Lagos Living
One of the quirks of growing in Lagos is what it fosters in its people — the ability to adapt. If one does not bend themselves to the sways of its dynamic rules, they are crumbled, consumed by its sweeping force. Judging the traffic at all times on all days of the week; knowing when to stand one’s ground in a confrontation and when to slink away; deciding whether that loud bang in the night warrants plunging one’s apartment into darkness and turning in early, tentatively drifting off with prayers on one’s lips: Such things aren’t taught by people. They are learnt through experience; by being claimed by the wrecking tide and vowing to never be the fool again.
Derin had been the fool long enough. He’d mastered the ways of the city now. It wasn’t as glamorous an accomplishment as it sounded. It only meant that he made it till the end of days unscathed, or as unscathed as one could manage.
Before the first streaks of sunlight pierced the skies, the streets were already awake. They were lit by stained headlights and hissed with the sounds of tyres splitting puddles of water, showering the curbs with muddied sprays. Derin covertly broke the file of passengers on the roadside, slipping behind the preening man by his side. The man’s white, perfectly tailored ankara was blinding when caught in the glares of passing cars, and he touched its embroidered neckline on occasion, seemingly adjusting how the top hung on his shoulders. ‘Feeling himself’ is how Lagosians would describe this man’s act of brandishing how good he thought he looked to the world. All Derin saw was a fool in the making.
There is a casual, surface madness that holds Lagosians, and perhaps most Nigerians, in a constant grip. It is the Einsteinian — allegedly — insanity of elevating wrong and undervaluing good, while also hoping that change is just about the corner.
Asides this is a greater, deeper madness. A transient thing, sometimes taking over one’s faculties for a blink, and wide-spreading, jumping from perpetrator to victim just as quickly.
Derin witnessed this other madness in the following seconds. He had sighted a speeding bus coming up the bend in the road and had taken cover. The man Derin hid behind was still basking in the attention his resplendence garnered when the vehicle zoomed past, splattering the queue with a jet of rainwater. Curses spewed from the line, but the bus was already far gone, which further angered them as all they had in retaliation were mere words drowned in the wind.
The man in the white ankara didn’t move or utter a word. Not as a free bus rolled to a stop before them. Not even as Derin hopped over a pool of water into the rickety vehicle, filling its shaky seats along with the other passengers. Till they sputtered away from the bus stop, the man stood, frozen, his once pristine clothes now spotting brown splotches, and his face tipping between helpless fury and sordid disbelief.
Work. No. Before then, it must be said:
If all the roads were of even middling quality, Derin’s journey to work wouldn’t have exceeded thirty minutes — a generous appraisal too.
It took him a full three hours and he had beaten the sun to starting the day.
It is an overflogged gripe, this traffic thing. Age old too. Frustratingly unrelenting. A monster in its own right. But this is digressing.
Now, work. Derin was interning at an internet service provider. He manned the phones in Operations, collecting and logging complaints from customers, and forwarded them through the appropriate channels. Dreary yet simple enough work if one thought of it. But…
and this should ever be kept in mind…
…that assumption wouldn’t account for one crucial factor: the second kind of madness.
He attended to such a call now, slinging the headset over his head. The call log on his monitor started to count.
“Hello. Good morning. I’m Derin from Operations, XXXK Nigeria, Ikoyi Branch. How may I help you?”
“Good morning,” a man replied in a shrill voice. “I’m Segun, calling from Rainforte Oil.”
There was a silent pause.
“So how may I help you sir?” Derin repeated.
“Yes, yes. It is the internet. The thing is not working again.”
Derin would never be unprofessional as to let it slip, but Mr Segun’s voice reminded him of one of those warbled voices comedians used in their skits. “Al-Alright then. If you aren’t able to identify the problem, we’ll have to run some tests from down here.”
“Ah. No oo. If I knew the problem, would I be calling you?”
Well…, Derin thought. Yeaah?
“Plus,” Mr Segun continued, “I cannot do any test. It’s not in my job description.”
Insert cricket chirps…
“I’m sorry sir, but tests are standard practice. Our staff will guide you through it. And if you can’t do it, you can hand the call over to someone from your IT department.”
“No, no. The thing is we don’t do tests over here. And please, young man, I don’t like your tone. I don’t like your tone.”
It was as if a tetchy old rat was telling him off, squeaking with rising shrillness. He cleared his throat. “Alright sir. What do you suggest we do?”
“You’ll just have to come over here.”
“And we will sir, if it is required. But we can only determine that after we’ve run tests. If you could just transfer me to your IT dep — ”
“Wait, wait, wait. This your tone…how old are you even? No, tell me. How old are you?”
Derin struck his forehead with the base of his palm, cutting an exasperated figure. He groaned under his breath — or so he thought— “My God.”
“Aah!” Mr Segun’s voice somehow went up an octave. Or two. And a half. “Did you…? Did you just…? Transfer me to your superior right now. I want to speak to your superior. I will not be disrespected like this.”
In the right or no, customer satisfaction was supreme and his bosses wouldn’t hear his part if this escalated any further. Derin threw a nervous glance at his line manager as he began, “I’m sorry sir. Yes…yes sir. I understand…but you see, that’s not how I meant it. Can you please just calm down…” There was nothing he could think of to placate Mr Segun that he didn’t try, all to no avail. With a defeated sigh, he took off the headphones and held them out to the person in the adjacent cubicle. “Sir, someone’s on the line for you.”
