Got my Nigerian driving license couple of weeks back but never tried to drive through the messy traffic of Lagos. Well yesterday night was my first introduction to the road being in the driving seat. Not ventured in to the so called Express way (i.e. highway as it is called in India) but was driving through the more complex network of road in the nearby localities.To be precise the lanes are not road but some sort of compressed layers of soil (Obviously compressed by vehicle movement) full of marsian craters. Driving a manual Toyota Hilux a 2.7Ltr Petrol monster. The biggest problem was driving a left hand drive manual vehicle as it causes a lot of conflict in the brain as anytime we need to shift the left hand moves in search of gear knob. Its more like riding an original Enfield for the first time. Well apart from this the public move around the road so casually that some time you believe that they might be invincible. To add to this are the Okada riders (Bike taxi as we have in Goa) who are Demigods and when on their Bikes they too become invincible. Fellow car drivers seems to be partially blind as they don't seem to notice any of the above and even the oncoming vehicle.
Well more or less the drive was good till i hit Traffic at a round about. No will let you go and nor will they go creating a web of entangled vehicle. Then starts the process of pushing the driving skills to limit. How well you can maneuver and get as close as possible to nearby vehicles without hitting them. Somehow i got out of the mess and managed to bring the Monster back home “scratch less”.
So henceforth if I say “i’ll call you back”, its probably because I am driving…
