A Day in the Life of a Danfo Conductor
Osa starts work at 4:45 AM with a prayer and a wad of small notes. By 5:15 he is hanging out of the door of a yellow bus heading for Oshodi, calling destinations like an auctioneer: CMS CMS CMS, Obalende straight.
I know every pothole on this route by first name.
A conductor is a cashier, a bouncer, a diplomat, and an athlete at the same time. Osa makes change for twenty passengers while hanging off a bus doing 60 on the Third Mainland Bridge, and he has never once fallen. He is twenty six.
The economics are brutal and precise. The owner gets his delivery, the driver gets his share, the agberos get theirs at every junction, and what is left belongs to Osa. On a good day it is enough. On a bad day there is tomorrow.
Ask him if he would leave the work and he laughs. One day, he says. But who will teach Lagos to these people? He slaps the roof twice and the bus moves. Somewhere ahead, the city is already calling its own name.
