Oh! My Home… 😂
This is a completely fictional series. However, it is inspired by actual events occurring daily in my country, Nigeria. The goal is to tell the everyday Nigerian story, and in doing so, inspire more and more of us to thank God for, pray for and work hard to build an excellent Nation.
This is the fourth entry.
“I live in Surulere, but work here at Chevron, Lekki Phase 2. Every week day, I wake up by 5am, hurriedly take my bath, pack my breakfast, and get dressed for work. Most mornings, I leave home by a few minutes to 6am, walk the few minutes down to Alh. Masha bus stop where I get a N200 bus to CMS. From CMS, I get a N300 bus going to Ajah and stop at Chevron, from where I take a N100 bike to my office. I often get to the office between 7am and 7:30am depending on the traffic situation and since the official resumption time is 9am, I have between 90 minutes and 2 hours to spare. This is when I finally have my breakfast, do my make up and catch a short nap before resuming work. You might have noticed from what I said that it costs me about N600 to get to work, and that is on a good day. On some days, depending on bus availability and traffic, it may even cost me as much as N1000 and should I mistakenly attempt to take a bike to beat the traffic, I may end up spending close to N2000. Fortunately, the trip back home often costs less. N100 bike to the bus stop, N250 bus to CMS, N50 bus to Costain, and N100 bus to Alh. Masha bus stop = N500. Therefore, on an good day, I spend N1100 on transport, more on bad days. This translates to about N22,000 per month assuming 20 good working days however, it more realistically ends up being N25,000 to N30,000 monthly. Take this out of my N100,000 salary and I have just N70,000 left for everything else — feeding, rent, weekend waka, and even the money I periodically send to my younger brother, who is still an undergraduate. Now tell me, where in the world will I get the money to afford a KFC meal? much less for 2” This rant was in response to Ibrahim’s request that Ife should take him out to KFC for lunch.
“Ahn Ahn, Ife calm down na, it shouldn’t be this deep. It’s just 1 lunch I asked for, not daily lunch for the next year”
“Well, you obviously don’t get it and I can’t say that I blame you. After all, you believed Audu Ogbeh when he said Nigerians order pizza from London”
I struggled to hold down my laughter. I was sitting across from them with headphones on, so they didn’t know I could hear them.
“What does Audu Ogbeh have to do with this one now?” Ibrahim asked.
“Why won’t you ask what Audu Ogbeh has to do with it? Shey it was you that supported Sen. Shehu Sani when he distributed transistor radios as his constituency project, talmbout ‘they need radios to keep up with the news’? You even resemble the Audu Ogbeh sef… should I order your KFC from Kentucky?”
I burst into laughter. I couldn’t hold it down this time, this was too much!
The entire exchange must have embarrassed Ibrahim because he just walked away without saying another word.
Later that evening, as I was heading home, I saw 1 of the craziest things I had ever seen: While in the bus heading from Chevron bus stop to CMS, I had my headphones on and was listening to my country music playlist on Deezer when I noticed multiple excited movements around me as people flailed, pointed and turned around to catch a view or a glimpse of the spectacle that was unfolding around us. Just in the lane across from us, we could see 2 men shouting at each other as they took turns to vandalize 2 vehicles that were parked bumper to fender in the traffic. Their actions seemed to be very well coordinated as they sequentially went from breaking each others pointers to rear lights, headlamps, before eventually commencing to scratch one another’s car. The entire sight was simultaneously hilarious and saddening and was even worsened when we heard the full story: Apparently, they were in traffic like everyone else when one of them moved a few inches too far and hit the other one from behind. The ‘hitee’ came down shouting and when the ‘hitter’ refused to apologize, pointing out that there was no scratch from the hitting, he decided to take revenge so he opened his boot, took out a wheel spanner and struck his driver’s side pointer, chipping it. This annoyed the ‘hitter’ who came down, opened his own boot and shattered the ‘hitee’s pointer as well, and this heralded a spell in which they gradually vandalized each other’s cars. This attracted multiple passers by who commenced taunting them until they shamefacedly entered their respectively damaged cars and tried to drive off only to realize that they couldn’t, at least not without inviting a mechanic to fix up their cars. I shook my head, plugged my headphones back in and resumed listening to my music as our bus continued its gradual meander through the traffic.
As I got home, Iya Basira, the homeless lady that lives on our street, offered me a rotting finger of Banana she must have found in someones trash. The traffic must have made me look so tired and stressed that she noticed. I thanked her, accepted her gift, and gave her a N200 note. She smiled back at me as I walked home.
