It's always said that if you live in Lagos, Nigeria, you can live in any other part of the world.
Yes! Lagos is like a training ground and only the strong can survive. Infact, the strong shall choke the weak.
When driving on Lagos road, you have to be mini-mad. I mean it. Because, most of these drivers over here act like there's something working wrongly on their brains.
Hehe. I think I'm getting annoyed now. Calm down, Sam. Haha.
Lagos is not for the weak. As a pedestrian, there are times the bike men or the drivers expect you to fly in the air simply because, they want to pass. When you want to cross the road, you're expected to run like you're being chased by a masquerade. When you want to board a bus, be ready to turn the park to a war zone so you could secure a seat for yourself.
I don't even want to talk about the wonderful perfumes the conductors give us every morning. If you no get mind, you go vomit. Yes, most of them smell that bad, I wonder if they ever take their bath.
But, Lagos is the place where it's happening. Haha. What's Lagos without all these wahala every morning and evenings?
So, I work in the city and every Monday, I leave the house so early so I can get to work on time. I return some times, two days or three days later, and some times, I stay for a whole week, as the case may be.
I was returning home for the weekend and I boarded a bus. The journey was going well not until a woman standing at a junction stopped our bus, so she could hop in.
The driver wasn't thinking! There were two heavy containers driving with full speed approaching us and there was no way we could escape it. There was a container at our front, and another one at our back. If you know all these containers, you'll know that they don't have a brake and what they do is to use air to pump their engine from a far distance before they get to their destination. This way, they'll be able to stop.
But, here we were, stuck in the middle. The woman who stopped the bus was finding it hard to hop in as the skirt she was putting on was so tight, she couldn't lift her leg.
Everyone in the bus was screaming. The containers were already close to us and I had already dropped my bags, including my laptop in order to jump out of the bus. I couldn't think of leaving my wife and my little baby alone in this world. I was ready to jump out to save my life because, there was little hope of surviving if those containers hit us.
Somehow, the driver got his senses back and took a quick move. We were saved! My heart was already hanging in my throat and I was shivering all through. This was death right before my eyes and I escaped it.
I used to hear cases of people being grinded by a car, tipper or heavy containers but, this was me escaping one. I couldn't help but thank God.
I got home that day and knelt down and gave a prayer of thanks.
My life was spared!
I'm going to be more careful with the kind of buses I enter and I'll keep trusting God to help me because, it's only His protection that keeps me alive.
Thank you for reading through.
