Excerpts of CC’s Journal
May 11, 2022
Stressed.
For some days now, I have been stressed and detached. My self-esteem dropped and almost hit rock-bottom. I react terribly to some unpleasant circumstances around me. I let them get to me and wreck my esteem. I accepted to do a job for an old acquittance whom I felt was patronizing and condescending me. Maybe it is because of the bias I abhor towards him, that’s why it feels like he is patronizing me. “Do it for old-time-sake……” said Golden, another ex-neighbor who happen to refer me to him. Unhappy and unenthusiastic, I still cajole myself to execute the job.
I hung by the door of that coaster bus like a monkey evading his predators. The tussle to enter the coaster bus was intense and fierce. It was a miracle that I was still perched on to the edge of the door despite all the feisty shoving and pushing and tussling. Maybe thanks to my lanky physique.
For an hour and two minutes, I was still at the bus stop waiting for a bus, because that evening was abnormal. The rain had reigned over the city this afternoon. This was a good and bad omen. Oh men! The bus stop was greeted with a crowd of people closing from work, going to work or other places. The lords of the bus stop were ever present with their short PVC wands and sticks held with a firm grip in their hands, scouting for the next vehicle (that will of course alight and pick up passengers) to perch on and extort. There is a phenomenon with afternoon rains in this city which is: the sudden scarcity of vehicles and buses and sporadic hiking of transport fare by vehicle drivers.
For the sake of minimizing cost, I usually favor the 30-seater capacity coaster buses over the other buses and vehicles. I get to pay a fare of hundred naira only which is relatively cheap considering the distance to my destination. But finding this bus today was like mining for gold or diamond. The ones I saw were always filled up to the brim beyond its capacity with passengers hanging like monkeys on the door. The wait for a bus was beginning to wear me down, time elapsed and I began contemplating serval alternatives:
Abi I should enter taxi and do cut and join? That would cost me three hundred naira oh!
Or I should enter mini bus? Na almost the same thing my guy, cut and join, two fifty or three hundred naira.
Abi I for cross over to the other side go enter motor go eleme junction where those coaster buses they load from? That one risky o, the hold up when go hold me go pain pass this waiting I dom dey wait since.
Make I just wait small again, if I no see, I go enter taxi, three H no go kee me sha.
Alas, I saw a coaster bus, with a minimal space for two persons to sit. The way and manner I hopped on the moving bus like an actor from Hollywood action flicks was surprising to me. I couldn’t figure out the exact number of people also struggling to get into the bus, but all I could recall was that there were lots of pushing, shoving and tussling going on around me, yet I was unphased and unmoved, my grip on the top of the door of the bus was tight and firm. I held on like a pro-bus conductor wailing for passengers.
Seventeen minutes afterwards, three passengers alighted at once and I sat on the middle seat in fourth row of the bus. Remember the phenomenon of afternoon rains on the city? Well, I was able to make a good bargain with the bus conductor, convincing him that it was unfair of him to charge me one hundred and fifty naira because I stood for a long time during the course of the journey, almost half way through it.
You might be wondering who are these “Lords of the bus stop”?
How did they earn the Lordship status?
It is because of their modulus operandi. How they control and possess their acclaimed territory (the bus stops). These lords of the bus stop operate in a hyena-like pattern, they are swift, sleek and sublime. They move like flies perching on any available commercial vehicle alighting in the bus stop to pick up passengers so they could get their own share for “helping” the driver get passengers. An interesting thing about them is their physical appearance. Some of them appear tattered, unkempt and rugged. They seem to have this uniformity and similitude in their mode of dressing, style and mannerism which from close observation, I could pinpoint two common mannerisms amongst them: their aggression and sense of entitlement to a commercial driver’s money. Like shepherds and herdsmen with pride and honor, they wield their sticks and short PVC pipes in firm grips, flagging down and clinging on to vehicles so they could stage their theatrics in the act of luring passengers and vehicle-filling. They wail in cacophonous tunes the various routes and stopping points a vehicle (the one they are hinged on at that moment) is headed. They repeat these feats on almost every type of commercial vehicles that alights at their territory (bus stops) and the amount they charge depends on the number of passengers they “lure and gather” into a driver’s vehicle. They override some bus-conductors, hijacking their role and blending in as pseudo-bus-conductors. They do a clean job which they get paid afterwards.
Clean job indeed! Luring passengers that will still find their way into vehicles either by asking the driver or conductor. Is that not the same thing as throwing water into a running river or stream and boasting at the end that your water filled up the stream or river? Passengers will always find their way into vehicles while waiting at a bus stop regardless of the theatrics of these Lords. Except they (passengers) are standing at the wrong bus stop or spot to get a vehicle. These opportunistic “lord of the bus stop” bewilder me with how they exert enormous autonomy and entitlement of a share of the money that some commercial drivers make.
