Even though I have decided not to write about my day to day life on this blog, I cannot resist this particular episode.
I started off this week, this morning by driving a cab!
How did a female business consultant in a smart grey suit on her way to work end up driving a yellow cab?....
I am laughing as I remember this thing and try to narrate it.
This morning, I left home at 6.15 to get a cab to take me to work at Victoria Island; and the hold up was already building with alarming rapidity by the time I got a cab.
We meandered our way up third mainland bridge where surprisingly there was no hold up and with delight we careened down the bridge at Muson Centre, right past Tafawa Balewa Square, past Broad Street cutting out at Marina and there we joined a stand still holdup … we lost all the good time we had made and at some point I began to doze… in a bid to prevent myself from fretting… it was a quarter to 8.
We had moved about 15 feet in 25 minutes when the driver called my attention,
“Ah aunty, aunty I’m not okay at all o”
“What is wrong now?”
“Ah aunty I want to shit o…. now now….”
“Ah! Now now like how? Do it after you have dropped me now”
“Aunty I cannot wait any more o…. I have been holding it since… since we climbed third mainland bridge o…. but this hold up is too much…. I cannot hold it anymore”
“I have to get to work! I am running late…. How can you want to do that now now… I don’t understand o”
“Aunty, can an adult like myself come and shit on myself?.... allow me to beg those people in that coca cola depot to let me use their toilet o”
“You will now leave the car in the hold up?.... try and change to the side lane then so you can park further down or something” I grumbled
“Aunty I cannot wait that long o… please…. Can you drive?.... help me be moving the car small small I will meet you in front”
“osi gini?.... I should drive your taxi?.... I should be moving your taxi?”
“Yes aunty, shebi you can drive…. Please aunty”
Next thing the guy is jumping out of the cab and I am jumping into the driver seat of a yellow cab in a hold up in Lagos in broad day light!
Oh me God! I began to laugh at myself….
As I moved the cab forward…. I heard a few people in other cars begin to laugh and snigger…
One guy on the road side called out ‘Taxi … Oshodi’ at me….. Didinrin!
Would you believe I had barely moved the car two feet when my phone began to ring,
“Tyger is that you?”
“What happened to good morning, I thought….
“Is that me where? I asked innocently.
“This is Jumoke and I can see someone that looks like you driving a yellow cab”
“A woman driving a yellow cab?... how can? I replied laughing.
“In fact it is you, I am sure…. Why now, where is the driver?”
“lol…. Please there is lastma down the road… biko I have to go”
I moved the cab some more and the phone rings again…. Stupidly I pick again.
“Hello Tyger, good morning”
Ah someone else with some more manners.
“This is Bolaji, are you the one I can see driving a taxi?”
Suddenly the whole world can see me!!!!
The day I was cruising my friend’s ‘end of discussion’ and the day I drove another friend’s lovely convertible, nobody saw me…. Not a soul called my phone to say ‘babe I can see you, you are tight o’…. but I start the engine of a yellow cab and my phone is going haywire on me…. God dey!!
Anyway, I drove the cab some more before the cab driver came running, grinning from ear to ear.
“Aunty, Thank you, I don come o”
So I go back to my back seat, my chick rep in tatters…. After driving a yellow cab in broad daylight!
