, but gun never carry me." He shatters into mirth. Uncomfortable, I laugh too.

"No sister, I am speaking now. I am trying to tell you something."

Smile freezes. Fades.

"I don't condone violence. I don't like it. I like good things, positive vibrations ... but this life ... With violence, you can always see the genesis. You can always see the genesis, but you can never see how it finishes. If you can't see how something finishes, it will finish you."

He insists on walking us out into the main road. We must be seen with him to be safe. He must be seen with us. LS @TheKingsTings

• Nkosi is a writer and curator, and a member of the 'Invisible Borders' collective travelling from Lagos to Sarajevo by road. www.invisible-borders.com