My Lover and I

This last weekend, I made it to my fifth month of being back here after being away for a while. It’s been an interesting time (for a lack of a better description) and I can’t believe the amount of re-adjusting I’ve had to do, I mean, it’s been  less than five years!

Someone asked me the other day how Lagos has been treating me and my reply was this: Lagos is still like the lover who plays games with my heart, she’s sweet one moment, ruthless the next! And really, that’s how it’s been, Lagos sure isn’t the easiest damsel to court! I’ve had some, well, interesting experiences and I realized that if I couldn’t learn to laugh at them, then I would simply find myself picking up my two legs in my hands and running like a mad woman was at my heels!

My first week at work (about three months after I got back), I remember bussing home from work for the very first time on my third day or so. Luckily for me, there was a colleague who lived close to me and we made the journey together. Everything was going fine, like, piece of cake really, even the transit through good old Obelende didn’t seem so bad. That was until we got off the bus at Berger and my colleague said we were crossing the road! I looked at him like he was crazy, like cross this road?! It was either that or he was pulling my legs and catching his trips at my expense. This was Berger, with all them massive lorries zooming on like they ‘just don’t care’, and this guy was telling me that we were going to run across the road, right in front of those lorries and the crazy danfo drivers, with our tiny chicken legs! Add to that the fact that that morning I’d dressed in a nice little dress and these dainty heels, hoping to impress on the new job and all. There was NO chance of an ice cube in hell that I was crossing that road, no Sir! Poor dude, he being the sweet gentleman that he is and me being the crazy, spoilt brat that I was, I made him make the loooong walk down the over-pass and then under the pass and all the way to the bus stop at the other side. A journey that would have taken us two minutes (yeah, the crazy run across the road) took almost thirty minutes. Dear Tomi, I know you still hate my guts for making you take that walk, but I’m soooo sorry! :”(

Me (spoilt brat or not) and Tomi, have had our fair share of adventures together. There was the time we were sat in traffic at Toll Gate and saw someone get robbed, in broad daylight! That was a chilling experience for me. There was also the time two cab men fought over us and I almost had my shoulder wrenched out of its socket! I remember the day we were so excited about being the ones to get the coveted front seat in the bus at Obelende.  You need to understand how big that was for us, we had graduated from being squashed and hunched up in the uncomfortable back seats (if you’ve never been on those buses, you can’t possibly imagine how awful they are, especially for Tomi who is rather tall, and well, a spoilt Brat like me) for the journey that sometimes took as long as three hours (we’ve had a record breaking five hours once) to sitting like royalty in the front seats. So, here we were, cruising along on third mainland bridge (by some miracle, there wasn’t traffic on this fateful night) feeling fly, when some crazy dude just cuts in front of our bus. I don’t know about Tomi oh, but me, I matched my imaginary brakes sharply! He’s always as cool as a cucumber anyways, so I’m sure he didn’t even move a muscle, which is okay. What wasn’t okay however was the fact that the driver of our bus, whom we were rather quickly going to find out was high on cheap booze, also didn’t match brake! Next thing I know is that we’re slamming smack into this other crazy driver’s backside. You know what they say, that your life flashes before your eyes? Big fat lie. The only thing flashing before me was this very bad movie in which I was about to go flying out the windshield from the force of the impact! Everyone in the bus chorused their shouts of Jesus! Blood of God! Jésù! Yéèpà! Etcetera, etcetera. There were even a few shits and craps thrown into the mix. What was the first thing our crazy driver did when he finally woke up from his zombie-don’t match-ya-brake daze? He gets down from the bus and goes after the other driver to get in a fistfight with him. Fine, I understand that the other driver was at fault, and that he must have been high on adrenaline on discovering that he’d escaped the accident unscathed, but this was third mainland bridge at ungodly-o’clock at night, we were sat smack in the middle of the bridge with other vehicles zooming past us on both sides. We were sitting ducks for any other crazy driver whose leg wasn’t connected to the adrenaline-triggered part of his brain that would make him step on the brakes by reflex. Plus this guy was trying to cave the other guy’s face in, right in the middle of said road. Ah, see my life outside for inside this very bad home video! How we got off the bridge? By some stroke of luck (scratch that, it was simply God), our bashed-in bus still worked fine and our high-on-cheap-booze driver managed to drive us all to Berger in one piece.

Next on the list was the day that Tomi left me behind and crossed to the other side at Berger! (yeah, yeah, even this spoilt madam had to start crossing the road at some point. Trust me, I developed a technique where I would hide behind Tomi and not have to look at any of the lorries zooming towards me. The really bad part of the crossing is the lane barrier at the middle. That thing is high and fat and due to the fact that you have about a three second window within which to scale it before the next truck gets to you, there ain’t no time to ‘do it like a lady’. In essence, you have to learn to scale it hurdle-style! Believe me, I learned real fast!). So, on this fateful night, I carried Lasthma for two seconds and the next thing I know, Tomi is on the other side and I’m stood there with my mouth hanging open in horror. Honestly, I was ready to start bawling out my eyes! This was the stuff of nightmares for me! You don’t want to know how much crossing that road terrifies me, and that’s with hiding behind someone oh! The thought of doing it on my own sends me into a panic. Luckily for me, some man walks out into the middle of the road and actually stopped all the traffic! I have no idea who he was, probably a soldier, or why he needed to stop the traffic, I was just so, so grateful for that little miracle that saved this girl from making an utter fool of herself. Honestly, if the guy hadn’t done that, I would have jejely taken the thirty-minute walk, shikena.

