By Yemisi Adegoke (@briticoyemo)
Sometimes Lagos wins.
In spite of all the fun and excitement, the quirkness and hilarity, Lagos with all its might, with its hustle and bustle will leave your ego battered and your blood pressure high.
It’s a confusing experience, being enraged at a city, at the character, the very ethos of a place. There’s no outlet for your fury. No one to shout at, no one to blame and nothing to break. You just have to throw your hands up in the air, crack open a beer and behold the wonder that is Lasgidi.
The following is a tale of the first time Lagos beat me senseless.
The day started off well, after 9 days of no power, the gods of PHCN flipped a switch and behold, there was light. My friend and part time life saver Funmi kindly offered to drive me around in my Dad’s old car.
The day was supposed to look like this.
9am: Funmi’s friend arrives at my house and we help him with an errand
11am: Set off for the Island
1pm: Meeting
2.30pm: Leave the Island
Sometime after 2.30pm: Meet my new boss and colleague for the first time.
Simple enough right? But in Lagos simplicity is deceitful, because the devil is in the detail.
9am: Funmi’s friend hadn’t arrived. She called him to ask where he was and he said “Five minutes away, down the street.’ Now, it took me a while to figure out but Lagosians have a knack for not giving you direct answer, so I couldn’t tell if he meant, “Five minutes away, down the street” as in half an hour away or “Five minutes away down the street” as in he had just woken up.
9.40am: Still no friend and I was starting to get anxious, thinking of ‘go glow.’ Funmi suggested we leave the house and drive to meet her friend wherever he was along the way. We did, and finally the day started. Or so I thought.
10 something: We arrived at her friends house (which was more than five minutes away), the favour was to help move a chair to a location where an event was happening. Not a big deal, apart from the fact that the chair in question had yet to be delivered. Half an hour later the deliveryman said he was “Five minutes away, down the road.” I politely, (or probably not so politely at this point) told her friend that I had an appointment on the Island and have to leave soon due to traffic. He assured me that the chair was on its way and would arrive in the next few minutes.
11.30am: It did not. By this time my boss had been in contact, he’d arrived safely in Lagos and was eager to start work on our documentary project in the next few hours. He asked me to make some calls and arrange some things before our meeting at the National Stadium at 4pm.
12.00: After what seemed like an age the chair arrived, but alas didn’t fit the car. So a total waste of time and petrol, so much for the joy of helping others. After some apologies Funmi and I set off for the Island only slightly behind schedule.
1.30pm: Funmi dropped me off at my meeting, where I apologised profusely for being late, and went to buy petrol. She said she’d be back shortly and we agreed that we would leave the Island no later than 2.30.
2.30pm: As my meeting wrapped up I noticed my phone battery was dangerously low. I cheekily borrowed a charger and messaged Funmi to ask where she was. She told me she was on the back of a bike getting petrol as the car had run out on the way to the bank. One of the things I love about Funmi is her sense of humour. I stifled a laugh until she sent me a picture of herself… on the back of a bike holding a jerry can. She told me to walk down to the GTB bank and she’d meet me there
3.00pm: I arrived at GTB and there was no sign of Funmi. My phone declared its battery was ‘too low for radio use.’ Am I the only one who hates that message? Isn’t the ‘radio use’ the whole point of a phone? If it’s too low for radio use why not just die? Anyway, Funmi was nowhere to be seen, I was somewhere in Lagos with no money as I’d, of course, forgotten my purse at home, with my only means of communication dead, Oh and I was due to meet my new boss in under an hour. Anxiety had me in a chokehold.
3 something: I tried to speak to someone at the bank asking if I could use a phone or asking if they’d by any chance seen Funmi. I hadn’t yet learned how to ‘tone down the accent’ so everyone looked at me as though I was speaking Martian. At this point I was so frustrated I’d have probably kicked a puppy. Then a patron at the bank, interrupted my wallowing with a joke so terrible I cracked up then and there. We made some much needed small talk. After which I tried my Blackberry trick, which basically consists of me taking my phone battery out and praying over it for a few seconds. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
3.45pm: Thankfully, this time it did. I had just enough battery power to make a phone call. I dialled Funmi who had been trying to get hold of me. Turns out I’d gone to the wrong GTB and she was on her way to pick me up. I frantically sent a text to my colleague telling him I was on my way, but would be late By the time Funmi had arrived ‘go slow’ had infiltrated, she estimated we’d be there 5pm, 5.30 latest. We stopped at a petrol station to top up the tank and I started charging my phone. Then we were finally off. Or so I thought.
4.00pm : At an intersection on Ozumba Mbadiwe just as the light turned green, a flash of smoke rose from the steering wheel and the car died.
To be continued…