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| Photo credit: Thecityfix.com |
“Hey, driver! Take it easy, will ya?” Somebody
yells from behind me as the driver navigates the Nissan Urvan through a nasty
ditch.
“What the hell does it look like I’m doing?” The
driver turns around and the look on his face says he doesn’t know from Adam
what the guy is talking about. “I’m trying to get you jerks to work as quickly
as I possibly can and you dare run off your mouth at me?” He cusses a little to
buttress his point.
“Just take it easy,” another passenger, a lady
with a child in her laps, says.
“We want to get to work in one piece,” adds yet
another passenger.
And
that makes the driver really press
the pedal to the metal. “If you want, I can drop you off right here.” Yet, he
doesn’t ease up so they can get off. No one takes up his offer either.
And
the tango between driver and passenger that has by some method become tradition
in Lagos, Nigeria begins.
If
the makers of the 007 films could tour the roads of Lagos, aboard public
transport for a day, they would learn vital lessons from the real-life car
chases Lagos commuters survive on a daily basis. The anarchy we have somehow,
learned to live with. The bottleneck drama we have dubbed James Bond driving. There are other ways to live with knowledge.
Mornings
arrive with a sour-sweet taste in my mouth. On one palate is the pleasure I derive
as I write this in this vehicle (I’m doing this on my way to work), on the
other–maybe, the hard palate–is the situation I described above. Every now
and then, I feel my teeth rattle as the driver who finds it impossible to stay
on his side of the road, dive-bombs a bump or a pothole. I pause my writing at this
time and look up, tensed. When the coast clears (some come later than others), I
continue to write.
The
road to hell is paved not with adverbs or works in progress but with hunks of
junks called Nissan Urvans. Especially,
the fleet operated by Lagos
commercial drivers. Nevertheless, as I stated earlier, there are other ways to
live with knowledge. Sometimes, life gets in the way and ruffles up my affairs
like my rides to work do. I continue to seek ways to put my talent to use.
The
one thing, which abides always, always, always is that I continue to write. In some
amusing way, I find opportunity poking out of life’s stack of slack like rabbits
bending blades of giant grass to take in the scenery. And like the roads that
get me to work, this place becomes more and more familiar to me even when my
writing is 99% bilge and 1% slog. I continue to write because like my early
morning bus rides, I can see my destination looming over the horizon like the
big arc of a rising orange moon.
“Owa o!” I tell
the driver as the bus bumps and bounces towards my stop. He doesn’t seem to
hear me. I yell “Owa o!” a second
time.
“Ibo
lowa!” he says as if he’s totally ignorant of the Bus Stop. I tell
him where I’m dropping off and the bus sputters and coughs and finally comes to
a halt several meters beyond my stop.
I
leap out of the vehicle and hurry to take my next ride–the last hell ride–that would finally get me to
work. It appears to me I’m almost eager for the jittery ride through torture
and all that’s life threatening. That I almost crave for it.
But
I know better. It’s the chance to reach into the richness of my imagination
that I long for; the beauty of finding creativity on these anarchy on wheels
that calls out to me–seeks to possess all I have and am.
Yes,
I know better. And it makes me unafraid.
Akpan
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