RobinHez:
The moment when u realize someone else's coloured armpit is directly against ur nose

Truckpusher:
I can see caracta and Ujsizzle jumping queue.

Truckpusher:
I can see caracta and Ujsizzle jumping queue.

UjSizzle:

Lol best angle to board a rushed bus is from the side. When everyone is struggling to drag their full weight in, you take a 90deg position and slide your way in

Old lasgidi

Svelteb:
consequently boarding d molue b4 u shey?

Truckpusher:
So you no even deny am?

Lawless girls , oya lie down flat lemme do you something.

UjSizzle:

Shey na on top belle or back I go lie down?

Truckpusher:
Wait lemme get my glasses - Your slimness dey confuse me, I no sabi which side be back and front.

Make I no go enter through backyard.

Samunique:
Ooo boy! U bad ooo!!!

U don make me remember how i fall trying to catch up with one at sango ota.

O what a...................day!!!

UjSizzle:

*slaps his eyeball*
I'm not flat

Dyt:
Each time I boarded
Its either I fight for someone tapping my ass or mistakenly touch my boobs or I throw up cos I am choking
Deep sigh

RobinHez:

Loool...if we don't remember where we're coming from, we won't know where we are going to

Dyt:
Each time I boarded
Its either I fight for someone tapping my ass or mistakenly touch my boobs or I throw up cos I am choking
Deep sigh

SeverusSnape:
Am I the only one who dislike Lagos?

Truckpusher:
Was just passing-by with my two hands tucked in my pockets while whistling Osadebe's music.

Svelteb:
y am i not believing u keh?

A JOURNEY TO THE PAST

By Reuben Abati
(Published in The Guardian in October 2002)

I decided the other day, to take a ride in the commodious, ubiquitous, mammy-wagon, otherwise generally known as the molue. A trip by public transportation and by this I do not mean chartered taxi, but any form of mass transit in which you are compelled to jostle against large crowds, has the advantage of bringing you closer to reality. I always knew this. I took the ride not as a philosophical exercise. Not out of curiousity. But because for me, it was a form of return to the past, to the roots of my earlier life in the city of Lagos. In the early 90s, I was a molue regular. I lived in Alakuko, one of those border communities between Lagos and Ogun State on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway. Alakuko is a boisterous, down-to-earth neighbourhood. It is immediately after Alagbado. A few metres away is Sango-Ota. Life in Alakuko was sobering. Persons knocked on your door to ask you to lend them some salt for the pot of soup their wives were cooking. They had suddenly discovered that they no longer had salt at home. A married couple's relations had just visited but they did not have enough money on them for the weekend, could you bail them out with N200 to enable them prepare a pot of soup? Freely, people offered unsolicited advice about one's personal affairs. They thought it was part of their business to express an opinion about when or how you should get married. Children moved about with or without clothes and shoes. Married women took their bathe in the compound in the early hours of the day, hoping that another woman's husband would not stumble upon them.

Many journalists lived in the Alakuko of my time. We used to play with the idea of forming an Alakuko Journalists Union - for, we had enough team to produce a newspaper. The truth is that housing used to be cheap in Alakuko; and journalists found it convenient to live in that border territory. I was not a tenant, though. I lived in a family compound. Going to and from the office, the easiest means of transportation was the Molue. Coming from Sango, the Molue would stop at Alakuko Bus Stop to pick up passengers. On the other side of the road, passengers from Lagos disembarked from other Molues. This to-ing and fro-ing was a definite aspect of our lives, a ritual of everyday life. I loved the Molue. I had no option. The first thing I had to learn was how to catch a moving Molue. You have just arrived at the bus-stop, the Molue is already on its way, you are pressed for time, you need a special skill to sprint towards the molue and swing yourself onto its tailboard. I also learnt how to disembark from a molue that is still in motion. And how to squat by the tailboard, with other passengers threatening to push you out, and the conductor claiming a right of ownership to that space, with either the wind or the rains beating your back or your face.

The molue driver is especially a most intriguing personality. Perched precariously on a seat in a cage-like contraption, he shouted expletives in all directions, with sweat turning his shirtless body into a glistening sight. Ordinarily, he would have taken a few shots of paraga - marinated herbs soaked in alcohol, sold in every bus stop in Lagos, or marijuana, the source of his blood-shot eyes and brittle countenance. The bus conductor is the same as his master. He could be a graduate without a job, and his driver, a school drop-out or vice-versa. As a rule, the bus conductor has a permanent body odour, a loud voice, and a criminal swagger. Frequently, he is engaged in a brawl either with passengers, or the conductors of other vehicles. He can be seen moving from one passenger to another rubbing his body off other people's bodies, either deliberately or accidentally touching female passengers in private places, quickly explaining that those who do not want body contact with other persons should not enter the molue. Inside the molue, body smells clash with other smells to produce a peculiar fragrance. It is an entire world unto itself, the world of ordinary people.