There was also the time the keke Napep I took decided to take on a flat bed in a battle for territory (in good ol’ Berger. Me and that Berger ehn?!). I was so sure the thing was going to ram into us and I have no idea how we managed to get out in one piece. And the time I took a bike (against my better judgment, but in my defense, I was running late) and just as he took off, the wind blew his ògógóró breath in my face! And of course, no Lagos story is ever complete without an Agèbrò! I was in Obelende one day, trying to figure out where to get my next bus from. The Agèbrò took a look at my bewildered face and was like “Fine geh, ibo lò ńlo?” he then went on to take my hand to help me cross the road (those crossings, eh) and he personally put me on a bus! I can just imagine the picture we painted, the Agèbrò holding the girl by the hand like an eccentric uncle and his jolly-just-come niece!

And the time I totally freaked out and ran (almost screaming) from Égúngún in Sábó (really, those guys terrify me)! Then there has been my dearest NEPA (I’ll never forget that weekend I was home alone and the GEN packed up on me), the gropers’ committee at Computer village (as in seriously, am I supposed to be used to having some sleazy stranger cope a feel?), the bus conductors (it’s like those guys can smell me a mile away and always try to swerve me), the plenty, plenty times I have missed my way and the even more plenty times I've waka'ed!

There have been lots of good times too. I remember the lovely evening I spent at Terra Kulture with my uncle, my aunt and my cousins. There was also the wedding that involved a convertible rising out of the stage (!!!). And the time I got my first Lagos wax?! Ah, that’s another story for another day! But I just have to say that Your Spa and Fitness at the Four Seasons by Sheraton was absolutely divine!!!

These five months have been a crazy roller-coaster ride and there have been many times (okay, maybe that’s more like many raised to the power of infinity) that I have wanted to cry and tear my hair out (and maybe start my own trek across the Sahara). But I survived. I came out at the other end in one piece and I think this ruthless lover of mine is beginning to grow on me.  Hmmnn, five months under my belt, let’s see what the next five will bring! ;D

Friday Night Waka

So, it's just gone ten on this Friday night and it's anyone's guess where I'm at.

There's a hen do on the island for a cousin of a cousin (what does that make us?!), plus there's the Karaoke bar at my office backyard. My sister has been on my case to go out with her and she's got something planned for tonight. I've even got a friend who's home sick and whom I need to go see.

With all my options for tonight, (add to that the option of staying in with a pack of choco milo and Vampire Diaries), where has this girl got her behind glued to?! The hardest, most uncomfortable seat at the back row of a sardine-can packed bus, crawling through traffic on third mainland bridge, with the bus stereo belting out "Ofondu Owendu"!

Sad, shey? Oh well, that's been my life the last couple of months and I think I exhausted my pity-party tank already. Someone really should have warned me that Lagos might be glittering but it sure wasn't gold!

My Best Friend

My Best Friend, or London Bestie, like we like to call ourselves, is not the easiest person to befriend but I still love him all the same. I’m not the nicest dude around either, but he still sticks by me, no matter what.

Tell me, how do you keep up with someone who never picks up their phone (the damn thing has its ringer permanently turned off), What do you say to someone who never replies to their messages or never even seems to read them?! And me? I’m really rubbish at visiting or meeting up, I usually can't be bothered to make the effort. Dunno what you say to someone who never catches up with you or checks up on you even though you’re just fifteen minutes away.

Well, I guess we're both quite used to it now. That’s how we are, it’s how we roll and it works so damn well. We’re in each other’s pockets for a few weeks, months even, then we drift and go our separate ways for a bit, and then one day, one of us just wakes up and goes “hey, I’ve got a London Bestie somewhere” and we get to roll as thick as thieves again, until something happens and we end up in different cities or different priority-landscapes or just simply get caught up with doing our own things, living our separate lives. He can be the most infuriating creature alive and I know I drive him up the wall more than half the time, so I guess we’re a perfect fit for each other.

So here we are, paddies again, and I think this time, we’re closer than ever before, in the sense that I think we’ve both grown over the last few years and we both have a deeper understanding of our friendship. He seems to have a way of knowing me in ways I doubt anyone else does, my quirky bits and the downright weird stuff that get other people squirming.  And he gets it, gets me, always has. Plus I guess if your friendship can survive our kind of on and off connection for so long, the mismatch of personalities and the living in different continents 90% of the time, there’s got to be something special about it.

So, despite all the crazy in our relationship (or maybe as a result of the crazy!), our Bromance is still waxing stronger and stronger with the passing years and I’m grateful for having my Best friend. So, here’s a toast to us, BFFs forever!