THE RAT IN COTONOU

I am at Murtala Muhamed airport in Lagos. It is chaotic to say the least, the least apart from a father who was miserably failing to control an autistic boy who was scaring everybody at the airport. (I sympathize with him though), and a ceiling that kept falling off, I was a very bothered that I would miss my flight.
I get to security check, the security guy throws one look at my passport and asks, “What happened to your eyes, do you smoke?” “Of course I don’t,” I reply. He goes on to ask for my fingers and checks for tar stains, of course he finds and grudgingly tells me to walk off. Am wondering if smoking is illegal in Nigeria. I head of for gate E4 where am supposed to board my plane. I find out that the plane missed the gate, I run to gate D2 where the plane is like a commot.
Aboard the plane and a commotion ensues behind my seat. A middle aged woman obviously speaking in a heavy Yoruba tongue. She is wailing. A guy sitting next to me, I think his name is Samuel Ikechiejieku, who plays for the Kaduna Hearts and is on his way to play professional soccer in Oman, explains that the woman is agitated because she has seen a rat aboard the KQ plane.
Everybody started speaking excitedly at the same time. We fly off to Benin’s capital Cotonou, the woman is still agitated, others join in her conversation, the elite among speak in English and the rest of them in Yoruba, or some other native language from Nigeria. Two camps emerge one says that the rat is Nigerian and the other says that the rat is a Kenyan rat. We land in Cotonou after ten minutes and have to disembark the plane so that he they can fumigate the plane. We are held in a holding bus, the discussion continues. A Nigerian gentleman is busily explaining to a couple of Chinese girls that the fuse is about the rat on plane. After understanding the gist of the fuse one of the Chinese women comes with a mind racking interjection.
“May be the rat just wants to go to Nairobi,” She says. Of course an extrapolation of that statement would have all sorts of different meanings. Try figure out one.