Revolt

18. Strings Attached

“The fibers of all things, have their tension—and are strained like the strings of an instrument.” – Henry Thoreau.

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The last time Lekan was here, he was camping out in Kunle’s shadow like a new, nervous transfer kid at school—terrified at the prospect of treading unfamiliar grounds and forging alliances with strangers, but now as he sat at the right hand-side of his father’s pioneer space and watched the board of directors file in, he wasn’t that panicky person anymore. Granted, his anxiety hadn’t evaporated, but he could feel courage coursing through his veins like lightning—if he were the god of thunder. As usual, the bulk of directors wore jaded, wry expressions on their faces, but he had come around to getting accustomed to that. Business people generally weren’t smiley faced people.

When everyone was well settled, he rose to his feet to address the room. The meeting wasn’t the annual board of directors’ conference, rather it was an impromptu one he had called, in order to table something of a prodigious scale to them. It was too big of a decision, to be taken or executed without their blessing—as it was almost as significant as the passing of bill, in a house of senate if the current setting were to be likened to a political one.

When he was sure, all eyes in the room were on him, he began.

“For years, we’ve been contending with a particular problem that we’ve failed to find a solution to. You could call it our Achilles heel or kryptonite, whichever. This problem is of course, transportation speed. As a distribution and courier company, our transportation is the bed rock that our business lies on. Now, our transportation is stellar but it’s not pitch perfect. We still get complaints from customers now and then that their goods don’t arrive on schedule. It’s hard enough to deliver in a country, where every street isn’t on the Google map. That slows our drivers down already, as they have to use their intuition from time to time, to navigate their path.

“We’ve tried purchasing more buildings for warehouses, so there would be closer proximity to residential areas, but of course this is Lagos, a megacity and there isn’t much we could do from that end, as many lands aren’t available for sales as regards that usage. The places that are available are usually apartments, that would cost too much to be rejuvenated into what we need them to be. And don’t let me get started on traffic, and it’s many impositions. Everything is practically constraining. Now the complaints we get aren’t over the top, that they threaten our existence as every local courier company is plagued with the same problems, but I figured if we find a solution in a place, where others can then we’d easily catapult ourselves to the top.”

“Mr. Keye,” It was Katherine, who sat across him on the table—that voiced her opposition first. She looked imposing as always, with her black rimmed glasses and her daunting gaze. “We do appreciate your optimism, as all the facts you’ve laid out can’t be disputed, but the reason why there is no solution in that area, is practically because there is really no solution in that area. We’ve exhausted virtually all our options, and have failed to come up with something…groundbreaking. But if you do have, one we’d be gladdened to hear it. However, if this meeting was called merely to bring this to our notice, then it’s all a waste of our respective time.”

“Of course, I didn’t just call you out here to inform you of this. If that was my motive, a simple text message would have sufficed.” Lekan pressed on, refusing to be undermined by the general contrition. “I have thought of something, a solution that has the potential to be revolutionary if implemented well. We already know we can’t increase our transport speed, because…traffic and difficulty to locate places. We also know it’s almost a dead-end, getting warehouses that are close to residential areas. But there is another means of land transportation we’re yet to look into. That is the railway.”