My first lesson in Lagos [Episode 2]

Read the first episode here.

“Owo da?” the conductor screamed at me again, with his palm further outstretched, sending bits of spittle flying into my face.

I began to whimper and fidget, sweating profusely. I checked my pockets again, hoping that my sudden wallet would reappear miraculously- it didn’t.

“Uncle, please don’t be angry. I’ve lost my walle…” I didn’t complete my statement before the conductor shouted at me on top of his voice, “be like say you dey craze abi? I resemble JJC for your eye? Ogbeni pay me my money before I change am for you!”

“Please sir, I just entered Lagos this afternoon. They must have removed my wallet from my poc…”

The conductor was having none of it, he insisted that I paid him his full fare or he’d punch my lights out. Of course his declarations were peppered with expletives.

He called me a thief, a prostitute, a 419er, a useless child out to defraud innocent, hardworking people like him.

I tried to explain that I was not some con artiste, but he wasn’t listening. After my repeated pleas fell on deaf ears, I suddenly burst into tears fuelled by frustration.

The man sitting beside me must have felt my tears were acidic because he launched into a tirade at the first sniffle. “Na so them dey do, them go enter motor, dem no go wan pay. Fine for nothing, pay money, e dey there dey cry, abeg make we hear word!”

Before I could think of an appropriate response to the nosey, unfeeling man, another passenger sunk her claws into me.

The woman, clearly overweight and bleached, launched into a verbal onslaught as if we had a disagreement previously.

“No mind them. Na ashawo dem be. E enter motor finish come dey talk story. Conductor no gree oh, collect your money complete from her hand”

I was stunned. This woman was a mother, yet she had so much hate in her for someone she had only just met.

I had hoped the passengers in the bus would have at least pleaded with the conductor on behalf of me, or that someone would even be kind hearted enough to pay.

How wrong I was! Nobody in Lagos had any mercy to spare, obviously. It seemed they were all just waiting for a victim to attack.

“Conductor, I don’t have any money on me, and that’s the truth. If you won’t listen to my pleas, maybe you should do your worst now”

Immediately I said that, the conductor banged the roof of the bus loudly with his fist. “Driver park abeg, park! Make this oloshi come down abeg”

The driver brought the bus to a halt and I was all but thrown out, to the approval of the onlooking passengers.

Within an hour of arriving Lagos, I had been robbed and abused. Now I was standing by the roadside, desolate. And I didn’t even know where I was.

I started crying again.