Summer in the city: A Igoni Barrett on a rainy bus ride in Lagos

The writer on a stressful commute in Nigeria's largest city on a day of downpours in 2007

Read other authors on their memorable urban summers

It had been raining all day the way an old goat pees, in fits and starts, with bleats of sunshine in between. This was a weekday in July 2007, the magical year I moved to Lagos, and only a few months into the nine-to-five that lured me over. The excitement of waking up every day at 5am and catching a jam-packed danfo bus for the two-hour commute had since curdled in my wannabe-writer's heart. I was standing at Obalende bus stop that afternoon after work, with no bus in sight for the past 40 minutes and rumours of a citywide gridlock swirling around, when the rain started again, a sun shower, proof, they say, that a lion is being born.

Fare hikes were expected on days of heavy traffic, but this time the fare had tripled. Outraged howls rent the air