“Dare to Fly” I read the italicised inscription which was written in red against the white-painted body of the tired-looking and dilapidated bus. It had been bashed in places and sputtered past me like an old man afflicted with tuberculosis. The conductor banged on the roof of the bus, repeatedly and hard enough to make me jolt. I thought that one of the parts of the bus would fall off against such onslaught. Ten paces ahead of me, the bus stopped and the conductor ran towards me, sipping on a low-price sachet rum which he held between his teeth. In his left hand, he carried all kinds of Nigerian currencies and by my reckoning, may even have some dollars or euros in there. His right hand was occupied too, he was holding up his ragged-looking, “once-sky-blue-now-dirty-brown” jeans. He may have forgotten to wear belt or maybe he was making a fashion statement; he may be sagging. His black singlet grasped desperately at some dignity but missed completely. It was riddled with tiny holes and was torn at the seams, it's thread flew meekly against the cold morning wind.
It was an odd morning, it was dark, cold and slow, almost mirroring my life. Lagos never sleeps but on this morning with the cloudy and cold weather, it seemed that it was having a hangover. In front of the Capitol road junction at Agege, only the sputtering white bus could be found.
“Oshodi 150 with your change” He towered above me and from his height of over six feet threw down the words and his breath of rum down like ballistic missiles at my 5 feet 8 frame. I shifted my face away from his stale breath of alcohol. He was already drinking at 6:45 am on a cold cloudy Monday morning; he is a walking wahala waiting to happen.
“Bros, you no dey go?” He said, effortlessly spinning me around to face him. I dared to look at his face. His lips were thick and black and the upper lip had a scar positioned directly under the bridge of his massive nostrils which possibly took more oxygen per time than my average-sized nostrils. Another scar, this time a tribal mark ran from his right cheek down to his jaw and fulfilled its purpose on me; it scared me. His eyes were bloodshot and were probably caused by the same substance which had blackened his lips. His dark skin was terrifying and that it not to say that he would have looked any less unsightly if he had been as fair as I am. I had profiled him and somehow decided that he was the material that criminals were made of. I concluded that his bus may be the infamous “one chance” bus which an unfortunate soul was destined to enter in Lagos from time to time.
They said that the perpetrators of that con-scheme or robbery often use “juju” and that if anyone was unguarded in the spirit, by that they mean praying, or exchanged conversation with any of them, he or she would fall under the spell and would see himself rushing off to his house, his business area or the nearest Automated Teller Machines to withdraw oodles of cash, as much as he can access within that short time and drop it with the con-men while thanking them effusively and possibly asking them to drop by anytime.
There are opinions that they merely feed off gullible people’s greed and their drive for enterprise. The con-men were known for weaving some fantastical tale that would make the greedy mark believe that it was a veritable business opportunity to exploit.
Others believe that they used some chemicals which would induce sleep in all of their passengers before they proceeded to rob, rape or kidnap them for rituals. There are a lot of rituals going on in Nigeria. I often wondered if it was that way in other western countries. I suspect that it may be, people do go missing atimes and their body turn up later somewhere else with some body parts missing. The Western police have and their psychological profilers tend to believe that the cases of missing body parts were instances of a deranged psychopath taking a memento off their victims, in Nigeria, we believe that a politician or another societal bigwig had used the victim for money rituals and Nigerians are never wrong to expect the worst from their wealthy and often they were not disappointed. Anyone who could see a nation reeling in debt and still muster the temerity to demand wardrobe allowances could possibly kill someone. If he could hold a knife to a nation’s throat, killing a human being may pale in comparison
I was already prejudiced against the conductor who had long left me and was crying “Oshodi Oshodi” at other passengers who like me took one look each at the bus and another and its conductor and decided that they are better off trekking to Oshodi Bus stop.
