1.The Hawker.
The tarred road felt hard under his feet. Despite the fact that he was wearing the three years old bathroom slippers he had brought with him from the village, the ground still found a way to hurt his feet. He had been running all day on Muritala Mohammed way, hawking bottled water to passengers in the ever slow traffic gridlock. It was his first day on his new job and he already hated it with passion. Although he had been hawking for close to twelve hours non-stop, he had only sold six bottles. Six measly bottles, with a profit margin of twenty naira per bottle, that meant he had made just one hundred and twenty naira. Now, a hundred and twenty naira was money back in the village and could get you two, maybe three satisfying meals in a day if you were truly prudent. But in this Lagos? No. A decent meal began from two hundred and fifty naira. Which was more than double of what he had made today. His stomach grumbled as he thought about this. He wasn’t only hungry, but was thirsty too.
Why can’t I take one bottle of what I’m selling? He wondered for the seventeenth time that day. Because, my potential gain would be drastically reduced. This was not the Lagos that was he was promised.
“Bottle water!” he heard someone shout from a quite a distance away. He began running towards the voice. He wasn’t known as the Cheetah of Ikot Ekpene for nothing. The person was in a commercial vehicle moving slowly. He ran with all his might, adding up the twenty naira in his mind.
One hundred and forty naira, at least that’s more than half of two fifty.
He was completely lost in his thoughts and didn’t see the stone right in front of him. He kicked it hard and felt something snap in his foot. Reflexively, he looked down to assess the damage. His slippers, had cut and his big toe was bleeding from the toenail. He grit his teeth, ditched the second leg of the slippers and continued running with his bare feet.
“No, no, no!” he said aloud as he saw another hawker was running to the person that had just called him. He tried to push himself faster but the pain slowed him down considerably. The other hawker reached the window of the commercial bus and thrust the bottle water inside the window. The person purchasing paid and the other hawker was on his way. He was sad, indeed he was sad. He struggled to reach the commercial bus.
“Yes, bottled water, anyone? Chilled bottle water?” he asked, the desperation rather evident in his voice.
“Oh boy, you need to be sharp in this Lagos oh” the man said, opening his bottle water to drink. “I called you first, but your friend reached here before you. Lagos has no time for sluggish people”
He wanted to explain to the man, wanted to tell how he had run, wanted to tell how his toenail was broken and possibly his toe bone, wanted to tell how he had lost the only pair of slippers he had brought with him from the village, but instead, he watched as the bus moved slowly away from where he stood. When it was out of sight, he sighed and went to sit on the shoulder of the road to nurse his toe. Some people, hawking different things sat there too. They had yet to warm up to him since it was his first day but some looked at him with just the hint of pity in their eyes. He tried to talk to them earlier but right now, he couldn’t care less. He massaged the bone area, trying to set the bone back. There was a stench coming, not from his wound, but from his clothes. The sun had been at an all-time high in the afternoon and had seemed to send all it’s rays to his body. Now the air was so cold, it was hard to breathe. He continued his massage, trying to hold his breath and breathe from his mouth.
If I had this sort of injury back in the village, Mazi Dokita would treat me. Mama would scold me for running too much before wrapping me in blankets and lighting firewood to warm me
The pain was just subsiding half an hour later when he heard someone shout in his direction. “Bottle water!” He looked up to see a man in a black Range Rover Sport. “Can’t you hear? I want bottled water!”
He looked around for his competitor. The fellow hawker hawking bottle water was nowhere in sight. He got up slowly, putting his weight on the other foot.
“My friend will you hurry up? The traffic is about to move” the man shouted impatiently.
He moved as fast as one and a half legs could carry him, logging the crate on his head. He got to the Range Rover and dropped the crate beside the car.
“How many do you want sir?” he asked politely.
“Give me two bottles and bring change for one thousand naira and be fast about it”
He didn’t have change for a thousand naira but forty naira! Forty naira was too much of a profit to let go just like that. He gave the man the two bottles.
“Where is the change?” the man asked, his impatience increasing by the second.
He turned to the hawkers still sitting on the shoulder of the road.
“Abeg, una get change one thousand?” he shouted over the noise of hundreds of motor engines
Three of them shook their head but the last one raised a finger up and proceeded to check. After a moment he brought out the change and raised it high. Maybe his luck was changing. He crossed the lane, half ran and half limped towards him. As soon as he got to the shoulder of the road and collected the change, the remaining three hawkers seated began laughing. He turned to see what was so funny. At first he couldn’t figure it out, but then he saw it. The Range Rover was speeding away and the driver was laughing, revealing a gold tooth in his front row teeth. He stood, rooted to the spot, unable to believe his eyes. The man had driven away with his two bottled water and the money.
“Welcome to Lagos” said one of the laughing hawkers which instigated another bout of laughter.
He grit his teeth, handed the change back and started dragging his foot towards where he left his crate. He was about crossing the lane back to the middle of the road when he heard the unmistakable crunch of plastic. He looked up to see a Coaster bus crushing his plastic and breaking the crate. The driver looked out of the bus and hurled insults at him for leaving his crate on the road while the hawkers, all four of them this time laughed their hearts out at him.
This is not what Lagos is supposed to be like. This is not the Lagos I was promised.