A Lagos morning, in five photographs

At 5:40 the call to prayer is the only thing moving. The cars on Third Mainland are not yet a river; they are still droplets. A generator hums two streets over, less out of need than out of habit, and somewhere a rooster decides it is already late.

By 6:15 the bukas are warm. The woman at the corner shifts the akara from one tin to another, and the oil sighs. Her daughter, eight years old, weighs the change in her palm like a magistrate. A boy on a bicycle passes them carrying bread in a cardboard tower taller than he is.

The first danfo passes at 6:50. Three men jump on while it is still moving. The conductor's hand on the open door is, for one full second, the only thing connecting them to gravity, and then they are inside, and then the door slams, and then they are gone toward Yaba.

By 7:30 the sun is hard. The market women have laid out the day's geometry: tomatoes in pyramids, garri in mounds, peppers in two precise rows of red and yellow. Nothing is for sale yet. Everything is decided. A cat walks the length of the front of stalls without anyone seeing it.

By 8:00 the city is loud, and the morning is over, and you cannot remember it ever being quiet, which is the city's way of staying alive. The woman at the corner has sold half her akara. The boy with the bread is now home. The men on the danfo are at work. The cat has eaten.