To Learn Lagos

Lagos teaches you lessons, whether you’re ready for them or not. It offers no sympathy for the slow to learn, allows the quick to learn to learn its soft spots and it repeats its mantra every day: adapt or die.

First, you learn how to deprive your body of sleep. You must, or you will learn how to doze on a crowded danfo with your phone in your pocket and your reflexes at the ready.

Second, you learn how to ‘shine your eye’ at the bus conductors. You learn or they will extort you and slap all the good energy out of you. But there is an art to shining your eye for bus drivers and conductors: do too much and nobody takes your side. Perfection is in knowing how to shout and the exact words to use.

Third, you learn how to ‘skemp’ scammers, masquerades, liars, conmen, falsely disabled people and the never ending stream of people selling medicines that work for everything from strokes to teething problems. Only pregnant women should avoid the medicine. You have to, lest you end up broke and suffering from liver complications.

Fourth, you learn how to ‘bend down and select’. No one is above bending down and selecting. You develop an eye for trendy pieces, statement accessories and know how to spot nonsense from ‘better OK’. You have to, because buying clothes in Lagos the way that you want to requires that you have the clothing allowance of a Nigerian senator. And you don’t.

Fifth, you learn how not to look broke. And so, once or twice a month you go to where the truly rich people live, across Third Mainland Bridge. And you put on airs and observe and maybe make an acquaintance. And if you’re a natural liar, you tell them you’ve only come into town for a visit and will be going back to PH the next day. You do this while in your head, you snap with disgust at how much money they spend on frivolous things and wish, wish fervently, that someone would mention a job opening or ask a driver to drop you off at home.

Sixth, you learn how to do two things with money: A, get it and invest it, or B, get it, squander it and engage in questions about how useless the country is and why the money you’re being paid will never be enough. Regardless of how much it is.

Seventh, you learn how to be classist.

Lagos teaches you lessons,
some hard,
some buttery soft,
some mental,
some emotional.
In all, Lagos makes a man out of you.

The End.

Photo by Daniel Sikpi on Pexels.