I'll be honest, it's hard to come by peace and quiet in Lagos. No matter how many times you spray insecticide in your bedroom, the mosquitoes keep coming back, almost as if they faint for a time, then awaken.
Lagos isn't new to me, it's a city I grew up in during the early stages of my life, but being in Lagos this time feels new, because now I'm here, not as Daddy's little boy, but as a bachelor.
Unlike Abuja, here, honestly, you don't know where to begin with the mosquitoes. They fly faster. Almost as though they, too, are aware of the familiar Lagos slogans: 'You Chop I Chop' , 'Person No Send You for Lagos' , 'Who Carry You Come Lagos?', and 'If You No Sharp, You Go Die for Lagos.'
On Saturday, sincerely, I'm just going to take myself out, to the Cinema, buy a gigantic pop corn, make sure I get a seat where no one's going to be seated in-front of me, stretch my legs on the chair, slouch, chew and watch my film. My arms are starting to look like I have chicken pox.
My first thought, when I arrived Lagos--as the cab man drove me from the airport to Surulere--was that Lagos looks like an over-fried groundnut: sweet and crunchy on the inside, but rough and aesthetically displeasing on the outside.
"The thing be sey," said the cab man, "for Lagos anybody fit make am. Even if na pure water you dey sell, you go still dey find small, small change wey you go fit dey take survive."
"But Lagos is over-populated now," I said, pausing to take a look at the saturated neighbourhood with mud-splashed walls, and people dressed as Northerners.
"You see all these aboki's wey dey drive okada..."
"Yes."
"Many of them don build house for village, and the money den make am through this okada wey den dey drive so."
When we arrived Ajao, I and the cab man exchanged contacts, he told me to marry early, as he'd made mention of his two children and wife to me while driving. "Better to do it when you're young," he said.
"No wahalla. Na wife we come find for Lagos," I said.
Entering the residence, I worried I'd made a mistake coming to Lagos. "What's the worst that could happen?" I said. "Everyone's left home, I long have been overdue for independence, and if na die e go take make person make am for this groundnut city, then na die e go be."
My pidgin English is gradually returning. Apparently, the lay-man here considers it 'arrogant', when you're unable to stoop to his level, so I must, always, begin my conversations with, "Bros, wetin dey happen? How go dey go?"