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Friday, October 19, 2012

Lagos traffic+ rain = Sleep on the road

Today is Friday and it’s a very rainy one at that in Lagos. You needed to see school children carrying their bags on their heads and sandals on their hands to swim through the flood.
What of vehicles? Hmm, they have turned into canoes as they seek out the right way to go through to avoid falling into a pot-hole or man-hole or even vehicle-hole…lol

Well, thank God I made it to office in one piece albeit splashed by a little rain.
When the rain vex in Lagos, this is the result!

The state of the roads in some parts of Lagos doesn’t make it easy for people to cope with the rains and floods. The other day after it rained, a woman peddling oranges fell into a big gutter while trying to find her way across the water-filled road. She knew there were pot-holes on the road and decided to play smart by crossing the gutter to get to the other side but the move proved to be not-so-smart after all.


When I got to the office, I was the first person in because majority of my colleagues are stuck in traffic. You see where my concern for the state of our roads comes in again? When it rains this way, the roads are messed up, your clothes get drenched (If you have no car), and at he end of the day, take hours to get to your destination because of traffic jam.

Let me day-dream for a bit.

I leave my house by 8.30am and head to work. I get to the office at 8.45am and resume work.
That will mean I journeyed from home to work in 15 minutes… Okay, Chynwe, snap out of it and get back to reality!

But who says this cannot happen in Lagos?

Someone told me the other day that Lagos can never get to that point seeing as it’s a big city. Examples such as India and some others were cited. It saddened me because I am a very hopeful person. I hope and look forward to that day when I can go from the Lagos Mainland to Island in less than an hour.

What the traffic jam brought about by state of the roads and not enough roads for the millions resident in the city of Lagos has caused eh, you cannot begin to say. In fact, most of us here have come to look at it as a way of life. Some mothers leave their homes early in the morning and get home late at night. That will mean they spend very limited time with their children and husbands.
Funny but that is what the rain can do ( Not the downpour of today o)

When it rains like it did this morning, the hope of anyone returning home early is almost shattered. I remember leaving my office with my husband and one year old son on a certain Wednesday at about 6pm. It rained and so the traffic jam was merciless. At about 11pm, we weren’t even close to home yet. I kept thinking of my son, the many things I had to put in place for work that night against the next day. When the clock struck 1am, I knew that I wouldn’t make it to work the next day since I didn’t know when I would get home. We finally got home at 2am the next day from a journey started over 6 hours before.

It’s not easy coping with the Lagos traffic but it’s even harder when it rains. Does it then mean we have to pray for the rains to go away? Nah… that will solve nothing really. I think the prayer will have to be for more roads and existing ones repaired.

Till then, let’s keep our fingers crossed while suffering and smiling.

Enjoy the cold weekend folks!

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