Love on a Lagos Weekend.
Sunday evenings in Lagos are usually calm. No rowdy roads or unsolicited motivational speech from a person trying to board the same bus with you on your way to work.
You take a walk down the street, hand in hand with your lover. You both recap your week and talk about what's ahead in the coming week. Your lover casually teases you about the coworker that always comes to you to solve tasks that should not be a big deal. The people on the street stop to watch the two of you as you burst out laughing without a care in the world.
When it's time for your lover to leave, you hate how the meridian decided it should be shorter day and longer night today of all days. You want to hold the hands of your lover and forget about entering the traffic again on Monday morning.
You kiss for the 6th time, after saying 'just one more kiss before you go' six times.
Your alarm goes off, 6:30 am, Monday morning. It had just been a dream, there's no lover you held or walked with. You only went to ola iya to eat five wraps of amala the previous day, and you took a bath and slept off immediately you got back. The dream was not real, but one thing is, there is going to be traffic if you try to recall the face of the lover from your dream before going to have a bath, so you sigh and get up from the bed to prepare for work. You don't want to, but you have to.
You'll recall her face when you're sitting on the bus. Hopefully she's sitting next to you on the ride to work, that was the last thing you thought about before heading for the bathroom.
You knew it was just wishful thinking –hoping to meet the woman in your dream– as you sat in the front seat of the bus. You are extremely happy to be the first person on the bus, that way, no smelly conductor is shoving their mouth in your face as they try to collect the fare. You look at the face of every woman that got on the bus, wishful thinking or not, you want to see her and probably hold her hand if she lets you. She doesn't get on the bus, the last person enters and it leaves costain bus stop. It's a smooth drive until you all join the traffic at eko bridge like every other morning. You hope they fix the other bridge fast enough, because you can't continue spending 20 minutes everyday on one spot. You doze off for a while, and when you open your eyes you're almost at your destination. You adjust your bag and clear your throat as you tell the driver “oando wa o.”
Even though it was just one dream, you can recognize the back of her head anywhere. She's buying gala and pepsi as you get down from the bus. The exact same voice that told you to take on each day as it comes this week in your dream, is saying, “one cold pepsi please, and it's 1k I have ma.” You have 500 naira, and you need a bottle of water. You hear the seller saying that she doesn't have any change, because it's still very early. So you offer to pay for her snacks, drink and your water. Your dream girl turns to face you and thanks you for being kind to her. You cannot tell her she was kind to you first, so you smile and nod your head in acknowledgement before going your way.
"We'll see again.” You whispered to the air as you walked away.
