‘The Mechanics of Yenagoa’ tells the story of Ebinimi, a mechanic, whose unusual creative dexterity is the answer to the knotty issues that plague vehicle owners across Bayelsa, and the day-to-day activities at his workshop — which he wishes doesn’t share the same premises with the ‘Jerusalem Warriors International’, run by the stressful Reverend Ebizimor.
From a sister trying to find a delicate balance between devotion to her pastor and making her marriage work, to Ebinimi’s tight-rope walk on deciding between love, work, and romantic necessity, the story weaves through politics, social media, religion, and alternate trips into the underworld of Yenagoa.
Ebinimi is a representation of the varying sides of the different characters that make up the Nigerian space. Business owner, politician, graduate, hoodlum, artisan, lover, preacher, relative, voter, friend, congregant… the author exhibits a unique skill in relating the experiences that characterise the seemingly usual, but life-changing day-to-day activities of living in Africa’s most populous country.
The characters reflect the varied peculiarities found across the social strata of life, with each person exerting some level of influence — however seemingly insignificant — within his/her comfort zone.
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As the story develops, individuals undergo change and respond through refixing their lives, depending on how best they see fit — a reverend rebrands into ‘Fire for Fire’ and threatens to vanish with a trunk filled with blood-chilling secrets; a female assassin embraces family life while answering deftly to the call of the thug world; a politician rises from the dregs to playing in the big league; a mid-season girlfriend readjusts her interests in ways that best serve her growth; an overnight internet sensation tries to adjust to a new reality with his uninformed lover-turned-manager; a best friend plots a revenge so deadly it will take a special kind of miracle for the victims to live to tell to story; a mechanic walks through the smouldering coals of living through a scam.
It’s interesting that as much as Ebinimi is expected to be the centre of attention, other characters — through links to the experiences around the protagonist — take the fore at intervals in the effort to tell a rich story of an entire existence through the antics that take place in and around the mechanic workshop.
With sprinkles of humour and pain, each chapter teases with the seeming resolution of a crisis, and just as the reader begins to heave a sigh of relief, the pace picks up again and climaxes into another suspense-filled bombshell.
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As presented in ‘The Mechanics of Yenagoa’, life, as expected, comes with its ups and downs, and even if a person refuses to deliberately make a difference, the inbuilt repairer in each individual does what it can to turn a screw here, twist a bolt there, to adjust the situation into what best works for that period.
Through the highs of freedom, love, unexpected fortune, rebirths and near-death saves, to the lows of drugs, criminal politics, betrayal, twisted cons, and selfish turns, as Afenfia aptly captures in his work, there’s a mechanic in all of us.
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