Writing in the present tense of a place

A scene in The Agency took eleven rewrites. Not because of a wrong plot or flat dialogue, but because Lagos kept slipping into the past tense. 

I would write: the traffic on the bridge was thick. Accurate and true to the story’s moment, but dead. The reader could observe from a safe distance, like looking at a photograph rather than standing in the room. 

I wanted the reader inside the traffic. Feeling the heat from the car in front. Hearing the bus conductor shouting over the noise of an engine one bad gear-change from giving up entirely. Smelling the suya from the roadside stall three cars ahead, drifting through a window the air conditioning is too exhausted to keep closed. 

This is what I mean by literary virtual reality. Not a technique, but a standard. A commitment to placing the reader inside the scene, not describing it from outside. 

Lagos demands this more than most places I know. A city existing in a perpetual present tense, not waiting to be described. You are either inside it or you are not. The reader can always tell the difference.