New Lagosian
Photo: Dami Akinbode
The engine of the smoke-puffing transit wanes, then dies. I am now in Ojodu Berger, Lagos. I alight close to a group of ruckus bike riders, who rush up to me like a gust of wind. I shake my head at them in disinterest. Ahead, rows of travel buses and traders fill the dust-coated park. Motor-conductors shout destinations as if in a who has the loudest voice competition: Ibadan, Oyo, Ogbomosho. I find this city truly rowdy. As blissful as it is, everything, everyone, looks cramped together like sardines in a can.
My phone rings. I squint as I try to make out the name in the bright sunlight. John.
“How you dey? You don reach?” His voice sounds like he’s in a hurry. It’s a Nigeria thing. Phone calls are too expensive, so everyone tries to cram everything they have to say into one minute.
John was my coursemate and roommate for three of the four years at Obafemi Awolowo University. But NYSC has just separated us—he, Osun and I, Lagos.
“O boy, I don reach o. I just dey move out of the bus sef. But, omo, this place too tight like shit.”
I am not sure he can hear me above all the noise: the honks of vehicles, the murmur of roadside traders, the barbershop loudspeaker, the screams of the conductors. I take out a red, white-striped handkerchief and wipe off the sweat trickling down my forehead.
“Told you. Anyway, stay safe. Let’s talk in the evening when you get to your aunt’s place.”
I open Aunty Aisha’s message again: “Call me when you get to Ketu.” Aunty Aisha—dark-skinned and thin-legged—my mother’s younger sister, has been living in Lagos since she married Uncle Gbade in 2019. They had met when Uncle Gbade came for NYSC in Kano. Shortly after his service, they had gotten married in a small ceremony and moved to Lagos. No one says it, but I think Aunty Aisha never comes home because not many people like that she married a Yoruba man. Aunty Aisha—dark-skinned and thin-legged—won’t have wanted for able Kano men, men with prospects.
“How do I get to Ketu, sir, Ketu?” I turn to a man on a Bajaj bike. He is wearing a pair of big spectacles with black lenses that give him a funny look.
“I fit take you there. Your money na 1k,” he says.
“One thousand naira?” I widen my eyes in disbelief and switch to Pidgin because sometimes too much English can get you in trouble. “I go give you five hundred naira, my oga. I sabi say the place no too far like that, you just wan chop me.”
“Ehn, dey go by yourself na.”
“Oya, no vex. I no too get money like that, make I give you five hundred naira, abeg.” I rub my palms in supplication.
He agrees. I hump my luggage and place it on the fuel tank. As I make to straddle the bike, a man bumps into me, says sorry without turning, and goes into a mall. I shake my head and sit upright as the bike zooms off.
Ketu may be the marshiest place I have ever been to. Large puddles of water spread throughout. People either walk on narrow concrete structures that border the road and the open gutters or hop from one strategically placed stone to another. I watch this old man as he lifts his ankara trousers, ambling through the muddy road, one long stride after another. He almost falls into a stagnant pool on the road at one point but quickly props himself up with his second leg. I hold my chest and let out a sigh.
The way the motorcyclist manoeuvres the road, you can tell he knows this area well. He doesn’t even slow down or stop to think; he just eats up the dirty ponds like mounds of fufu. He stops me beside the shed of a roadside fishmonger and brings down my luggage from his fuel tank as I reach into my pockets for his money. My pocket is empty; I can only feel the pointed tip of my ballpoint pen prodding my finger. I bring my hand out, tap both my side pockets and both my back pockets. No wallet. My money is gone. But how? My mind flashes back to the man who bumped into me at the park. Fucking idiot. He had pickpocketed me.
I stare blankly at a polythene bag swaying on the muddy water in the middle of the road.
“Wetin you dey look for, Oga?” the bike man asks, getting impatient.
“I can’t find my wallet. I think I was robbed by the guy that ran into me at the park.” I am sweating profusely now.
“So, wetin con concern me? Oga, pay my money. I no send you oo,” he replies, his voice now raised, which somehow gets me even angrier.
“I just tell you say person rob me. No be only transport fare dey my wallet sef, I even have my cash cards in it.”
“I no hear all that English wey you dey speak so, just pay my money.” He steadies his bike, hops off, and stands before me, snapping his fingers. He is ready to fight me any minute now. It’s my first day in Lagos, and all this drama? A small crowd is even gathering. A woman, probably in her mid-fifties, walks through the crowd, asks how much my fare is, and pays him. He starts his bike and makes his way through the disappointed, fast-thinning crowd, hurling insults at me. I turn to the good Samaritan and stoop: “Thank you, ma.” She saunters away.
I phone Aunt Aisha, telling her I am in front of called Tech Joy Cafe. Ten minutes later, a black Venza stops in front of me. My aunt, in her flowing brown abaya, beckons to me. I greet her as she steps out of the car; she takes my luggage to the boot and gestures that I get into the car.
The car’s AC is heaven, and the lady on the radio is trying really hard to effect some foreign accent, maybe British. She announces that a college student was lynched and burnt to death in Sokoto for blasphemy, that Unilorin students held a peaceful protest asking the Federal Government to negotiate with ASUU so they could go back to school. Aunt Aisha turns off the radio. The car is silent.
“Call Brother Sabo and tell him you have arrived. I have no credit on my phone.”
“Ko inna. Ok, Aunty.”
About the author
Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arówólò (he/him/his) is a Nigerian writer, frontier V and an undergrad of Mass Communication. His works have appeared in Perhappened, Kissing Dynamite, Lumiere Review and elsewhere.