I cannot really trek to Oshodi Bus Stop, or maybe I can. More than a dozen Nigerians took to trekking in the aftermath of the Presidential Election which the General Muhammad Buhari had won. Some claimed to have trekked as far as 220 kilometres to congratulate the president for winning the election, others claimed to have travelled similar kilometers to congratulate President Goodluck Jonathan for conceding defeat. Nobody thus far had congratulated me for being a Nigerian and none still have congratulated me for accepting defeat in the failed national project. If I trekked from Ikeja to Oshodi, nobody will be there to congratulate me on my successful arrival. I would only be late for work and get the opposite of congratulations from my cantankerous boss who hates Nigeria, his wife, his job and his life. I was his Administrative Assistant and my job description was “to always come to the office before him, sit down, do the Boss’ work and give him all the credit ad well as take all of the blame in the event of failure”.
I do not like my Boss, but I like money.
I have often fantasized on how I could earn money without doing any actual work. It must be easy because some of the celebrities do that all the time. One of them once gave lectures on the objectification of women in the society. I would have believed her if she had not released a sex tape, posed nude on several magazines and generally made a career out of being objectified. The admittance into the lecture was slated at the flat rate of $40US and thousands of people are bound to show up.
I spent my leisure time wondering if anyone would show up if I hosted a lecture on “How to Survive a Day at The Office” and spent some more time “googling” on lazy ways to make money. Thus far, I have found none. The links I found talked about investing money, working on a computer, reading emails and a whole lot of work-stuff. I have recently come to accept that “productive laziness” is a lot of hard work.
A gush of cold wind tickled my neck. A rumble of thunder, subdued, like a lion growling before it pounced, broke out in the sky. The gathering cloud made the morning seem earlier than it should, giving a 5am visibility to a 6:50am morning. I watched people rushing towards the jalopy bus and made a run for it too. Even if it could not move, it could at least serve as an umbrella for a while.
“Oshodi #200 with your change” He said as people scramble to get into the bus.
“Madam, if you no dey enter, come down make another person enter” The conductor told a woman who was asking about the sudden change in price. The woman stood at the door of the bus for about a second or two, turned to the conductor with a glower, apparently deciding that anyone who could take “Igbo” and rum that time in the morning was not worth her words, she sighed loudly and entered the bus. I stood beside the conductor certain that if looks could kill, the conductor would have been on the sidewalk in a heap. The woman looked every inch like a madam and she knew it, she was not about to start arguments with the conductor like most of her mates who wore blonde or brunette wigs, bleached, did every other thing but diet to keep in shape and wield a rude disposition as a defensive mechanism against anyone who would dare point out that she was old enough to be a grandmother.
She looked around the seats of the bus running her fore-finger on the seats and inspecting it closely for specks of dust. Satisfied, she sat down and placed her black leather bag on top of her laps, from outside the bus, I could see the unmistakable gold medusa’s head. She held her chin up and her eyes scanned the bus looking for parts that may likely dirty her cream-coloured knee-high gown which she covered with a black jacket. The conductor did not look at her red face which could have been yellow in her younger years and the eyes that condescendingly inspected even the man on faded black shirt and horn-rimmed eyeglasses, that was sat next to her. Her misophobia felt forced, I could see in her even as I entered and sat directly behind her, the haughtiness of a woman who felt that she deserved to go to work in her own car but was too prepossessed with her appearance to do something about it. She must have spent as much money buying designer clothes, shoes and bags than she would have needed to buy a “tokunbo” Mercedes V-boot. I agreed with her, she was way too overdressed to ride to work in a bus which was more likely to debark us in the middle of the highway and at the mercy of the insane Lagos commuters who took to the roads as if it was a race track, talked with their horns and would often embark on suicide maneuvers to see who will blink first. They do not stop for anyone but a “kaboom” or even the more insane LASTMA.
There was this song I watched a video on YouTube; a place where people could go and watch the video of other people trying to get famous by either doing amazing things or doing stupid things, where a man sang that LASTMA chased him into his bedroom for breaking the traffic “one way” rule. I was not certain whether LASTMA actually chased that man into his bedroom; I was not even certain whether LASTMA chased that man at all but I was certain that “that” was something LASTMA could do. I have watched them embark on high-speed chase in a bid to arrest a jaywalker and in that process caused more accidents than they have been able to prevent.
Thus Lagos drivers for all their hardheadedness have come to accept that one should not attempt to escape from LASTMA except if one wanted a Death Race.
To be continued...
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