A Date With Danfo Drivers

I’d almost forgotten the experiences of the average Lagos commuter, especially those who go by Danfo – public buses – simply because I had the painful luxury of a relief car from my insurance company after my accident on the Third Mainland Bridge. Stop wondering how luxury can be painful, this is it. You buy a car; it somersaults within 6 hours of delivery in the most dangerous place ever due to multiple factory failures. The insurance company takes pity on you after five months and offers you a service that should have come immediately after your accident.

Enter: relief car!

The conditions are simple. You fuel the car and maintain it for the duration of 20 days after which the car is withdrawn from you eternally, except you want to shell out the N27, 000-per-day price tag for renting it. Oh, I almost forgot to add this: the car arrives to pick you at 7am and it is yours till 6pm. If you exceed 6pm, it would cost you N300 per hour. And woe betide you that it is a weekend, it’ll be One WHOLE thousand naira for every extra hour. Don’t forget it is called a RELIEF car.

So, my 20 days are done. Exit: relief car! And with it the unbelievable driver who stood me up for 30 minutes after he said: “I am coming”!

So, this morning the rain reminds me that the car, however painfully luxurious, was indeed a relief as it beat me from my doorstep to my office steps. First, I forgot I didn’t have any change to pay for the Keke Marwa ride: the effects of having a car pick me from home. So I owe him as we speak. Next the Bus Conductor threatens to throw me out of the bus for presenting him with a thousand naira note and promptly withholds my change – a whopping Nine Hundred and Fifty Naira! Typical me, I pretend to be a gentleman, even when it is obvious that I am a thug. I wait patiently.

Enter traffic.

The driver publicly declares that those headed in the direction of Ajayi, Onike and Queens’ College bus stops must alight the bus as he would turn off that route to join Herbert Macaulay Way from Customs bus stop through Harvey Road, Onitiri. For me, it was kif kif – same difference – as the bus would still head in my direction. Naturally, you would expect the world of passenger to cry foul and scream blue murder but to my new found amazement, they all alighted in the rain! The only thing they demanded was their complete and accurate change, which came after a few aggressive appeals from other passengers. I almost got into a shouting spree with the driver then I recalled I was pretending to a gentleman so, I shut up.

As I looked back to see what has holding the bus conductor from jumping unto the bus so the driver could continue the journey, I saw he was in the middle of a tussle with a passenger who was frantically demanding his change. I almost smiled as my new reality was dawning on me but decided to pretend further. After he broke loose from the ex-passenger and promptly jumped into the bus amidst random cursing of mothers and grandmothers, the conductor looks me dead in the eye, counts my change from the pile in his hands and hands it over to me. Now, I am thinking to myself that only two things may have led to this noble act: either he was suddenly exhausted from his earlier tussle and didn’t want more from me or he saw through the smokescreen of my good clothes and retro eyewear and decided I was indeed a thug who was pretending to be a gentleman. He was right: very right indeed.

We eventually make it to my bus stop, Sabo. For the record, I don’t own it but here, bus stops are bestowed on all passengers who alight there. Typically, what you hear is this: “No be ya bust stop be dis? U no go come down?” Leg 1 is done. Obalende is Leg 2.

It’s now 10 minutes and no Obalende bus has been kind enough to arrive empty and the population of Obalende goers keeps increasing. As the first empty bus arrives and declares its destination, the world converges on it! For a moment, Obalende seems like the Promised Land because nothing else could make a billion passengers want to find a spot in the overwhelmed bus. After the rush, the unsuccessful passengers start to slink away from the bus, while those who made it in are adjusting their rumpled clothes, dusting their dirtied feet and reapplying their smeared make ups. Some others are screening the faces and lips of the women in the bus in search of colours similar to the stains on their shirts and tops. And a few more are wearing victorious smiles of having made into Zion Train.

I could swear some people thought me a JJC (Jonny Just Come) as I stood in awe of the rush. I could have attempted to make it in but I pictured a nasty scene in my head and just resumed my original pretence.  As Bus 2 comes and announces, “Obalende! Obalende! Obalende!” I respectfully cross away from the rush and wait upon the next bus driver who shows up just in time for me to quickly drop my pretence, loosen up, jump into the bus, find a bad seat, sit and start adjusting myself in one quick move.  The drama would have been over from this point but the next bus had a few things to offer in the soonest future.

As we get to Obalende, one thing becomes clear. No more pretence. In fact, I am carrying a mental placard: NO TO PRETENCE! There is something about Obalende. Everyone is a thief, a robber and a worker. Everyone is also very scared. Motorists are scared of L.A.S.T.M.A and Passengers are scared of unscripted hikes in bus fares. We all are scared of pickpockets and they are scared of us, too. They catch us, we beg to get home. We catch them, we burn them. Literally.

So I jump into the bus that should literally drop me at the office and the bus conductor threatens to rip me off by N10 higher than the usual fare. Following that discovery, I disembark from the bus and h-enter another one – note my ‘h’ factor. In the new bus, I find myself seated next to a blob. When I looked closer I saw it was a woman! She was the fattest person on the Island that day. And she was ravaging a burger. I wouldn’t have been interested in her case if she wasn’t grumbling out food particles from her mouth as she urged us to “Shift hinside”.

Anyway, the bus heaves into life and we start the short journey to my office. On the bridge over the Obalende roundabout, the joints on the bridge are no longer connected and are bare. After three unsuccessful attempts to minimise the obvious impact of driving over the gullies, the driver starts complaining aloud about fat people that won’t stop eating. I could swear the blob was deaf because she carried on without a flinch. When we turn on to Keffi Street, I start to smile in my heart because I’m closer to the office. When the driver looked ahead and saw the array of speed bumps ahead, he clears to a side of the road, kills the engine and tells the lady blob, ‘E be like say you go come down for here.’ And when the people shouted at the driver for his action, his response did the convincing: ‘Una no dey see sontin?’