I did not just travel inside the molue, I was fascinated by the nature of its world. I eventually found myself writing many newspaper columns, on Fridays, about the molue. In the mornings, the commuters were especially quiet and meditative but on the return journey in the evenings, with everyone tired, impatient and looking forward to the night, molue commuters exchanged banters, or anger, or ideas. In many articles, I reported their views. The classes of opinion were diverse and critical, usually on the topical issues of the day. The molue is the bus of the poor, the irony is that it is the place to encounter the richest expressions of the Nigerian mind, without the pretensions that we all live with. With the day's newspapers, or other encumbrances clasped to my chest, I entered the molue daily, and soaked in the poetry of the streets. Inside the molue with its slightly elevated height, we looked down on the surroundings from Oshodi to Alakuko. You could stand on the balcony, that is the tailboard; on sit in the room and parlour - the roomier seats which take three passengers, or in the verandah, where you share a seat with another commuter with a good view of the outside world. The inimitable Fela had the molue in mind when he sang about "59 standing, 99 sitting - shuffering and shmiling". Molue commuters rarely think of suffering; they smile in spite of their circumstances. I was part of that world until the inevitable happened. I bought a car.

Car-owners, especially in Lagos, are glad that they do not have to undergo the enormous stress induced by the transportation crisis in the city. But buying a car, was for me, a kind of class suicide. A ride in a car is a solitary exercise; you are cut off from the world of ordinary people. You listen only to voices of your kind. You suddenly belong to a class. The transformation is both social and psychological. But the molue is the parliament of the poor. Ordinary people do not always have a chance to speak to the rich in society. Their voices are rarely heard. When they are allowed to speak, it is only when there has been a disaster (bomb explosion, fire outbreak, vehicle accidents) and the entire community is forced to drop everything else, and show compassion. But after a few politically correct responses from society, the ordinary Nigerian is immediately forgotten. Life moves on.

I had problems getting used to the ownership of a car. For about three months, I could not drive the car. A friend and colleague assisted me to move it around. I felt lonely. I left the car at home on many occasions and took the Molue. Everyone advised that I should start getting used to being a big man. Eventually, I began to drive. And I started enjoying it. My trips in the Molue soon became a thing of the past. Even if I missed the theatre of the Molue world, it did not matter anymore. The car was a Tokunbo. Naturally. I was now pre-occupied with trips to the mechanic, vulcaniser, auto-electrician, and the battery charger and the panel beater. Tokunbo cars always have one aliment or the other. They have helped to create jobs for a large community of artisans: the best in the world in the art of refurbishing and reconstructing what the white man had created, used and discarded as scrap. Ownership of a car brought me face-to-face with the sheer inhumanity of Nigerians, demonstrated on a daily basis, in the crazy mannerisms of Lagos drivers. Then, the police who expect you to pay them on a daily basis. Then, armed robbers, car-jackers and the potholes on the roads. But a car is like light: you soon get used to it. Driving past a Molue, I imagined the excitement therein. But I could not summon the courage to return to the past. The past is the greatest enemy of poor and ordinary people. Some persons are born lucky. Their past is as certain as their future. But for others, the past is a lost country, the present is a ladder to a future of dreams...

The other day, I finally found the courage to embark on an experimental trip in the Molue. First, as I stood at the Ojota bus-stop, I had problems entering the bus. I was struck by its nature: a home-made metal contraption, capable of falling apart in an accident situation. I suddenly remembered that the Lagos State Government had once threatened to ban the Molue if the owners did not restructure it to ensure that the exits are better and the windows wide enough to allow proper ventilation. This was in the event of a Molue going up in flames on the Third Mainland Bridge, and the passengers burnt to death, others jumped into the ocean, because there were no ready routes of escape. There was no ocean between Ojota and Yaba, but still I was uncomfortable. I looked at the faces of the other intending passengers - the same types with whom a decade earlier, I used to chat heartily and exchange views about the Nigerian state and politics - I squirmed. Many of the persons around me looked as if they had just returned from either the prison, or a psychiatric hospital. When they talked, they sounded as if they were shouting. One man beside me belched, even when he had not finished a meal. On the other side was a physically present woman. I heard a loud sound. I could bet that she was the one breaking the air. The sound was followed by a foul smell. All this was while I was waiting, in the midst of the commotion of Ojota under the bridge, trying to make up my mind whether to enter the Molue or hail a cab. I resolved in favour of the Molue.