He got off with a warning and a punishment: No lunch break and an extra hour of work after closing. He could have complained to HR, but then his manager could get him fired for the earlier complaint. It wasn’t worth fighting; it was just an hour and who needed breaks anyway?
Mr Segun’s call, unfortunately, wasn’t the worst of the day. But he took a sliver of comfort from it also not being the best he had faced.
The halls of the office were empty when he left. Derin did this thing where he referred to himself by a slightly different name. He’d switch the e for an a and it became Darin; which meant to walk alone. He always had; walked alone. In more than one sense of the phrase too.
But in this moment, it was literal. He strolled beneath a bridge, headed for the next bus stop under purpling clouds. Men and women with cheaply fashioned carts hawked their wares, roving about or holding a spot.
He felt a soft tug on his left arm. He cringed, jerking his gaze towards it. Then he sobered at what he saw. A small girl clutched his hand in both of hers — dainty things, light as snow. A frayed sack of a dress hung from her gaunt shoulders. Her skin was like soot, a most riveting shade, and her eyes…
Derin was generally unfazed, the sort of person to always take things in stride, but her eyes…they melted him. They had the whitest of whites and her pupils were like shattered emerald crystals.
She gestured mutely at her mouth and belly.
Derin swallowed, and as he made the thought to reach for his wallet, he felt another tug. On his back pocket. Much stronger. Much quicker.
He slapped his buttock, striking an empty pocket and fleeting fingers. He twisted about to the sight of a scurrying boy with a brown square tight in his fist, vanishing into the crowd. He turned back to look at the girl and…she was gone. Too late, it dawned on him what had just happened.
He bent down, reaching for his right foot, digging in his shoe. He retrieved a slim wad of cash and proceeded on his way, silently mourning the loss of his debit cards and such, and counting his blessings it had been the wallet and not his phone.
Derin occupied what he believed was the prime seat in a danfo — yellow and black deathboxes that creaked and shuddered even when sailing level roads. It was the front seat, next to the door. There, he was closed off from the rest of the passengers save the one to his left, and open to fresh air and rolling scenes.
Night had fallen. The bus enjoyed a rare, probably brief, respite from the traffic, flying over a stretch of free road. The wind roared in his ears, setting his collar on a flapping spree. Home wasn’t so far now. All in all, a modest day, he’d sa —
Tires screeched to his right. A dark pickup up truck drew up alongside them, slithering to right itself. In the second that it took the truck to surge past them, Derin caught a glimpse of the inside of the truck — empty beer bottles rolling on the dashboard; multiple sachets of gin squeezed in the hand of the driver, not far from his mouth — and an overpowering sour whiff.
The passengers railed as the truck swerved into place just in front of them. They cautioned insistently for the bus driver to slow down. The driver succumbed to their pressure, and they lagged further from the mad truck.
Things had just begun to quieten when a roar erupted from ahead. The pickup kicked into higher gear, shooting forward. Its flimsy excuse for a tailgate snapped down with force. And hell began to rain.
There is a paradoxical trance in which one experiences a passing moment in crystal detail, capturing each frame perfectly. But with this clarity comes a paralysis, a knowledge that things are moving too quickly for one to react. Too slow and too fast at once.
A bunch of thin iron rods, now unchecked by the gaping tailgate, spat from the back of the truck. They clattered to the ground; a symphony of ringing clangs and ephemeral sparks. But they did not lay there, for both truck and bus were in motion. They rebounded off the ground with unbelievable force, hurtling towards the bus like singing arrows.
The bus driver slammed the brakes, jerking the wheels. Derin and the passenger to his left flew out of their seats.
Seat belts? What is this magic you speak of?
He felt a star of pain as his nose crunched into the windscreen. The bus drifted, skidding to a stop. Derin’s face was pressed to the glass. As the bus swerved, he saw the rods make jarring impact. They were low, tearing through the tires and the space under the bus.
Wails filled the air as people bled out of every opening in the bus; doors, windows, and boot alike. Someone shoved Derin to the floor. His head thrummed with a ringing sound as he took in the bottom of the bus. Rods skewered the tires and littered the floor. Oil was leaking from somewhere. Black smoke layered the air.
He snapped out of it and brought himself to his feet. The pickup was nowhere to be found. Cars from behind skirted around the commotion, filled with sorry, bewildered eyes. Some of the passengers sobbed by the roadside. The others swarmed the bus driver and his conductor, asking for their fares back.
Derin dusted his trousers, nursing the building agony that was his nose. He faced the road and walked home, thinking of what would’ve happened if the bus driver hadn’t first slowed down. They’d have been much closer to the truck.
He didn’t call his parents when he got home. It would just worry them. He’d apparently sprained his wrist sometime during the fray. But apart from that and his nose, he was fine. He was just fine on his own.
He stood on his balcony, hands on the railing, cradling his phone. The last shops by the junction below were shutting up. The news blared from a radio downstairs, clear in the emptying night. It had been doing that for a while now. Between it and his thorough search on social media, there was a whopping total of zero reports on the incident.
A tanker had tipped onto a different bus somewhere else and lives had been lost. That was what dominated the airwaves. And that steadied him — not in any sick way. It was more how knowing he was one of the lucky ones — having a job, a life — gave him the strength to go to bed and wake up tomorrow, knowing he’d have to face it all again. And the next day. And many more after.
Lagos really isn’t all that bad. Well, it is, it’s just not all that bad, not all at once.
