MY TWO CENTS: THE DANFO EXPERIENCE by Blessing Edet
We must admit, past Lagos State Government administrations have to be commended for the BRT buses but commercial buses, popularly known as "danfo" especially the old, yellow coloured ones that have lived over 100 years plus are still effective and very efficient in conveying passengers to various destinations in the state.
These buses are in different forms, shapes, model and sizes at times one can associate these buses to their drivers.
These days I seem to take the bus even more than private cars and cabs, either from school, church. Either it is a visit to a friend's or an outing, we can not deny taking one trip or the other with these buses.
In a commercial bus we meet different people from different background, occupation, religion, culture and beliefs. I cannot mention different age groups, children, youths, teenagers, adults and the elderly ones. Although, I can not mention them without including people in different disabilities moving from one location to another.
These bus journeys are often as interesting and also as annoying as anything you can imagine. At times a trip from a bus station to the next can be as funny as a comedy room or as annoying as a car spilling stagnant rain water on a person waiting for the next bus ride going for a job interview.
The journeys are never a dull moment with the drivers, conductors, passenger. Not forgetting the tax collectors (touts) popularly know as the agberos. The word " agbero" literally means to" carry passengers".
They are typically at bus stops and motor parks, where buses begin their routes, and sometimes in front of shops and construction sites. They are often demanding money. Those at bus stops and are often employees of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW).
Many times, bus conversations and sleep can make a passenger to miss his or her bus stop, due to interesting issues talked about on the bus. One time I overheard a married woman giving her friend her marital advice to her friend, a single lady I found the conversation very engaging that I had to alight at the next bus stop when I had gotten enough marital sessions for women.
Other days the topic up for discussion could be on politics, on bad governments or good ones in the past, past leaders; their reigns and the projects they have accomplished. These discussion at times are always engaging that the conductors and drivers if not tired would always add a thing or two in the talks.
And let us not forget the issue of our balance, otherwise called "change". Collecting of balance after paying the conductor the estimated cost for the fare, whereby a passenger can give a conductor 500 Naira money for a fare that is just 100 Naira . You will often hear the quarrel between a payer and payee raining abuses and if possible exchange of blows that will make a driver to park the bus and separate which often leads to chaos.
Some conductors at times are jesters: their appearance, composure and response to passengers are often funny like when a conductor tells a passenger, ''you are a fine girl oooh! I like you, you no like me too?'' The funny part is not in the words but the expressions that often follow it, with some giving facial expressions that often make other passengers to burst into laughter.
I know we all have numerous experiences when taking one of those commercial bus rides, which ever the experience let's all make the best out of those fares and be our neighbour's keeper.
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