₦airaland Forum

It was one cold bitter London morning. One of those mornings
you just want to stay under the duvet and if lucky have a woman's
fleshy body close by. Well I could neither stay under the duvet nor
did I have a woman to snuggle up to. Things had been really lean
on the female front of late but oh well. . . .

As I grudgingly set aside my quilt, feet in bathroom slippers, I
had Nigerian sunrise on my mind. Warm rays of the African sun
, cock crowing at dawn or the annoyingmuezzin calling out fanatics
and a housegirl delivering breakfast in bed, some of mummy's special
yams with scrambled eggs fried in blended pepper.

Nigeria was washed away by a strong whiff of the London autumn seeping
through god knows where. I had a white man's shower, quick rub of the armpits
and nether regions, sprays of deodorant, a quick donning of the standard office attire
and I was off to catch the bus.

I have a choice of buses to take me to the Square Mile where I work, from the unpopular
bendy bus 413 as well as the very unreliable 13 or the useless 184 which only ever
seemed to appear when you didn't need it.

On this particular morning I was stuck with the 413 and as per usual for the rush hour, it was
packed. Never mind the health hazards, garlic breaths and unwashed bodies, the warmth from
having so many bodies together was pretty welcome. Nothing exciting on the bus really, and there was
hardly any space to hold up a paper to read.

A few stops later at the Old Kent Road, the bus thinned a bit, as much of the African component
of the bus demographic scurried off i suspect to the dinghy council flats dotting this very ugly part
of London. No matter, I grabbed a vacant seat and proceeded to read the free Metro paper. It was the
usual recent fare on the front page. Impending prophecies of doom on the economic front, and of course,
another teenager got stabbed, this time in Edmonton, North London. I was reading the social pages when. . . . .

'Ol boy, that babe err, as I grab I'm waist, slap I'm yansh, my prick almost burst comot from my trouser'

I looked up from the paper to look at the source of this very uncouth unBritish interruption. He was a tall chap, probably
in his twenties dressed in that ghastly hip hop garb, oversized trousers, oversized jacket with FUBU writ large. Who wears FUBU
in this day and age anyway. His mate was dressed a lot better and that said more about how badly his young companion was
dressed, rather than his own fantastic dress sense. His grossly luminous brown leather jacket could barely conceal
an overextended gut, as it was difficult for his Shina Peter sunglasses to hide some really awful bloodshot eyes.

'I no know why you leave that other chick sha' Shina Peters was telling Fubu, 'that first one wey you grab, those I'm
breasts eh, person fit go six feet deep for inside those breasts'.

i heard a snigger or two from undoubtedly Nigerian folks on the bus.  I was sitting a fair few feet away from these two buffoons
and I could make out their words quite clearly. Plus other passengers had largely gone silent as they
paid attention to this Alaba spectacle, never looking,  only listening, because as a Londoner, you know never to make eye
contact with other Londoners.

'Abegi, leave that thing bros. . . .I be Ikebe man,' Fubu retorted.

'Wetin you mean by you be ikebe man. . . . look this whitey for here now' Shina pointed at a blonde lady
standing in that part of the bus,'see as I'm breasts pure. you go suck all the tangerine juice from those
things, and you go dey look young like me when you reach my age'.

Fubu found this so funny he almost bawled over, spread eagled on the floor. A few stared directly at them
now and this got him miffed.

'Wetin una dey look?' he asked of no one in particular in a growling tone.

'No mind them, dey no get money na wetin dey cause am'. Shina Peters suggested.

'I tell them say make dey no get money bros,' Fubu said,'If dey know say I don spend
one thousand pounds yesterday, I sure say dey go almost die for here now.' At this he laughed again,
as in laughed out loud, filling the long cavenous bus with whiffs of pungent alcohol.

Shina Peters was laughing as well now.'I sure say all the black people wey dey look us like mumu so,
na their cleaning job them dey go do so' he contributed.

'Bros, we don reach East Street, make we come down abeg'.

I could hear a few sighs of relief as the two of them got off the bus, especially from the black
folks who must have been embarrassed by the whole episode. I had a slight chuckle to myself.
Far from being embarrassed, I was glad for some early morning entertainment, and for the few
minutes those two had been on the bus, I was in a Molue not the bendy 413.

'Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen. Please, I hope you can give me your ear for a few minutes
this cold morning. I would just like to bring your attention to the best anti-flu drug that you will not
find at your local pharmacy. It is called FLUMODEM'

This time our interruptor was a middle aged man, scarified Ogbomosho style, holding his bag close to his chest
on one hand and what looked like a blue packet on the other.

I could hardly believe it. . .It almost brought a tear to my eye

I heard a few African groans, but I barely noticed anyone else. I looked out the window, and it wasn't Georgian
or Edwardian architecture. They had all morphed into those angular houses of that particular Nigerian variant.
The roads were punctuated by gutters, hawkers roamed the Elephant and castle and those red london buses
had turned a light hued yellow, with conductors hanging dare devil style.

All of a sudden, the temperature rose a fair few farenheits, and the sun shone through
just like it used to on those Lagos days of my youth.