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Oshodi: Enter with your Change


In the late 80s and early 90s if you never visited the Bar Beach in Lagos, you are a novice, but my parent never took us there for obvious reasons as there were so many stories of children drowning and a lot of diabolical stuff happening there, so it was a no-go area. As a barrack child that has zero regards for authority, I broke this rule with my partner in crime, Gee. One day, Gee and I discussed how come we will be in this Lagos and never visit the Bar Beach, in fact, we must plan to see this place ourselves.

We pulled all the money we could lay hands on and in this group was me, my 10-year-old younger brother, Gee and his 13-year-old brother, I was 12 then. We were so excited and because we will not get approval, we were quite discrete that no one knew where we would be that day. We took a bus from PWD to Oshodi, paid for 2 seats while we ‘lapped’ our brothers and did the same from Oshodi to Obalende. The trip to Obalende was fun as the third mainland bridge was recently opened and the drive over the lagoon was a beauty to behold and remember we are going to have fun at the famous Bar Beach and finally tick that off our bucket list.

Eventually, we arrived Bar Beach from Obalende at about noon, and the fun began. We went swimming cautiously, went horse riding, had loads and loads of candy also played soccer with some boys we met at the beach and about 3pm we decided it’s time to start heading out before anyone observes we were missing. At that time, there was no organized bus stop, which meant buses stop anywhere to pick up especially when they see a crowd (I guess it hasn’t changed). The way back was to take Obalende bus from Bar beach, then Oshodi from there and Ikeja right after, suddenly we heard a conductor screaming at the top of his lungs, “Oshodi, Oshodi, Oshodi, wole pelu change ee (enter with your change)”! Gee went to ask him how much is it from to Oshodi? And he mentioned a fraction of what it would have cost us.

If you recall at the start of the journey we had to scrap all that we had to go on this once in a lifetime trip so we only have enough for transportation back and to make things wonderful, we had a direct bus from Bar beach to Oshodi at a fraction of what it cost us coming the other way. Rather than “lap each other” we decided to seat comfortably and paid for 4 seats as we now have enough change. We also bought ice cream on the way to Oshodi in traffic as we had so much money left with us.

Dear beloved, the journey to Oshodi was very brief and in 15 minutes conductor screamed, https://omobarrack..com/2019/01/oshodi-enter-with-your-change.html

This is not a love story! The Barrack is a place where competition is normal, people compete for the weirdest things back in the days, like who was the first family to buy video TV, or VHS player or which block has the best football team. It was really ridiculous, but we love it and that made us who we are today. When it comes to music, the Barrack was an entity on his own, the culture was heavily influenced by the contemporary music at that time. Hip-hop artist like Tupac and Biggie were our role models even local artist like Baba Fryo and Daddy Showkey were very popular and we could sing songs from their albums cover to cover. In fact, there are rumours that some of the popular dance steps credited to the Ajegunle kids were copied from us. You might know the popular dance steps of Galala, Suwo but have you heard of Eeeba.

Eeeba was a funny type of dance that you will scream the word and the same time thrust for left leg forward while bending forward and stay in that position for about 30 seconds while shaking your leg to the rhythm of the song. This might be ridiculous in 2019 but in 1995, it was bae! In all of these dancing madness, there emerged a new King of dance, Chucks! He was a lady’s man, and envy of all the guys. He was the standard for dancing and good looks and he reign supreme at all events and parties in the Barracks. If there is any new dance that is out everyone waits for Chuck to do it and whatever he does is the yardstick.

Story continues here: https://omobarrack..com/…/the-legend-of-juliet-and-…

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