The sounds of my memoir

Writing memoir evokes memories, visceral and palpable. The sounds, smells and tastes of my childhood have come flooding back which such clarity, I have often felt I was back home, in the Lagos of my youth, the Lagos of the 1970s and 1980s.

Writing just a few chapters, these were some of the sounds that enveloped me:

• “Oshodi. Yaba. Stadium!” – the syncopated calls of the danfo bus conductors shouting out to passersby on the street
• The rumbling of generators 
• The chirping of the crickets after dark  
• Incessant honking of buses and ocadas in go-slow traffic
• The drone of imperceptible words from the gate-man’s radio at night-time
• The high-pitched jingle playing on a loop as an ice cream truck circles our neighbourhood  
• “Puff puff, pure water” – the calls of the street hawkers weaving between the cars in stand still
• The humming of the air conditioner and the drip drip of the water at the back 
• “Jesus is Lord. Hallelujah!” – call and response in Church
• “How far?” The area boy shouts to his nearest companion as they skulk the streets of Lagos  

What are the sounds you remember from your childhood?