Editor’s Note: In partnership with The 2024 Abebi Award in Afro-Nonfiction, Isele Magazine publishes the winner, the runner-up, and the notable essays selected by the curators of the award. Shalom Tewobola’s “A Molue Epiphany ” is a notable entry.
Award Founder’s Note: Part-travelogue, part internal monologue, “A Molue Epiphany” is Lagos through the eyes of a young woman making her way around the city with all its charms and traps. What does home mean? And is it something we can lose? And find again? With a colourful cast of characters intermingled in the cacophony of the city that never sleeps, we watch a young woman make a home of herself.
The yellow of the Molue blazes like molten gold in the afternoon sun. I inhale the tang of bus air—a mixture of palm oil, aging rubber, and humanity—lift my face to the rusted vehicle roof as a man bumps into my shoulders while entering. His sweat-dampened suit brushes against my arm. “Obalende, Lekki, VI!,” the conductor’s voice cut through car horns and street hawkers, his chant a familiar melody that draws passengers like me.
In Lagos, transportation tells its own stories of survival. There’s the infamous danfo, the regular yellow bus with black stripes Lagos government designed to carry seven passengers but often, the drivers cram in more. Among Lagos residents, danfo has earned its reputation as the preferred vehicle for “one chance”— a term that softens the brutal reality of kidnapping and robbery into something almost euphemistic, the way Nigerians often do with hardships.
I might have welcomed such a fate seven years ago, sitting in a Micra taxi in Ibadan. As the conductor collects fares now, I catch my reflection on the scratched window—in my NYSC uniform—and remember another version of myself: the girl who watched all her friends disappear into university life without her. There are occasions where something fundamental withers inside you, something that never truly regenerates, and that was one of such occasions. I remember standing in the school corridor, the walls echoing with celebrations as I held my JAMB results to my chest like a shield, willing my tears to retreat. That night, I bargained with every god I knew, threatening to abandon my faith if I didn’t secure admission for Medicine and Surgery. Like many desperate prayers, mine went unanswered. Later, I would realize how that rejection sent me on a path to finding a home—outside institutions or my parents’ expectations.
“TBS no be Obalende, I no dey pay 1,500 when I go still board keke to Obalende,” a girl who, like me, wore the NYSC uniform, said. The conductor, his fingers stained with something that resembled Egusi soup, responded in Yoruba which translates roughly to “That’s not my problem.” The faces in the bus clench at his dismissal, passengers erupt in protest, the girl’s voice rising above the din, and the conductor’s voice rising even louder. The energy of the argument rocks the bus, someone’s flailing arm catches my wig, making me jerk upward and slam my knee against the hard metal seat.
The second transportation known to the common Lagosian is the Molue. It is a contradiction—massive as a coaster bus yet somehow more intimidating, its loose bolts and rickety frame suggesting imminent collapse. This was my baptism into Oshodi’s transport system. My recent move from Yaba to Egbeda was a harsh lesson in economics: Bolt rides, with their air-conditioned comfort, were a luxury my salary couldn’t consistently sustain. Perhaps when my dreams of becoming a millionaire writer materialize—but for now, this occasional use of the bus would have to do.
The chaos subsides, and I find myself wedged between a man and his mother. Their hands pass groundnuts and bread across my head like I am a part of their family assembly line. Sweat trickles down my back, and I wonder if financial ruin via Bolt rides might have been preferable to this particular form of Lagos initiation.
Two passengers who appear to be in their early 20s come in, reminding me of the first few months of NYSC, another lesson in the impermanence of borrowed homes. My friend and I shared a self-contained apartment in Yaba. We bonded over universal corper experiences—the irritable that bordered on flirty “corper weeee” greetings from men, the militant “corper shun” at gatherings, and locals mistaking an allowance of 33,000 naira for wealth. Having spent my entire life in Ibadan, I thought I’d found my home in Lagos through her friendship. We had our rituals: conversations after work, going out during the weekends, shared meals after long days. But like every home I’d tried to build in others, this too had walls.
Despite living with people for most of my life, nothing prepared me for the silent accumulation of grievances. She collected them like a secret Ajo—what Yoruba women did to save money each month for their family. She stuffed each small irritation into her stash, until one day, days after my birthday, she sealed the stash completely.
The engine’s rumble felt like a generator awakening, jerking me back to reality. Nigerian, Australian, and American flags stuck to the windscreen, danced against each other. Stickers of Nigeria’s Afrobeats big three—Burna Boy, Wizkid, and Davido—decorated the dashboard, their faces peeling at the corners.
The bus lurches forward, and the conversation behind me grows more animated. “My brother, this country don pass be careful,” Mister Deep Voice said, his tone carrying the weight of recent hardships. “I sent my wife to America last month. The school fees we’re paying there, you won’t believe it, but still better than watching your children suffer here.”
“You’re lucky o,” Mister Croaky Voice responded, shifting in his seat. “My wife went last year. These days, to even buy food for myself alone is war. Yesterday, I went to the market—”
“Don’t even talk about market!” a woman interjected, her voice sharp with frustration. “Rice that we were buying 15,000 is now 45,000. I don’t even know what to feed my children at home. Even garri that used to be the—”
“That’s why my pastor’s prophecy about Tinubu is coming true,” Mister Croaky Voice said in yoruba, leaning forward. “He said this administration would bring hunger that will make Buhari’s time look like Christmas.”