One Molue after another arrived. I found I could not rush to the tailboard, and get into the bus. There were so many people, rushing, elbowing, scrambling to get on with the day ahead. One pregnant woman elbowed me aside. I didn't know what to do. I felt a set of fingers trying to get into my pockets. I had to step aside. Other molue buses arrived. I simply could not make it. I hated myself. I seemed to have lost my Molue skills. "God, what happened to me?", I asked no one in particular. Soon, the crowd reduced. Another Molue bus arrived. I got onto it. As I tried to find a seat, I was struck by a pungent smell. I looked around. A woman was breast-feeding her baby, exposing her mammary glands to the world. Some of the passengers looked like they had not had breakfast; they looked hungry. The bus had hardly covered a 100 metres, when the conductor began to ask for the fare. At every bus stop, the Molue took on more passengers. In a matter of minutes, the combination of the smell of armpits and cheap clothes was so suffocating, I could no longer breathe. I began to feel dizzy. One ragged looking fellow stood up and asked us to pray. Shortly after the prayer, which ended with a popular chorus which the rest of the bus sang, another fellow stood up to announce that he was a medicine-seller. He had, he said a wonder-drug which is capable of curing everything from herpes to malaria to HIV/AIDS. This was a familiar scene from the past, but I thought Molue commuters would have grown wiser. But as it happened, the man found so many customers. The quack pharmacist who should be talking to Dora Akunyili and the police had hardly taken his seat when another person, an old man stood up. He had a lot of nice things to say. But in the end, he told us that he was selling goodluck charms. He had the biggest sale of the day. On every row, there were requests for his magical powder to be soaked in honey, and licked every morning. Some of the customers included many of the persons who sang a Christian chorus only a few minutes earlier. Even the preacher who asked all of us to embrace Jesus Christ, asked for the magical powder!

By now, I was sweating and panting. The two guys beside me tried to start a conversation. One of them was reading a newspaper, and he had reacted to a political issue that interested him. The other fellow joined him, and started expressing an opinion. In the past, I would have joined the discussion, immediate neighbours would also have made their own contributions. But I was tired. At the next bus-stop, I quickly disembarked. As I stepped down, I felt a rush of fresh air in my face. It was as if I had just escaped from a prison. As the Molue disappeared jauntily into the distance, I felt as if a part of me had died. I thought of the past as an alien land. Instinctively, I raised my hand and waved to the Molue...

vicbussi:
eko tuntun. NEW LAGOS

musulumi:
Molue!!! U guys shouldn't start this nah...

It keeps reminding me of a strongly pierced Ukwu I rested my John Thomas on from Oshodi to Abule egba dis faithful day while standing. She never complained. She even positioned well for me.

Still searching for d likes since then though....fun

Dyt:


Oniyeye


I rem this day I wore a top that had all my cleavage in the open
This yeye man elbow the first time, I cleared throat, he said sorry
Sec time I looked he said sorry
Third time was a sounding slap
He didn't even say Nada
He got down half way cos I kept talking
Oloshi
Agbaya
Oniranu
Touch me one more time and I will strip u

And another time, I cldnt just do anything
I let the man have his way
He kept rubbing my bum with his thing
I wanted him pour so he cld be disgraced
He got down with a huge hard on
Ppl laughed at him ehn

Dyt:


I will scream
Shey eya werey sir
Abi won tele yin
Ti owo yin abi arayin ba kan mi
Igbobi leti ma laju

And mostly old men oo
The only Hosp I knew then was igbobi

Truckpusher:
I push my truck through that route everyday and they are always jumping queue.

mkoabiola:
If u no enter ds molue ,u are not a true lagosian.
44 sitting,99 standing.
D day I will nva forgt was dday a big rat fell frm d roof of molue
See as everybody scatter

Svelteb:
lmao, u r a case oooo

DollyParton1:



I would have fainted I was in that bus.

AZeD1:


Might be

Truckpusher:
Yes o, for Ojuolegba police post.

Case file number 2.

Attempted escape from caracta's embrace.