Transportation in Lagos: Everything You Need to Know

If you have been to Kyoto, Bangkok, Mumbai or Bangladesh, then you have a fair idea of what Lagos is like: congested, throbbing, unapologetic, impatient and impertinent; it cares for none and ignores all. I always try to shorten the length of time I spend in this city, I cannot abide its ever-wakefulness. When I am in Lagos, it’s a long series of cab, bus and speedboat shuttles for me. The city is so embroiled in its own saga, it has little time to be empathic for another. Like New York, there are so many faces of people in its bosom that it rejects all equally; what makes you fit into Lagos is the inability to fit anywhere else.

During my last visit to Lagos, I was running to keep an appointment at the Indian high commission. I boarded a bus at Falomo which was meant to take me to Kofo Abayomi, Victoria Island. If you know anything about Lagos, you’ll know that most times, walking is faster than sitting in a ‘moving vehicle’. I seemed to have been a little addled in the brain for I’d somehow forgotten to account for traffic peak times. Here I was, in a bus that was crawling along, at a rate that would be impossible for me to reach the commission before they closed shop. I was jittery, tense and willing the traffic to let up. As if this wasn’t enough, I was sweating profusely from everywhere, the bus was packed full and I was squeezed between two obese women who kept digging their elbows into my sides.  The seats were made of plain wood with no padding, and my butt was beginning to cry out in pain. I tried to thank my stars that I was in a small bus, the Danfo, *not the *Molue bus. *The *Molue *buses are 44-seater buses that actually carry over 70 people, these buses are usually jam-packed with people sitting and standing. The *Molue bus in addition to being the ideal bus for groping hands, and a crucible for all sweaty people, goes very slow because off its many stops. The Danfo bus which I was in, means ‘hurry’ in Yoruba, but this bus wasn’t hurrying, in fact, it was not even moving at all.

While I fiddled and worried, the Lagosians in the bus simply smiled and told me to “relax, that I’d get used to it”, I sighed to no avail and eventually my fear of making it before the office closed, had multiplied so much that it finally burst out of me and I asked the conductor to pull up and let me out. The bus pulled up and I hit the curb running. With my big bag. In the afternoon under the hot Lagos sun. May I remind you, that on a normal day, people stare at me when I walk the streets to buy something a few miles away. Let alone a foreigner, running in the noon heat with a huge traveling bag.

I had jogged for about ten minutes down the road, as the traffic alongside me thinned. And by a stroke of evil luck, the bus I had just disembarked from quietly crept up behind me. I resolutely kept my face forward, expecting to hear their jeers at my stupidity and catch, from the corner of my eye, the pointing fingers as they laughed at me, but that was not what happened. Quite unexpectedly, the driver pulled up the curb and motioned me back in. As I entered the bus, I half-expected to hear some sniggering but everyone just had a small understanding smile on their face. Everyone had the same patient look; the one Lagos teaches, the class I skipped, and the lesson I had just been tutored in.

I rode the rest of the way, embarrassed and yet welcomed. Nowadays, when my impatience seems to get the best of me, I think back on the patient smiles I’d seen on the face of those Lagosians, and I find that perseverance will eventually get you to your destination, never mind the hassle.