A Lagos Bus Conductor.

“ko de ni da fun iya è, eran oko, abi o tin yawere?”

This man wears a purple Ankara print, shirt, and trousers folded to calf length because it has just rained in Lagos. And if it rains in Lagos and you’re unlucky enough to be caught unprepared, you would do the same.

“abi è ma gbo werey, oni kin gba 300, lati ibi de Iyana-Ipaja? Oloshi, o tin siere, mtcheew, e koshi joor.”

He looks to the other passengers, who are chuckling softly to themselves at his outrage. They know that he means nothing by all that he has said, that if he sees the passenger’s mother, he is sure to greet her respectfully. They also know that he is only playing the role that his job requires: for him to be a brash, loud-talking, arrogant sob that you just want to slap his face.

“I’m not arguing with you, I’m not shouting for you. Calm down and talk to me. Where you enter from?”

He is negotiating with a gentleman who speaks pidgin with a thick Ibo accent. The fire is gone out of his voice, he is calmer, the bus is full, and now he must begin the complex process of adding and subtracting change with the help of the sachet of dry gin he bought while the driver manoeuvred flooded roads and a causeless gridlock.

“auntie, you’re fine o. E ma fine gan. Ahan, oko yin try o. Shey e ma fi le? E ni fi le? You’re fine sha. Dash me the 100 nau. Shey e gbo Yoruba? Ahhh, so pe olorun? E gbo Yoruba? Iyen na da. E toju oko yin o?”

He grabs a lady by the arm and helps her into the bus, yells at another bus driver to watch his mirror, allows two corps members, girls, to lap each other, stretches his hand to ask for an apple from a bewildered child on another bus, sings along to the music playing on the bus, and smiles, showing off his yellow teeth.

“Mama, e pin 200 naira pelu auntie yi. Tollgate wole! Agbado!!”

We’re left with a memory that soon disappears, a conductor smiling at fine auntie while his driver yells at him to focus and “gbenu oshi lo!”

The End.

Bus conductors in Lagos are a phenomenon. And this one was inspired by one wearing a silver thumb ring and yellow teeth.

I apologize for any errors that may have occurred in my latest attempt to write in Yoruba. I can only speak it with passing fluency.

And if you don’t speak Yoruba, well, it is the language of Lagos.