By Chioma Okereke

There’s an old tale where we live about throwing a newborn into the lagoon.

If the baby drowns, it is illegitimate and the mother must be banished from the community. But if it floats, the infant is embraced by all. They say fathers used to celebrate their child’s birth with this test. It must have been a trick, though, as everybody knows that all babies float.

I was born in the water. That’s what Papa says but it’s a fiction. I wasn’t born in a hospital or on land; most of us in my community weren’t. We drew our first breaths on Adogbo, though according to Papa, my first moments were almost in the lagoon itself. Makoko is what the outsiders had originally called our settlement hundreds of years ago, due to its abundance of akoko leaves, and the name stuck for the community on the Lagos coast just across from the Third Mainland Bridge. To strangers, it’s a slum, a metallic and wooden eyesore built over a stinking bed of ever-mounting sewage, spreading out across the smoke-filled horizon. For the government, it’s the impediment between even larger coffers for them and prime waterfront real estate. But to us, who are from here, Makoko is simply home.

The Nigerian government likes to pretend that we don’t exist, but we’ve been here for hundreds of years, our wooden houses resting proudly on their stilts above Lagos’s charcoal-coloured lagoon. We’ll remain here for some time, no matter how many attempts they make to push us out. Mama had plenty of babies in her belly before me, but only a few of us stayed. That’s not only an issue with the women in our family, as she’d explained, but with life here on the lagoon. There’s a high rate of maternal and infant death among those living on the water, which is strange considering that we all originally come from the womb having been surrounded by liquid. Still, many women lose their children – although there’s plenty to go around – as there are very few doctors here to speak of.

So, Mama had some false starts before Dura came and then many other miscarriages before it was my turn nineteen years ago, followed by Charlie Boy five years later. I was fearless, Papa used to say. It’s why I was able to be born.

Mama had been visiting her best friend when I announced my early arrival, pounding hard on her stomach and pelvic bone. Auntie Uche had protested that it was too late for her to leave. Having had more babies than Mama, Auntie knew I was well on my way into the world, but Mama had been insistent. She’d wanted to return home to have me in her own bed, so they’d stepped gingerly into a canoe for the short ride back. Papa wasn’t even there but claimed Mama’s labour was so painful that he’d heard her while he’d been far out fishing with the other men. Mama’s voice had travelled across the water and spooked the fish, which rushed to their nets, delivering them a glorious bounty!

As I’d inched through her passageways, Mama rocked the canoe so much that they’d almost fallen overboard. Auntie Uche could only look on in fear as she prepared to rescue Mama from the filthy waters, but then something odd happened. A mighty invisible hand had reached out from within the lagoon and pushed her upper body firmly back in place. Mama let out a heavy cry and then slid to the boat’s bottom so that Auntie Uche could row her home before I slipped out through her legs from underneath her wrapper. We’d stayed in the boat tethered together by our cord while my aunt screamed for help and our neighbours went to fetch the other women.

Papa was astounded when he came home later that evening, covered in sweat and scales. His eyes were large and his mouth even wider when he saw what Mama had produced. He said I looked like one of the fishes he drew out from the water daily, in shock from being extracted from their natural habitat, their eyes big with fear as their cheeks contracted from struggling to take in the air out of the water.

He retold this story many times when I was smaller. I used to ask him if I’d been slimy like the catfish that we ate in the past, which the lagoon used to be full of when it was teeming with fish. He’d reply that I was, but that Mama had cleaned me up, so by the time we met, I was dry but naked and as beautiful as a mermaid.

He said I was practically born with one foot in the water and that Mama had been helped that day by the deity Yemoja herself.

It’s why they named me after the water spirit, though everyone calls me by Papa’s pet name: Baby

Excerpt from “Water Baby” copyright © 2024 by Chioma Okereke. Published by Quercus Books.

About the book: She's the Pearl of Makoko and the world is her oyster.

In the floating slum settlement of Makoko, Nigeria, nineteen-year-old Baby dreams of a life beyond her father's expectations. With the arrival of a drone-mapping project aimed at broadening visibility for the community, Baby is given the rare opportunity to explore something unconventional. However, when a video of her at work goes viral, Baby is faced with choices she could never have imagined - including the possibility of leaving her birthplace to represent Makoko on the world stage. But will life beyond the lagoon be everything she's dreamed of? Or has everything she wants been in front of her all along?

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Born in Nigeria, Chioma Okereke grew up in London and studied law at UCL. She started her writing career as a performance poet before turning her hand to prose. Her debut novel, Bitter Leaf (Virago), was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and her short story, Trompette De La Mort, received First Runner Up of the inaugural Costa Short Story Award. She divides her time between the bustle of London, the hustle of Lagos, and the rustle of rural France.

You can read our interview with Chioma Okereke here.