It was 9:35am on a Monday, I had arrived Tafawa Balewa Square on my way to a 10am-interview appointment on Victoria Island. Commercial motorcycle alias Okada was the best option because I was not familiar with the address and I didn’t want to be late.

As I approached the Okada park in front of the square, they were all calling me, “Where? Where you dey go?” One of them caught my attention; he kept waving and his smile was inviting. I thought I heard him speak, but I was wrong.

“I’m going to PC1 Engineering Close” I said. He shook his head and waved hand right over his right ear and without a word brought out a jotter and a pen from his breast pocket and extended both to me. On the jotter were names of streets and prices written in different handwritings by previous passengers, I guessed.

I wrote ‘PC1 Engineering Close’. He looked at it and nodded and wrote ‘N200’ and showed me. Although N150 would have been a fair fare, I didn’t complain.

I climbed his new bike. He wore a crash helmet and gave me one and insisted I buckle it under my jaw. I felt uncomfortable under the helmet but I didn’t show it, I didn’t want offend my friend or scuttle the adventure.

He craftily meandered through the maze in the slowly moving traffic, hardly applying the brakes. At a point I wanted tell him to slow down. But I swallowed the words. “He will not hear.” So I started praying, almost audibly, that nothing will go wrong. My plan was ready: “If anything happens I will jump off this bike.”

We had just passed the Kofo Abayomi junction along Ozumba Mbadiwe Street when my friend did a scary stunt. He swerved left to right and to left again inconveniencing other bikers racing behind him. One of them shouted, “Hey, you no go stay one place? E bi like say you dey craze.” My friend did not respond, of course he did not hear a word of it. I wondered what it feels like to be deaf to all the noise of Lagos.

We arrived at 9:52am. I was relieved. I gave him a N200 note. He smiled and nodded and I returned the gesture. I stood there relishing the adventure as I watched my friend zoom out of sight.