JOY IN CHAOS

The first time Aisha laughed that week, the sound startled her.

It came out suddenly, sharp and almost foreign, like a forgotten language her body remembered before her mind did. She was standing at the edge of Third Mainland Bridge, packed into a yellow bus that smelled of sweat, engine oil, and impatience. The traffic hadn’t moved in forty minutes. A hawker outside was selling plantain chips with the confidence of a man who knew no one was going anywhere soon. And somehow, in the middle of all that madness, Aisha laughed.

The conductor had just insulted a car that didn’t exist.

“See your father’s road!” he shouted, shaking his fist at the empty space ahead.

The passengers burst into laughter, and Aisha joined them, surprised at herself. Two hours earlier, she had been on the verge of tears.

Her morning had begun at 4 a.m., as most of her mornings did. The alarm rang softly, but her body was already awake. In the tiny room she shared with her younger sister in Ajegunle, the heat clung stubbornly to the walls. Power had gone out in the night, so the fan stood useless, like a tired witness.

She washed quickly, dressed in the semi-darkness, and packed her bag. By 4:30 a.m., she was outside, joining the quiet river of people walking toward the bus stop. Some looked half-asleep. Others looked permanently awake, faces carved by routine struggle.

At the bus stop, the queue was already long.

Aisha sighed, tightening her grip on her bag. She worked as a customer service representative at a small tech firm on the Island. The pay wasn’t great, but it was steady something many people envied. Her shift started at 8 a.m., but if she left home after 5, she might as well not go at all.

That morning, buses were scarce. When one finally arrived, people surged forward, voices rising, elbows flying. Aisha managed to squeeze in, pressed tightly between bodies that felt just as tired as she did.

By the time the bus reached the bridge, traffic had completely frozen.

That was when the conductor started shouting at imaginary enemies, and laughter filled the bus.

Aisha leaned her head against the window, smiling softly. It wasn’t that the situation was funny. It was that laughter was a rebellion. In a city that demanded seriousness to survive, moments of joy felt like stolen victories.

She thought of her mother.

Her mother used to say, “If you don’t find joy where you are, Lagos will swallow you whole.”

Her mother had found joy in small things: perfectly fried akara, gossip with neighbors, old gospel songs played on a crackling radio. Even when money was tight—and it often was—she laughed easily, deeply.

After her mother passed, Aisha struggled to understand that joy. How could anyone laugh when life felt like a long, exhausting queue with no bus in sight?

Yet here she was, laughing.

The bus eventually moved, inch by painful inch. When Aisha finally got down on the Island, the sun was fully up, blazing without mercy. She arrived at work late, apologizing breathlessly.

Her manager waved it off. “Lagos happened,” he said simply.

The day crawled by in a blur of angry emails, frustrated customers, and malfunctioning systems. At some point, the internet went down, and the office buzzed with groans. Aisha rubbed her temples, exhaustion pressing down on her.

During lunch, she sat alone on the stairs outside the building, eating rice from a plastic container. As she ate, a street musician nearby began to play the saxophone. The tune was uneven, but soulful.

People slowed. Some smiled. A security guard nodded along to the rhythm.

Aisha closed her eyes and listened. For three minutes, Lagos softened.

She felt it again that quiet joy. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just enough to breathe.

That evening, rain poured suddenly, drenching the city. Streets flooded in minutes. People screamed, laughed, complained, and ran all at once. Aisha removed her shoes and joined others wading through water, holding their clothes above their knees.

Someone slipped and fell. Before embarrassment could settle, hands reached out. Laughter followed. A stranger joked, “Lagos baptism!”

By the time she got home, soaked and tired, her sister was waiting with hot noodles and a story about her own terrible day. They laughed together, loudly, freely.

Later that night, lying on her bed, Aisha thought about joy.

Joy wasn’t the absence of chaos. It was learning to dance inside it.

Lagos would not slow down. Traffic would remain brutal. Money would still be tight. Power would go off again. People would shout. Buses would disappear. Life would continue to demand more than it gave.

But joy,joy could still exist.

In laughter shared with strangers.

In music rising above noise.

In food eaten together after a long day.

In surviving another morning and daring to smile.

Aisha smiled in the dark.

Tomorrow, she would wake up at 4 a.m. again.

Tomorrow, the queue would still be long.

But tomorrow, she would carry joy with her quiet, stubborn, and alive.

And in the chaos, that would be enough.