Eneh Akpan Writes: Anarchy on Wheels

Photo credit: Thecityfix.com

Lagos bus drivers (besides being speed daemons) have a hang for maneuvering their buses with one-half of the tires rolling on asphalt while the other half bumps along suspended on the shoulder (God knows why), which is often than not a mud-rid depression. I guess you could call it a variant of talent just as people have a talent for walking into doors. Trucking with these road hogs sometimes, leaves me in strange circumstances–getting stranded is just one chapter in that book.

“Hey, driver! Take it easy, will ya?” Somebody yells from behind me as the driver navigates the Nissan Urvan through a nasty ditch.

“What the hell does it look like I’m doing?” The driver turns around and the look on his face says he doesn’t know from Adam what the guy is talking about. “I’m trying to get you jerks to work as quickly as I possibly can and you dare run off your mouth at me?” He cusses a little to buttress his point.

“Just take it easy,” another passenger, a lady with a child in her laps, says.

“We want to get to work in one piece,” adds yet another passenger.

And that makes the driver really press the pedal to the metal. “If you want, I can drop you off right here.” Yet, he doesn’t ease up so they can get off. No one takes up his offer either.

And the tango between driver and passenger that has by some method become tradition in Lagos, Nigeria begins.

If the makers of the 007 films could tour the roads of Lagos, aboard public transport for a day, they would learn vital lessons from the real-life car chases Lagos commuters survive on a daily basis. The anarchy we have somehow, learned to live with. The bottleneck drama we have dubbed James Bond driving. There are other ways to live with knowledge.

Mornings arrive with a sour-sweet taste in my mouth. On one palate is the pleasure I derive as I write this in this vehicle (I’m doing this on my way to work), on the other–maybe, the hard palate–is the situation I described above. Every now and then, I feel my teeth rattle as the driver who finds it impossible to stay on his side of the road, dive-bombs a bump or a pothole. I pause my writing at this time and look up, tensed. When the coast clears (some come later than others), I continue to write.

The road to hell is paved not with adverbs or works in progress but with hunks of junks called Nissan Urvans. Especially, the fleet operated by Lagos commercial drivers. Nevertheless, as I stated earlier, there are other ways to live with knowledge. Sometimes, life gets in the way and ruffles up my affairs like my rides to work do. I continue to seek ways to put my talent to use.

The one thing, which abides always, always, always is that I continue to write. In some amusing way, I find opportunity poking out of life’s stack of slack like rabbits bending blades of giant grass to take in the scenery. And like the roads that get me to work, this place becomes more and more familiar to me even when my writing is 99% bilge and 1% slog. I continue to write because like my early morning bus rides, I can see my destination looming over the horizon like the big arc of a rising orange moon.

“Owa o!” I tell the driver as the bus bumps and bounces towards my stop. He doesn’t seem to hear me. I yell “Owa o!” a second time.

“Ibo lowa!” he says as if he’s totally ignorant of the Bus Stop. I tell him where I’m dropping off and the bus sputters and coughs and finally comes to a halt several meters beyond my stop.

I leap out of the vehicle and hurry to take my next ride–the last hell ride–that would finally get me to work. It appears to me I’m almost eager for the jittery ride through torture and all that’s life threatening. That I almost crave for it.

But I know better. It’s the chance to reach into the richness of my imagination that I long for; the beauty of finding creativity on these anarchy on wheels that calls out to me–seeks to possess all I have and am.

Yes, I know better. And it makes me unafraid.

Akpan