This is lagos

I woke up this morning and the first thing that came to my mind was ‘go and buy Vaseline now before it starts having price tag’. Harmattan is seemingly in the air and when Harmattan is in the air, every other thing that is not in the air doubles price. 

I dressed up to go out, on getting to my b/stop, I realised a Pharaoh somewhere in Lagos had just released his Israelites. The batallion Israelites were obviously stranded hoping that a Moses would come with a big danfo bus to convey them to their promise land. 

Amongst the deemed Israelites was a man I suspect to be one of those Fulani herdsmen. He kept looking at my legs as if they looked like those  of his cattles. 

I am definitely not getting on thesame bus with this man before he chops off my legs and uses wheel barrow to DHL them to adamawa. I said to myself. 

Soon, an empty danfo arrived and they flocked in according to the size of their heads . The cattle leg finder  man was too caring as to beckon me to get on the bus b4 it gets full. I told him I wasn’t going anywhere and i only came to the b/stop to receive b/stop breeze. He murmured some words, looked at my legs One last time then got into the bus. I sang praise and worship in my heart while I trekked with the ‘wanted’ legs I still had. After walking a distance without finding a bus, I decided to pause for the buses to find me. As I stood, a police man who stood opposite used all his eyes to stare at me. With the way he accessed and surveyed me, he might have thought Evans and I were related since we shared thesame skin colour. I would have ignored his empty eye threats had he not called a fellow colleague of his to  join in the staring. At that point I rummaged my bag, got my phone out and scrolled back and forth to see if I mistakenly had any lawyer friend I wasn’t aware of. After fervently searching without seeing even a Lawson, I was enfeebled. Who will bail me if these people decide to take me to court? I looked at the police man and he signaled me to cross over. It was a good thing  as I could show him my birth certificate and clear the mix up. I was waddling to cross the road when I saw a bike speed forth . i flagged  him with  all the fortune of muscles my fufu days had given me. I mounted  briskly and asked him to fly away. 

Na you the police man dey call? Na so them dey do o, before you know anything you go see yourself inside prison dey write statement.  The bike man side. 

Ehn ehn! So this is how people just wake up and enter prison for nothing. It’s not my portion! Lucky dube didn’t have me in mind when he sang prisoner.

I alighted from the bike to get a keke to mushin. The keke napep  driver was nice. His  charming mannerism had gotten to the peak of no return. Once I told him my destination, he carried my handbag,  led me to the back sit of his empty keke where I sat like the Queen Elizabeth of  keke association. In split seconds, the keke was full. A woman sat at my left while a man lapped his daughter at my right. I was in the middle. As we plied along, I noticed that the keke Man dropped his manners where he ignited his engine. He didn’t stop talking and the worst part was, no one was ready to listen to his life story. We got to isolo market and he parked. He came down and  exchanged pleasantries with the market women there. He shook hands with a butcher that was adjacent him while admiring all the knives the butcher laid on his slaughter table. he probably wanted to conduct a naming ceremony for knives. I was irritated but the other passengers didn’t seem to care. The woman on my right dipped her hand into her nylon bag and brought out watermelon. She munched it there and then without regrets. The man on my right was dragged aback to his elementary school lane by a persistent daughter who kept asking him to read 36 states and capital,  he was engrossed in Google Search as he didn’t know where to start and stop. I was the only one who wasn’t doing anything. All I did was watch that woman consume her water melon with the seeds designing her face and juice dripping from her hand to  her skirt. she was on the white part of the rind when I called her attention. I told her I was a medical student and that part of the melon wasn’t edible. She stared blankly  and continued to munch more aggressively. The green part was undoubtedly  her favourite. You needed to see how she disintegrated it. The keke driver finally got in and apologized. I was on the verge of forgiving him when he raced forward to meet another keke driver.  As they drove side by side, They laughed, talked about naija bet and the debated on the topic ‘why did the beef inside gala reduce drastically’. they bid goodbyes by engaging in an ‘on your mark, get set, go!  Exercise. They kept overtaking each other till we took a different turn. It was a trying time inside the keke but I made it out alive. I gave him a seductive 200naira, he handed me a 100 Naira note that suffered from kidney failure. I was about burying my money inside my bag when I saw this teenage school boy. He sighted me too. There is no time I don’t see that boy on that road and he doesn’t fail to ask me for money which i always gave. The first time was when he told me he doesn’t have transport to go to school under hot afternoon. I don’t know if his school was on night section. The second time was when he said he had eye problem and needed money for eye drops. Now what? Does he need money to do brain arrangement? He immediately ran towards me but before he would not the vowel A for aunty pls gimme 100#, I told him my ear was paining me and I needed money to buy otapiapia . While he tried to beguile me with his innocent face , I threw my face to Addis Ababa with Patience Ozokwor being my role model.   I don’t know if its wickedness but this is Lagos. Someone cannot be using my sweat to buy 6plots of land in Lekki while I cannot even buy common ekpa  (groundnut) without pricing.