Going to Work in Lagos

A short, light-hearted piece:

Going to Work in Lagos


By Cheluchi Onyemelukwe

“Aren’t you going to work today?” From the doorway, her aunt’s soft voice pierces its way into her sleepy consciousness. Nneka gets up and rubs her eyes vigorously. “Good morning, ma,” she says, and heaves her resisting body towards the door. She came to work in Lagos two months before, but waking up at five in the mornings to go to work has got no easier; the traffic is terrible in a city bursting with cars driven by impatient people on bad roads.

She peers up at the clock in the sitting room. It is past six o’clock. She rushes to the bathroom. She reminds herself to wipe the floor, wet with water that she has poured over herself carelessly in her hurry. She hurries into the room and looks at her watch; it is already twenty minutes to seven. She is certain she will be late to work today. By the time she dresses and powders her face, it is ten minutes to seven.

She rushes out, shouting goodbye to her aunt who has just finished having her bath and is going to her bedroom, her back all wet. She gets to the burglary-proofed door. No one has unlocked the two heavy padlocks. She moans. Where are the keys? She looks around the kitchen, she can't find them. Where are they? Chibuzor!!! she shouts. Where are the keys to the padlocks? Why do they lock them anyway, she asks herself. When the armed robbers come with their guns, people willingly open their doors, padlocks and all. She is flustered. It is broad daylight and she is still at home. Chibuzor walks sluggishly to the door with the keys in her hand. She could slap the girl. Instead she snatches away the keys.

At the bus stop, she is lucky to get a seat in a bus which is almost full. The passengers are shouting at the conductor. “We won’t pay 100 naira today. There is fuel in Lagos, why are you collecting more than the normal price?”

“Madam, get down if you won’t pay,” the conductor tells a particularly vocal woman, “You must pay 100 naira if you want to go with this bus.”

Nneka hands over her money when he holds his hand, smudged with dark grease, out to her. Fortunately she has the right amount; she doesn’t want to quarrel with any conductor over change. Lagos conductors like to collect money from people but they hate giving back money. She doesn’t care about the price, she had woken up too late today to afford the luxury of haggling.

No fuel queues, and it has not rained for some time, so the traffic jam is not too much; traffic is hell in Lagos when it rains. The driver, too, is a sharp driver, cutting into small spaces with dexterity. Today is definitely her lucky day.

She jumps out of the slowly moving bus in the usual traffic when they get to CMS.  Passengers going to Victoria Island and God knows where, jump into the bus as it moves along in CMS. That is one trick she has had to learn since coming to live in Lagos, jumping into and out of moving buses. Patience is not a virtue in Lagos -- buses wait no one.   She does not take the pedestrian bridge. Instead, she makes her way across the highway packed full of cars forced to move slowly because of the narrow openings at the end, meandering her way in between the cars. She turns to glare at a driver who drives too close, dangerously close.

He shouts at her, “Why not use the pedestrian bridge? Are you are looking for someone to kill you? Tell the evil spirits that sent you that you did not see me.”

Mad man, why was he shouting, speaking big grammar this early in the morning? Who ever uses the pedestrian bridge at CMS? She has heard it is not strong enough to carry the weight of pedestrians. Anything can happen in Lagos. And she is too young to die.

She hops on a motorbike; wearing trousers this morning was a good idea. The cyclist speeds to Broad Street, driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street. Other drivers shout at him. But he pays no attention. He is just the kind of cyclist she needs this morning. She thinks that she may have to go straight to the bathroom once she gets to work, to pat her ruffled weave-on in the mirror.
The driver swerves madly to avoid an oncoming car. He is not successful. Something tells Nneka that she is indeed going to be late for work. Her mind watches the horror unfold as if in a dream, one of those in which she is powerless and cannot wake up. Suddenly she feels her body flying in the air and then it is all darkness as the dirty, muddy, ground rushes up to meet her.