Banwo (Ajokuta mamomi)

June 29, ODUSOLA AYOMIKUN

Banwo
(Ajokuta ma momi)

          Banwo tightened his grip on the steering wheel of the rattling yellow bus as it bounced over another pothole. The Lagos night was thick with heat and fumes, and the old danfo coughed like an old man with bad lungs. It was almost 11 p.m., but the streets still hummed with reckless noise: hawkers still yelling just to sell their goods, drivers even were not left out with horns blaring. It seemed as though the night is the dawning of another day.

“Last bus! Mile 2! Mile 2 straight!” 

He had shouted earlier that evening, his voice raw from the daily grind. Now the bus was empty, the day’s passengers long gone, and all that remained was the dull ache in his back and the low hum of his frustration. At 25 he was nothing but a danfo driver trying to survive in the chaotic streets of Lagos. His everyday was actual basic; the usual navigating potholes, shouting agberos, and the daily grind at the motor park.

Life seemed to have been unfair to him. His childhood had been hard, born to a drunkard father and his mother abandoning them while he was five. His stepmother had double up as a mother figure but he'd faced hardship once again at her death and had been forced to drop out in JSS3. Since then, he’s lived alone in a single-room apartment in Ajegunle.

He hated this life.

Not because of the driving; no, he respected the wheel. Driving was honest work. But because nothing ever changed. The park was ruled by extortionists, agberos who claimed daily “dues” from poor drivers like him. The government? Absent, except when they showed up to harass them or seize their buses. And yet, through it all, Banwo stayed clean. He didn’t steal. He didn’t fight. He drove his route, collected his change, and minded his business. Still, minding your business didn’t mean your heart didn’t bleed.

He thought of Titi; her laughter, her long eyelashes, the smell of her coconut oil perfume. He loved her, maybe more than she deserved. She was always asking for more: a new wig, a new phone, money for her cousin’s birthday. Banwo always gave what he could, and when he couldn’t, he hoped he could. Lately, he suspected she was seeing someone else. But he told himself, if only I had more money, she’d be loyal. She would stop messing around.

He'd passed the turn leading to Ajegunle and veered onto a less traveled route by Epe, an obvious shortcut home. It was quieter here, almost too quiet. It was also a notorious street known for gross misdemeanor. Most at times area boys were seen lurking about and hence the plight of their victims. The darkness was thick as the night wrapped itself around the bus like a warning. Suddenly he spots a car ahead on the roadside. 

It was a black Toyota Corolla parked awkwardly on the right part of the road. The driver's door was flung open and the headlights still on. As he slowed down, he heard a faint scream from the nearby bush. It was sharp and terrifying. Banwo’s heart jumped into his throat. He parked the danfo hurriedly and grabbed the small rechargeable torch he kept under his seat. The light flickered weakly as he approached the car, there was no one in sight. 

Another cry. This time it was clearer; a woman’s voice. He rushes in to find her. There in the bush, he finds a young woman lying half-conscious and her clothes torn. She was on the ground, barely dressed, her face swollen and there was a deep gash on her arm. Her lips trembled as she tried to speak. He rolled his light around the bush, her attackers were gone, scattered by his arrival. She looked extremely horrified with her every attempt to speak failing into a painful whisper. 

For a minute there, Banwo imagined what could have happened to the lady, why she plyed this street at this time of the day. Suddenly he suspects her mumbling some words as she looked at him for help, pointing in the direction in which he came.

Banwo crouched beside her, heart pounding. “Aunty, you dey hear me?”

She nodded weakly.

“I go help you. Just hold on.”

He raced back toward the road to get her bag and maybe find her ID. He flung open the car door and froze.  

A black duffel bag sat on the passenger seat. Unzipped. Inside it was stacks of naira. Bundles of neatly wrapped notes in fiftys, hundreds, thousands. His throat dried instantly. This wasn’t pocket change. This was millions. In a split second his life flashed before his very eyes with the wind cursing through his soul. He remembered the day his mother left, it was like the wind had blown dust off a sealed box in his chest, a box he’d spent years burying.

She didn’t shout. She didn’t fight. She just packed her bags one morning while his father was passed out drunk. Banwo remembered standing at the door, barefoot, watching her walk into the rising sun.

He remembered her last words, whispered like a secret:

“You get sense, Banwo. Don’t be like your papa.”

Then she was gone.

For a long time, Banwo thought she would come back. His father, Pa Alade, was once a tall, strong man who drove trailers and told stories about the North. But after he lost his job, he became someone else, someone who sat shirtless in the front yard drinking burukutu from morning till night, arguing with himself and chasing women like flies.

The women came and went. Some kind, some cruel. One of them stayed long enough to become Banwo’s stepmother. A widow named Mama Foluke. She sold rice by the roadside and used to comb his hair every Sunday, humming church hymns under her breath. She was the closest thing to warmth Banwo had known since his mother left. Life had been pretty good, miraculously his father began healing until Mama Foluke's death. It happened one rainy morning when her kiosk caught fire from a faulty stove. Banwo remembered her screams and the smell of burning nylon.

He never forgot it.

After she died, did the worse began. His father no longer had a woman to absorb his frustration. He became ill and was diagnosed of a liver disease. Not to long after his father died, officially making him an orphan, with a dead father and a mother he wasn't sure was alive. He was in JSS3 then, doing fairly well in school, but after missing too many classes, he was told not to return.

No fees. No guardian. No hope.

He looked back at the bush.

Her scream echoed again in his mind and his hand trembled as it hovered over the bag. His heart pounds. This money could change everything. He could buy a new bus, rent a better apartment. Take Titi away from this place and get could both start afresh.

He holds the bag, looks back at the bush but his legs wouldn’t move. Not away from her. Not tonight.

With a curse under his breath, he slammed the car door shut, scooped the woman into his arms, and rushed her into the danfo. 

At the hospital, they took her into emergency care. He sat outside, shaking, covered in dirt and blood. A nurse came out with a clipboard. “You’re the one who brought her?”

“Yes,” he said, voice hoarse.

“We need details. Name, if possible.”

“I no know her name.”

“She kept mumbling something... ‘Sayo Alade.’ Sound familiar?”

Banwo stared at the nurse, stunned. The noise of the hospital faded. His ears rang. His palms went cold.

Sayo Alade.

She was his sister.