Until today, anytime I want to embark on a road trip using a bus, I get sick imagining what is waiting for me...
The leaders of each Local government were called for a compulsory meeting, where no invited members were allowed to miss, except for a genuine reason. An absence meant that the defaulter would pay a fine.
The event was to start by 7pm and my town to the event city was just about two hours drive, so I decided to get on the journey by 4pm. The transport system was a drop-by-drop pattern. The first bus I entered became my trauma. I sat at the back, close to the window side and just 30 minutes into the journey, motion sickness held me so badly like a 6-month pregnant woman. It was so bad that I couldn't hold my system, and I puked while the bus was moving. Yeah, I puked through the window and the people who sat close to me saw everything and began to console me with all manner of stuff such as sprinkling water on my head and asking if I was sick before I entered the bus. Before I knew it, the bus which I considered to be long, had everyone concerned about my health status and I was treated like a sick person.
Did the nausea stop?
Nope, the stomach rotation was still there and the urge to puke the second round was there but I summoned the courage to hold it back because I didn't want the driver to drive me to the hospital as all the passengers were suggesting. We got to the first junction, and I came out and quickly rushed to the nearest gutter to puke again. I couldn't continue the journey, I had to rest in that spot for about an hour before I boarded a motorcycle and returned home. Yeah, using a motorcycle to travel back was very expensive but that was the alternative for me because I couldn't dare to use a bus or any type of vehicle.
The post drama happened...
Since then, I found it very hard to travel knowing that motion sickness was after my life. But then, it was during the NYSC year and we had to travel a lot. I was dodging all of the journeys and the ones I couldn't dodge, I had to pay high cost to use motorcycles.
Then, time got to where we had to travel to the state headquarters to rectify an issue in a particular bank that's not in my city. There was no way to use a motorcycle because it was very far.
Two days before the fixed day, the fear of what I was going to experience came knocking very hard. I didn't know whether I was going to experience the same thing again or not, but I was just scared and the thought of the scene of me in the bus again got my stomach feeling the same way. I tried so hard to shun the thought but by then, my stomach had adopted the effect already and guess what, I puked that same day. Jeeeez! I hated myself, I hated my body system that day!
Guess what? The day came, we boarded a bus, the effect came, very heavily but I was able to fight it and I didn't puke.
Image: Chatgpt