When Eze was invited to spend his Easter holidays with Uncle Chidi in lagos, he jumped for joy! He had always pictured Lagos as a wonderland of bright lights, paved roads, elegant people riding by in their expensive cars, and beautiful residential quarters. This invitation was the wonderful opportunity for him to leave his small village for the first time and experience first-hand the good life of the city that he had imagined so much about!

The fateful day came and Eze happily bid an excited good-bye to his family. The first leg of his trip started modestly in the back of the rickety lorry that plied the dirt road linking his village to the rest of the world, but Eze was sure that he would later ride triumphantly into Lagos on one of those legendary luxury buses that he admired so much. This was also an experience to look forward to!

When he arrived in Lagos, it was almost dark. The first things that struck him as he alighted from the bus were the teeming crowd with their desperate unsmiling faces, the deafening noise of the ceaseless trafic, the polluted air with its acrid smell of exhaust fumes and decay, the endless rows of dirty and crumbling concrete buildings, and the filth everywhere. What a sharp contrast with the city he had built up in his imagination! But surely there must still be much to look forward to. Back in the village, Uncle Chidi was regarded as a well-to-do trader. So Eze was further surprised and disappointed to find that he lived in a single room in a sleazy part of the city. At night, it got hot and stuffy, but they dared not open the windows as this would bring an invasion of mosquitoes. latest prom collections look hot

Eze woke up the next morning feeling clammy, but he could still not have a bath. As his Uncle took him to a shack across the street for a hurried breakfast of thin tea and mouldy bread, he explained that they usually bought water from a mobile tanker that had not come around for some time. Eze was still recovering from his surprise at this information when they rushed off for his uncle's market stall, and he had his first unpleasant ride in one of the notorious molue buses of the city.

As they struggled down from the bus, shoving against the solid mass of desperate, bad-tempered commuters, Eze thought of his village, and the city suddenly lost whatever was left of its attraction for him. True, the village was small; life there was monotonous, and it lacked some essential amenities. But it was peaceful; you drank clean water and ate what you wanted fresh; you moved about freely and breathed clean air; and everyone was friendly and helpful. Greatly disillusioned with the city, Eze longed to return to his beloved village!