* For Atoke and Abe (@saintabadini), for unwittingly providing the motivation for this post. Thank you.
I was returning from work one fine evening when I boarded a bus
from Yaba that looked innocent enough. As the bus went down Herbert Macaulay I
was thinking the usual things I think when I first get on a bus: gauging the
driver’s speed and demeanour, trying to sense if this was a normal human being
behind the wheel or one of those demon-possessed drivers, and whether it was
time to start singing ‘Jesus Take the Wheel’. I examined the bus, or at least
as much as I could from my place on the second row: side mirrors, check;
rear-view, check; door that looked steady enough to not fall off its hinges any
minute, check. All gravy.
Moments after we got on Third Mainland Bridge the bus engine
started to sputter. The driver eased over to the outer lane and the bus began
to slow down. The driver and conductor started a conversation:
‘Na fuel don finish so?’
‘No be fuel. Engine go soon pick.’
‘You sure say no be fuel?’
‘I say no be fuel!’
The bus went slower and slower.
Nononononoooo…!
Alas, no amount of nos could keep the bus moving. We were halfway
across the bridge when it came to a jerky stop. The driver turned the key in
the ignition. The engine wheezed but wouldn’t come to life. He did this five
times before he was ready to admit:
‘E be like say na fuel o.’
Well done, Captain Obvious.
I turned to look behind me at the speeding vehicles. The conductor
had got off the bus and was waving oncoming traffic onto other lanes. I
shuddered and turned to face forward again.
‘No mind these stupid danfo people. Dem dey drive dey make money,
yet dem no go buy fuel. Na water una wan take drive?’
‘This is how they have wasted my time. The whole of today, from
one danfo to another, all of them, time-wasters!’
The driver shouted something to his conductor in Yoruba. The man
sitting to my right chuckled and interpreted: ‘E say na person come thief the
fuel wey dey him bus before.’
‘No be only thief. We resemble small pikin wey dem go dey lie give
anyhow?’
The driver turned the handle of his door and let go of it. I
watched with alarm as the door swung open and into the road.
‘Driver, hold your door! It’s entering the road!’
The driver pulled the door ajar and shimmied out of his seat. He
went to the back of the bus and opened the boot, and then the latch covering
the engine.
‘Wetin you dey open engine for, this man?’ This from the woman
sitting in the passenger seat. ‘Abeg, come give us our money!’
Really, on Third Mainland? And
you’ll do what with the money? Fly?
The driver replaced the engine latch and shut the boot, and he and
his conductor stood behind the bus trying to flag down another danfo.
‘What are you people doing?’ the man beside me called to them. ‘Who
wan stop for you on top Third Mainland?’
I sat biting my lip and glancing nervously behind me, trying not
to imagine a speeding vehicle ramming us from behind.
After a few minutes of futile waving the driver walked back to the
front of the bus and opened the door, again leaving it to swing into the road.
‘Oh, God, this man! Hold that your door!’
‘E be like say dem dey follow this driver from village.’
The driver held the door against his body with one hand and, with
the other gripping the door frame, he began to push. I turned around to see the
conductor pushing from behind. I winced as a vehicle coming fast behind us
swung into the next lane with seconds to spare.
The driver said something in Yoruba, and again the man to my right
interpreted: ‘He said you people should come down and push.’
I pictured me pushing a danfo bus on Third Mainland, or anywhere
even, and I couldn’t help myself. I closed my eyes and laughed till I was
wiping tears. The Interpreter joined in, but he and two other men got down to
push. As they pushed the bus began creeping onto the next lane, and I stopped
laughing long enough to scream to the driver to keep his bus on its lane.
The bus was inching forward, pushed by five men, when another
danfo, spotting us from a distance, started to slow down behind us. The other
bus flashed its headlights and the message was clear.
‘Enter bus, enter bus!’ the conductor screamed.
The other danfo was now right behind us, and the men who had been
pushing hurried back onto the bus. The other danfo bumped us from behind and kept
moving, taking us ahead of it, with our driver keeping us in lane using the
steering wheel. I looked behind but couldn’t make out the face of our rescuer,
only white teeth.
The other bus pushed us all the way to Adeniji Bus Stop where it
left us and sped on ahead. But instead of putting us on another bus or giving
us a refund, the conductor grabbed a five-litre keg and got off the bus before
it had even come to a stop. He hopped onto an okada without breaking stride,
and we watched as he disappeared down the road into Adeniji.
‘Him don go buy fuel be that’, the man to my left said with a
sigh. The woman in the passenger seat got off the bus with a huff and soon
boarded another one.
Moments later, a man with the soiled clothes and unkempt hair of a
vagrant appeared at the door of the bus. He placed a slip of paper that looked
like the receipt for a lotto ticket on the bus’s front bench, right in front of
the man seated to my right. And then, muttering something reproving, he
wandered off to stand a few metres from the bus. I looked at the unkempt man,
and then at the man to my right. He looked back at me, his face mirroring mine.
‘Wait, so he just came and dropped that paper and walked away?’ I
asked. The man’s answer was to glance back at the unkempt man, and then shift
on the seat, closer to me and away from the slip of paper. I laughed, but this
time I laughed alone.
The conductor returned minutes later with his five litres of fuel.
He poured it into the tank as the man to my left said, ‘That’s how they will be
buying kobo-kobo fuel. Very soon now they will go and stop other people again
on Third Mainland.’
When the driver turned the key this time the engine roared to
life. We continued on our way, and I expected to be at Obalende in another two minutes.
As we approached Sura Junction, I noticed the driver muttering
something, saw the index finger of his right hand swinging between the road to
the right, which led off from Sura Junction, and the road continuing straight
ahead, which led to Obalende, like he was contemplating which to take. Everyone
knows that going by Sura Junction would almost certainly mean getting stuck in traffic
in the narrow streets of Obalende, before reaching Obalende Bus Stop.
‘Driver, no take Sura o,’ the man to my left said.
The driver said nothing.
‘This man, abeg follow straight.’
He kept swinging his index finger
Nononononoooo…!
We reached Sura Junction and the driver turned right. Into Sura.
It took what felt like a full minute. And then, from the man to my
left:
‘This driver, God will delay your destiny the way you have delayed
us today.’
The driver was calm when he spoke: ‘It is your destiny that will
delay. In fact, your destiny have die.’
And so on and so forth.
