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while the preacher called for the ‘blood of Christ to cover this bus and protect us from thieves’. By the time the bus pulled out of the motor park and rattled along the expressway, we had received a full service of hymn, prayers, and a sermon steaming with ideological fervour.
    The preacher railed against abortion, painting a scenario of an aborted foetus confronting its mother in heaven on Judgement Day.
‘ You killed me ,’ he intoned in a mock-baby voice. ‘ Wetin I do? ’ I learnt from this point onwards that there was no need to attend church in Nigeria – the church always found me no matter where I hid. And if people weren’t trying to sell God, they were selling something else, from motivational pamphlets to medicines. The city’s population density offers endless opportunities for everyone to pitch their wares, and danfos are especially handy for securing a captive audience. Once the preacher sat down, he was immediately replaced by another passenger promoting a medicine he wanted us to buy. More shouting. Like many Lagosians of all professions, he was selling merchandise on the side in order to make ends meet.
    This man was offering sachets of Chinese mistletoe tea as a cure-all for every illness under the sun. Among other things, he claimed it could reduce hair loss, boost your immune system and improve the fertility of women who ‘suffer wahala for womb’. For thirty minutes he itemised the tea’s magic powers with a surprisingly seductive eloquence and sincerity. In fact, all Lagos salesmen have an earthy and genuine sales pitch that is devoid of all that shady infomercial patter I’m accustomed to. Perhaps it’s easier for them to relax when they know they can rely on their audience’s gullibility and patience. After the mistletoe tea man finished his pitch, I watched in amazement at how many passengers reached into their pockets to buy some.
    I stared out of the window and tried to make sense of the cityscape. A torrent of humanity poured out of buses and streamed along the streets and bridges as if heading towards a big event. To the novice eye, Lagos looks a chaotic jumble, but I could see that there was method in the madness, a tapestry of interweaving lives and agendas criss-crossing each other a million times over.
    People cram themselves into any conceivable space. The spaces beneath the flyovers are used as car washes, bus stations and ad hoc mosques. I saw a pig farm by the expressway, and men getting shaves
and haircuts on the grass of a busy roundabout; the Ita Toyin Food Canteen stood proudly on the edge of a vast rubbish dump near the National Theatre. Women sold oranges next to ditches filled with evil-looking sewage sludge so black and shiny it was almost beautiful. Hawkers were selling an eccentric jumble of items, convinced that they would eventually find a buyer who would want that random squash racket or set of weighing scales. A man even roamed through the rush-hour traffic carrying two large, framed oil paintings of waterfalls. It was hard to imagine anyone buying them spontaneously and wedging them inside their vehicle. But the vendor had no such doubts, and as he strode confidently from car to car, his die-hard salesmanship appeared to be driven by something greater than financial desperation, as if he genuinely believed in his product.
    Belief, especially self-belief, seems a vital ingredient in helping people get through life in Lagos. There’s no room for equivocation or weakness. People have to compete for what they want in an environment that punishes the unambitious, the sick and the incapacitated. Street vendors need sharp eyesight in order to catch the lingering stare of a potential customer. And they need fast legs to respond to that interest and sprint alongside the moving traffic to exchange their merchandise for cash. While legless beggars lean against the central reservations and moan for charity that rarely