Mister Deep Voice laughed, but it carried no humor. “Even my Benz is now decoration for the garage. The fuel money could rent a house in some states.”
“Your Benz?” Mister Croaky Voice perked up. “You never mentioned—what model is it again?”
Their performance of prosperity reflected something uniquely Lagosian—the ability to maintain dignity while pressed shoulder-to-shoulder in a molue, the determination to hold onto status even as it slips away, and the resilience to have a home you, like these people, can call your own.
Dwin the Stoic’s “Home” played in my thoughts, silencing the bus’s chatter. Since I attended his concert, I listened to him every day, so most of his lyrics were stuck in my head.
Home is all I ever knew you were
And home's the only place I know to run
If someone were to compile my life’s story, the constant search for home would be its spine. I’ve learned that home transcends physical walls; instead, it’s the warmth of belonging, the safety net you seek when the world around you spins. I once found it in a dark-skinned boy whose laughter made me laugh too, whose eyes sparkled beneath coily hair in the sunlight. His voice had been my anthem, making me believe in endless possibilities again.
And I'm still hoping that you hear me now
There's nothing here for me outside your arms
When did those sparkling eyes dim? Was it after promises of forever, after declarations of his love for me? When did his heart stop composing songs? At what point had I lost my home? Perhaps the desperate need to find a home in others sprouted from my own fractured childhood home—but that story deserves its own space.
I wanna come home
“Talo she kini yen nau?” the groundnut-eating man beside me demanded, though his mother’s knowing laughter confirmed my suspicions. Someone had farted. Everyone coughed and cursed, including me, Mister Croaky Voice demanded an emergency stop. The conductor looked up and shook his head as if regretting coming to work today. Mister Deep Voice muttered something in Arabic.
“Sorry sorry, I’ll buy you sweet,” a woman holding her baby who had begun to cry, said. Our driver, separated by a metal compartment, hummed along to Wizkid’s Ojuelegba, as if immune to our suffering. I wondered if like me, he was also having realizations in his head.
****
In my third year in university, I met another attempt at home in human form. He was a boy who lacked my first love’s height and sparkling eyes, whose voice carried none of the melody I had known before, but who knew me completely. If nineteen had brought teenage love, twenty-two delivered who I thought was my soulmate. We shared everything. Now, his face has faded from memory, defensive amnesia protecting me from the pain that once threatened to swallow me whole. All I remember is that he, too, had been home.
As we approach TBS, the air thick with sighs and complaints, I catch my reflection again in the window. The woman looking back at me had built something permanent from all these temporary homes. I saw it in the way I now carried myself—shoulders straight despite the discomfort, smile genuine despite the chaos, just like what welcomed me in Lagos on my first day as a corper. The January air was still laced with harmattan dust, leaving my skin dry and taut. My mother warned me, “You can’t handle Lagos stress, Shalom.” I knew she was right, but my spirit insisted—this was something I had to do. So I left the ones who loved me to chase a dream I barely understood, hope causing me to dream of better. When I told my mother why, I condensed the truth into something simpler: “I’m going to follow my passion.”
I remember sitting alone at a desk in Yaba, sending pitches and writing stories that felt like pieces of my soul. One day in March when it felt as though hell itself had descended upon Earth, the owner of the workstation turned to me and asked, “What do you do?”
“Writer,” I replied. Her face twisted like she’d tasted one of those sour candies I liked.
There was a hint of pity in her glance before a customer’s call pulled her away. Being a writer means diving into yourself, facing hard truths, and wrestling with emotions. I wondered if she had ever needed to do that, and in that moment, I felt a quiet joy for her. Her job didn’t demand that she confront her deepest truths, like mine did.
My shaky resolve gave way to steadiness on a rainy night. I cried and asked the universe for clarity. As though God had heard my prayer, my mother called to tell me she was proud of me. That singular moment became my truth. It didn’t matter that the woman at the workstation didn’t understand. I understood, my mother understood. That night, the relentless question—Will I ever be enough?— finally faded. I dropped the measuring stick I had carried for so long. And when the city slept, I found comfort in my orange notebook, letting my words echo back to me like a familiar voice. It was enough. I was enough.
Now, as I sit in the rattling molue, I add a few lines about today’s journey in that same notebook. Its pages are filled with fragments of dreams, questions, and stories. I see myself in those words, the cracks and the wholeness.
“Yellow pawpaw,” the conductor’s voice cut through my reverie as the bus wheezed to a stop. “Shoti san wo sha?”
I meet his gaze, standing straighter in my white and green uniform. The old me would have fumbled, feeling displaced and defensive. But this me—the one who had learned to be her own home—simply smiled.
“Check,” I replied.
As I climb off the bus with my bag secure under my arm, I realize that home isn’t just a feeling. It is every word I write, every rejection I survive, every small victory I celebrate, and every step I take on Lagos’s streets. The city might never stop moving, but I had finally stopped looking for home.
About the Author:
Shalom Tewobola is a writer finding herself. She loves to write about film, pop culture, and non-fiction. You can find more of her works at culturecustodian.com and on twitter @shaquille__t.
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