Lost in Lagos || Week in my life

Hey boos! How’s your day going? TGIF am I right? 😀

This is another week in my life post where I basically tell you guys how my week went and stuff I did. I know I’ve kind of been leaving you guys in the dark a lot on whats been going on with me but I promise, I’m trying really hard to give updates whenever I can. So yh, thanks for understanding :). Right now, I’m actually back home. Yassss, finals done and dusted and grad loading. WHUT WHUT!!!! I’m super excited for grad week and I promise there are a truck load of posts coming up on it. So brace yourselves folks :D.

So yh, this week has actually been superrrrr busy for me. I actually went shopping for some stuff last Saturday but i’m not putting that in this post since I’m going to do a haul for you guys in a bit. For this week, I started an internship/training/work experience program at a firm on Monday and it has been fun yet really challenging.

First off, I’ve had to endure the worst traffic I’ve ever seen in my life. Imagine a journey of 50 minutes taking 3 hours! I know, It’s insane. But that’s what I go through everyday during rush hour. I wake up at 5am, leave at 6am, wait at the bus park for about an hour before the bus loads and leaves for the road. Add 90 minutes of traffic (if i’m lucky) until I reach the next stop. Then 30 minutes on a rickshaw till I get to work.

Thursday was practically the worst day of my life! I practically spent a total of 5 hours on the road!! Here’s how it went. After I got down from the bus, I waited more than 55 minutes trying to a rickshaw to my destination.  I decided to go to another stop and then I got lost. I spent another 45 minutes trying to figure out where the hell I was before I got a rickshaw to take me where I was going. That was by far the worst thing that’s happened to me. Not just because I was lost but because the people around where I was were behaving very uncultured.

At first, there was supposed to be a line for the rickshaw but then things got so disorganised and people started to do as they pleased. It was probably because they’d waited so long as well and their patience was already thrown in the trash. I tried making a run for it and getting on one of the free rickshaws but someone always beat me to it. Then came an excruciatingly long wait before another one came, and then someone would beat me to it and the cycle continued for the next hour. I finally got to the front of the ‘line’ but then the rickshaw drivers increased their prices by 50% just because there was a bit of traffic. And that’s when all hell broke loose.

There was fighting, insults and all manner of wildness going on. I got scared and decided to get a public motorbike to take me. But those ones had their prices increased by 500%. That’s Lagos for you, always taking advantage of the little people. I waited for a while and when I saw things weren’t going anywhere, I called my aunt and she told me go to another park. When I got there, I didnt see any vehicles going to where I was going. I asked some drivers and they told me to walk further down, which I did but still didnt see any. Now I realise that they didn’t explain things properly. They should have told me to cross the road because all I kept doing was walking further down till I reached a junction and then I was like ‘where do I from here?’. I then decided to take another rickshaw which was apparently not going to where I was going. I got down and discovered that I had just gone round and round in circles and got back to where I started from. Not exactly where I started from but around that area.

Later on, I tried using the almighty GOOGLE MAPS but that got me even more confused, which is like crazy! Like isn’t the sole purpose of Maps to guide and not confuse a person?! Anyways, I finally got the right direcions from a very concerned lady who was listening to my very frustrated conversation with my aunt on the phone, which was basically me on the verge of crying and giving up on life :D. She told me where to go, THE RIGHT WAY this time. I got there, found a rickshaw going to where I was going and got to work……….at 11:15am! I know, yikesssss. Fortunately, I got pardoned cause I’m a newbie and I’m not familiar with the area but still, that experience was LIFE CHANGING. I mean like in a horrible way. It has totally shaped the way I see my city and the sad fact is that it has drastically reduced my respect for it. I don’t want to go to deep but I was soooooo drained throughout the day, both physically and emotionally and I never want to feel like that again.

So yh, here ends my sad story of the frustrations I faced this week. Don’t get me wrong, getting this internship is probably one of the best things that’s happened to me, but the actually getting there is the problem. Getting to work after spending 4, 5 hours on the road (when the destination is IN THE SAME CITY!) and then coming back sometimes at 7:30 or 8pm was not what I imagined. I dont know how people do it. Shoutout to all working class Lagosians out there, plus my mom who had to do this for a really long time before she resigned. You guys are the real superheroes! I guess I have to start waking up an hour earlier so I can beat rushhour and see if that works. I hope it works 😐

That’s all for today guys! Hope you enjoyed that post! Comment down below if you’ve had similar experiences getting to work or school or anywhere in general. Or if you’re one of the very lucky people who lives right next door to the office, comment down below as well. I’d love to know! 🙂

Until next time,

XO

Jess.