It has reached the time that I will describe myself so that you will know the kind of person I am.
I am from Poteko in the South-South, but I am right now based in Lagos because I am pursuing my OND at LASPOTECH. I am the last born of my mother, and this year April 13 will make me twenty-two years on the dot. In my looks, I am somehow handsome and I am not too short. Also, I have muscles. Some of my Lagos friends are thinking that I have body because I used to do weight lifting before, but the real truth is, from the time I was small I used to follow my mother to her cocoyam farm — that is why I have muscles.
Anyhow, as I was telling you before, when I reached the BRT Park it was only air-conditioned buses that were remaining. (That is another good thing about BRT: some of them have air conditioners. But the bad thing is that the AC bus is more costly than the ones that don’t have AC. Still yet, even with air conditioner, BRT is cheaper than danfo.) So I paid the extra sixty naira for the AC bus — it pained me, I won’t lie — then I entered and selected one seat near the window. (There is no reason for me to be sitting near window in BRT, but I am used to it.) I was like the number seven person in the bus, so I knew I had to wait for long before the bus will full up. The driver had not put on the AC, so the bus was hot.
After small time, I opened the window for breeze to enter. I was feeling thirsty and I wanted to buy pure water from the hawkers, but I didn’t see any small children. As I was looking, one fat man who was wearing KAI uniform started to stroll near the bus. Immediately my eyes saw him, my brain picked that it looks like KAI are starting to do their work, that these days when it is schooltime you will not see any small children that are selling things. This governor, the man is trying o. First LASTMA, then LAWMA, then LASAA, then BRT, and now Kick Against Indiscipline. All that is remaining for the man to give us in Eko is PAP — poverty alleviation program. After that one, he can go to Aso Rock.
Anyhow, as I was saying, there were no small children selling pure water. And me, I cannot buy anything from old mamas and young girls because of my smelling mouth problem. Those old mamas, they can give advice anyhow, and those young girls, they have bad mouth, they like to curse too much. But the small children, they will not talk when I open my mouth, they will just turn their face to one side.
As I could not buy pure water, and the heat was worrying me too much, I started to think that maybe I should listen to music to cool myself down. So then I brought out my phone and my earphones, and I put the earphones inside my ear. Dagrin died like two months ago and since that time his music is reigning, everybody is playing it, whether inside barbing salon or inside nightclub, whether big boys or street girls, all of them are playing his songs. So last week I went to Computer Village and copied his whole album into my Motorola. For like three days I have not listened to any song except the one that he sang with Omawumi, and somehow, even though I still like the song, I am sick and tired of it. So I started to listen to “Pon Pon Pon” again.
I got myself when the engine of the bus started. The air conditioner was on and the bus was full up. My ears were paining me. And also, the window near me was open. So I closed the window and removed the earphones from inside my ear, then I locked my phone and put it inside my pocket. After that, I raised my hand to adjust the air conditioner so that the chilled air would reach me well. When the bus started to move, I started to look outside, so that the old mama who was sitting on the same seat with me won’t have any chance to start discussion.
Small time, we entered go slow. In case you don’t know, this is a normal thing in Lagos, even now that we have LASTMA. The go slow was a bad one, but the air conditioner was blowing well, so me, I was okay. There was one fine yellow woman who was sitting on one of the seat at my back, who was talking to herself. She was saying that she was in trouble because of the go slow, that people were waiting for her at her shop and her phone battery was dead, so she could not call the people to tell them that she was coming. I felt pity for her. The woman was fine.
In fact, let me describe her so that you will know the kind of person she is.
Her skin is very yellow, like those Igbo albino that have black hair. But the woman is wearing a head scarf, so I suspect that she is Yoruba. Her nose is straight and very fine, and it has one small earring inside it. The earrings inside her ears are very big and also they are very flashy. She has two types, one is round like a bicycle tire and it is gold color, the other one has many ropes that are shining like decoration. She has red-color lipstick on her lips and she has blue-color eye shadow on her eyes. She is wearing a green-color satin top with short sleeves and also she is wearing very tight blue-color jeans. She is slim like a sisi, but her breasts are big and even as she is sitting down I can notice that her hips are big too. She did not paint her fingernails but her toenails are red like chicken blood.
Anyhow, our bus was moving slowly but surely — LASTMA officials were controlling the go slow. As I was thinking to myself how everything is going on well, something happened. The air conditioner went off. At first, I was thinking that it was only for a short time, and the other passengers were thinking the same thing too, because nobody was saying anything. But after like ten minutes the bus started to get hot like the inside of iron container, and people started to grumble small-small. Me, I just kept quiet, because if I open my mouth in that hot place, it is me that will be responsible for anything that will happen.
After small time, I opened my window, because all over the whole bus other people were opening their window. I was sweating. The old mama beside me was sweating. Everybody was sweating. Thirstiness started to worry me again. My condition was so bad that I started to wonder how bad it will be if I had made mistake to enter danfo. Joy gripped me when I thought about all the things I was enduring in the past, inside those iron coffins that those wicked NURTW people are agreeing to register as transport bus. Inside my mind, I started to praise Lagos State governor. If only our president had sense like him, maybe Nigeria will not be where it is.
Suddenly, somebody near me was complaining. It was a man whose voice resembled soldier. Let me describe him so that you will know the kind of person he is.
His head is shining because he has scraped off all his hair. His neck is thick like a cow’s own. He is very tall and very huge and his skin is a chocolate color. The whole of his skin is shining like he has rubbed Vaseline. He is wearing a blue-color native and his sandal is pure leather (I have not seen the design before, so it is not the cheap type that you can buy under Oshodi Bridge). I am suspecting that he is a Muslim, because his feet are clean, there is no dust on them, and it is afternoon time. The way the man’s skin is shining shows evidence that he has money. His voice is very deep, like baritone, so I am suspecting that he will have a bad temper. But I just like the man — he makes me to remember Mr. Kosoko, my social studies teacher when I was in primary five.
Anyhow, this was the man that was complaining. He was shouting that the driver should put on the AC, that we paid extra sixty naira so therefore we must enjoy it. The driver did not do like he heard the man. Maybe it was because we were sitting at the back of the bus, or maybe it was because the bus radio was on and it was singing Fela’s “Confusion” at very high volume. So then, the man was raising his voice, and other people started to support him. All the time this trouble was going on, we were inside standstill go slow and the inside of the bus was like it was catching fire.
By now, all over the whole bus, people were saying that the driver must put on the AC. Then the Mr. Kosoko man started to get very angry. He was shouting that BRT bus is government motor; that no driver can be oppressing us with a motor that is not his own; that if the AC is not working then the driver should refund us back our sixty naira or he should take us back to the park so that we can enter another bus that has AC that is working. All the passengers, all over the whole bus, all of them agreed with him. So they started to shout, “Take us back!”