LAGOS IS NOT A REAL PLACE! (PT1) - by Love, Jay!❤️

The first thing Amara learned about Lagos was that nobody had time.Not the bus driver. Not the conductor. Not the woman selling gala by the roadside. Not even the man who almost ran her over five minutes after she arrived.And definitely not her.She just didn’t know it yet.Amara had spent the last three hours sitting inside a bus with one small Ghana-Must-Go bag between her feet, staring through the window like Lagos was a movie she had somehow entered.There were too many cars. Too many people. Too much noise.And everyone seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere.“Is this all Lagos?” she asked quietly.Her cousin, sitting beside her, didn’t even look up from her phone.“No. We’re still entering.”Amara looked out the window again.We’re still entering?She tightened her grip on her bag.Back home, the loudest thing she heard in the morning was usually a rooster.Here, somebody had been pressing their horn continuously for almost five minutes.She couldn’t understand why.“Why are they honking?”Her cousin finally looked at her.“Welcome to Lagos.”That was the first time Amara heard the sentence.She would hear it many more times.The bus eventually stopped.“Enter! Enter! Enter!”A man jumped down from the bus.“Ikorodu! Ikorodu! One space! One space!”Amara stood there, confused.“Is this our bus?”“Yes.”“But I thought we were going somewhere else.”“We are.”“Then why are they shouting Ikorodu?”Her cousin stared at her.“Amara, just enter.”She entered.That was mistake number one.The second mistake was assuming that public transport worked like the buses in her village.It didn’t.In Lagos, apparently, you had to know where you were going, how much you were paying, where you were getting down, and sometimes what street your mother’s first daughter was born on.And if you didn’t? You were finished.The conductor stretched out his hand.“Madam, transport.”Amara brought out her money.He looked at it.“How much is this?”“One thousand.”“One thousand for where?”She blinked.“You said transport.”The people inside the bus laughed.The conductor looked at her like she had just told him that water was dry.“Madam, where you dey go?”She mentioned the place.“Ah. Seven hundred.”Amara gave him the money.He collected it, shoved it into a pile of other notes in his hand and immediately turned away.She waited.He didn’t give her change.She waited longer. Still nothing.“Excuse me.”He ignored her.“Sir?”Nothing.“Sir, my change.”He turned around.“What change?”“My three hundred.”He stared at her.Then looked at the money in his hand. Then looked at her again.“Madam, which three hundred?”“My change.”He laughed.“Ah! Madam, you dey calculate money for Lagos?”Someone behind her laughed.Amara didn’t.“My three hundred.”The woman sitting beside her leaned over.“Don’t worry. He’ll give you.”The conductor shouted at someone outside the bus.“Enter! Enter! Last bus! No space again!”Then, as casually as if nothing had happened, he counted three hundred naira into Amara’s hand.She stared at him. So he knew.She looked out the window.Maybe Lagos wasn’t going to be so bad.Five minutes later, she discovered another problem.The bus stopped suddenly.Someone bumped into her.Then someone else.Then the conductor shouted something she didn’t understand.Amara held onto her bag tightly.“Move inside!”“I am inside.”“Move inside!”“But there’s no space.”“Madam, na Lagos. Space dey.”She moved. Somehow, there was space.She didn’t understand how.She was still trying to figure it out when someone behind her hit her on the bum.She turned immediately.“What was that?”The man looked away. Amara stared at him. Nobody said anything.She looked around the bus, confused.Then the conductor shouted,“Madam, shift!”She shifted.She didn’t say anything else.It was her first day.She wasn’t going to start fighting people.At least, that’s what she told herself.When she finally got down from the bus, her legs hurt, her head was pounding, and she had already decided that she hated Lagos.Her cousin looked at her.“You okay?”Amara nodded.“Yes.”“You sure?”She looked around.A woman was arguing with a bus driver. Two men were shouting about change. Someone was selling boiled groundnuts.A car was honking. Another car was honking back.Someone shouted, “Oga, move!”Someone else shouted, “You no get horn?”Amara sighed.“Your Lagos is very noisy.”Her cousin laughed.“You’ll get used to it.”Amara looked at her.“I don’t think I will.”She picked up her bag.They started walking.She had come to Lagos with one goal:Survive.She didn’t know yet that Lagos had plans of its own. And if she thought her first day was bad… She had no idea what was waiting for her tomorrow.

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