Mama Chisom had been selling akara at that junction for eleven years, She knew everyone , the danfo driver who always collected change and never returned it, the NEPA man who liked his bean cakes extra-crispy, the secondary school girls who bought two and pretended it was just one. She knew everybody, so when the fine-looking woman in the white kaftan sat down on the bench beside her frying stand that Tuesday morning, Mama Chisom noticed.
"Good morning, ma," the woman said, arranging her wrapper carefully like she was afraid of the world touching her.
"Morning," Mama Chisom replied without looking up from her oil. "You want akara?"
"No. I'm just… resting small."
Mama Chisom glanced sideways, The woman's eyes were doing that particular thing scanning everything but landing nowhere, Like someone who had walked out of a house and wasn't sure whether to go back in.
Chukwuemeka the mechanic apprentice from across the road, jogged over was wiping his hands on a rag, "Mama Chi, abeg give me four, My oga never eat since morning."
"Four? You have money for four?"
"E go enter, I promise yeah..."
She hissed and scooped them anyway. He winked at the woman in white as he collected them. "Aunty, you fine o. This junction don upgrade today."
The woman smiled,
Just a small one, like she was testing whether smiling still worked.
The morning moved the way mornings do at busy junctions loud, then louder, then somehow louder still, buses.
Argument about a pothole, a child screaming for reasons only children understand, the woman in white sat through all of it like she was watching a film she hadn't chosen but couldn't stop watching.
"You come from that side?" Mama Chisom asked eventually, nodding toward the estate behind the junction, no real reason, just the way Nigerians ask questions not fully asking, leaving room for you to answer as much or as little as you like.
"Yes." A pause. "I'm visiting my brother. First time in Lagos."
Mama Chisom turned to look at her properly for the first time. "First time? And them send you out here alone?"
"I sent myself."
There was something in the way she said it — not proud, not sad, just… honest. Like someone who had recently discovered that sending yourself somewhere was the only reliable option.
"You want akara now?" Mama Chisom asked again.
This time the woman laughed. A real one. "Yes please."
Mama Chisom wrapped three in newspaper and handed them over without counting the money. The woman looked up, surprised.
"On top the house," Mama Chisom said simply. "First time in Lagos, you need to start somewhere good."
The woman took the akara and sat back down, eating slowly, watching the junction the way strangers always do — seeing everything at once because nothing is ordinary yet. A child chasing a tyre. Two men laughing over nothing. A goat that had clearly made peace with traffic.
Mama Chisom watched her watching, and thought: That is how the place looks when you have not learned to stop seeing it. And for just a moment, through the stranger's eyes, the junction looked almost beautiful.
Image:MetaAI.
