Two states, two stories

_{photo by Jake Blucker}

I grew up in Lagos state, Nigeria, arguably one of the busiest state in the country with two times (if not more than that) the population than it can handle. So doing anything in Lagos has always been a struggle, chaotic, from standing on a very long queue to vote, to trying to get into a public transport vehicle.

The same thing applies to the traffic too. Lagos traffic has always been a nightmare, you could spend more than five hours on the same spot in a vehicle and when you eventually drive to the cause of the traffic, you find absolutely nothing there.. So yeah, get ready to spend hours and hours in traffic for absolutely no reason at all.

But you see, although all of this might seem like a bad thing (and it is), it kinda prepared me for the worse wherever I found myself, and I used to think that was a good thing until I traveled to an entirely different state and found out that where I used to live in Lagos state was nothing but a zoo, compared to other states in the country.

You see in Lagos state, whenever it was time for you to go out, you have to prepare for the worse, especially during the rush hours (which is mostly on weekends). You have to prepare to struggle or fight to get into a commercial bus, while also guarding your bags and valuable possessions.

I remember this one time where I got my phone stolen while I was trying to get into a bus to go to a church vigil. What was crazy was the fact that my earpiece was plugged into that phone and I was listening to a song. Yet I didn't find out that it was missing until I was done struggling with the other guys for a spot in that vehicle. And guess what, I ended up not even getting into the damn bus because it got filled up quick.

But unlike Lagos, it's a complete different thing over here. Here, you have buses queuing up and basically pleading with you to come get in, and this probably due to the fact that here isn't as populated as Lagos state, so there really isn't that much customers here, as there is over there.

Also, over here, the roads are far more better than that of Lagos state where you have pot holes everywhere and have to hold on to something or risk hitting your head on the roof of the vehicle whenever the bus runs into one of those pot holes. I and my brothers used to make this joke that if you can drive in Lagos, you can drive anywhere else in the world.

But you see, it's not always rosey on this side of the country, because the one thing this place do have in common with Lagos state, is the prices of transportation. Although I don't think it's as high as that of Lagos state (I haven't been there in a while), it is high nevertheless, most especially during the festive seasons where people have to travel down here from various part of the world to come celebrate..

Although I don't really blame the drivers for the hike in prices, because these drivers tend to increase their prices based on how much they get petrol.. So the more expensive petrol gets, the more expensive it is to pay for transportation.

But aside from that, it's all good here.