My Conductor Has a White Beard

7:50pm, Fadeyi Bus Stop, Lagos, Nigeria

I am watching my conductor, a dark, thin, tall man in his early thirties with a salt -and-pepper beard, watch the fuel attendant, who also spots white beards.

I watch the fuel conductor yell at him over a misunderstanding; a passenger appeals to the fuel attendant, and my conductor apologizes. The fuel attendant takes the keg and sells 5,000 units of fuel. I don't say anything. Like the last time I bought fuel in that keg, it was filled to the brim with less Naira. Or how I have always known that things have gotten bad, but maintained a willful indifference, because for me, to ruminate on the current state of things is to weep.

My conductor returns to the bus and sits beside me. He turns to me and asks if I have paid. I resist the urge to be snarky, to act sharp, to cut off embarrassment before it rears its head. I tell him gently that I paid three bus stops past. I remind him that it is me he picked from Anthony, the one who collected 100 Naira change; I only moved seats. He nods. I wonder how many faces he sees in a day, a week, a month. If they become a blur at any point. Even I wouldn't recognize the conductor from yesterday.

I am watching my conductor wipe sweat off his forehead, and I have questions. Has he eaten today? Does he go home to a warm meal and a laid bed, or resorts to food by the roadside? Is the driver kind to him? What are driver and conductor relationships like? Is he happy? Are there people who love him? Who would miss him if he ever goes missing? Does he hope for romantic love the way that I hope for love?

I am watching my conductor, and I wonder if there's a carefully curated body of knowledge one has to know to be a conductor. I have met energetic ones, the ones who can jump off and on a bus with practiced ease (the most I do is jump while the bus is in slowed motion), the ones who know how to draw a laugh from passengers, could call them, hold their bags, appeal to their sense of vanity, and lie if need be. "Yes, the bus will soon be going." "Sorry, just wait five more minutes." "Just one more passenger."

I see now, and maybe I have always seen, from drivers as old as my father, from children who beg on the street, from women who hawk by the roadside, or mallams with wheelbarrows of tigernuts and kolas, that they are just like me. People who are hopeful for something.

I wonder how they afford to live with and in this administration and how all that differentiates me from them is opportunity. I have merely been fortunate, and yet, if they moved to me, I would not hug them, I would not maintain eye contact unless absolutely necessary, I would make perfunctory greetings, and if I shook their hands, I would take my bath afterward.

I am watching my conductor, and I want to take his hands and tell him that I see him. I see him. But I don't, I can't. So, I do the next thing, I write about him.