Hello people, welcome to my blog.
In response to the second question on this weekend experience contest, there have been so many times I have done reckless things but the one I may not forget in a lifetime was a night trip between Akure in Ondo State and Ile-Ife in Osun State.
Travels are supposed to be enjoyed by travelers but in our part of the world, Travelers move around with fear of being kidnapped by ritualists, organ harvesters or terrorists or being stolen from. Once you step out of your comfort zone, which is the environment where you live, you are expected to be extremely careful with everything and everyone you see.
It was on one of my numerous travels to Akure, I had gone to my late father's office to process some of the documents that will be needed in the payment of his pension as he died while still in active service. Meanwhile, I went with my step brother who travelled down from Ekiti.
Ekiti is one hour and few minutes away from Akure while Ile-Ife is more than two hours drive away.My brother invited me to spend the night at his place in Ekiti but I insisted that I would travel back to Ife that night. Don't blame me please, his mother is my mother's rival and this is Nigeria, West Africa.
I got to the main garage and did not see any bus or car heading to my destination so I tried other garages before concluding to enter any bus I saw by the roadside. We call this kind of bus soole. The conductor of the bus will bring out his head out through the door and shout his destination while you as an intending passenger will wave your hand to stop the bus.
The bus will stop at a distance and you will run to meet the conductor for negotiation before you will enter then, the driver will drive off looking for other passengers. That is how soole buses work in our part of the world. No insurance, no security, no escorts, they don't know you and you don't know them.
Immediately I joined the bus about five minutes past nine that night. The first thing I did was to tell my younger brother whom I share the same mother with about my location and the risk I am taking and he told me to share my location. I did that immediately and the journey continued. About one hour and five minutes into our journey, we got to a place called Jabu.
Jabu is one of the numerous places between Ondo and Osun state. One thing about this Jabu area was that the service reception there is always very bad. This place has overgrown shrubs and big trees around and very dark as there were no street or road lights on the highway. According to what I was able to gather through rumors, the rate of kidnapping in that area is very high.
That was the exact place our driver decided to park to put some water in the bus radiator. I tried calling my brother as if he could run down from Lagos which is about a five hour drive away to rescue me in Ondo State but the reception said hey girl, you are not calling anyone today.
The ten minutes we spent there was the longest ten minutes of my life. The driver allited taking his cell phone along with him ,went to the front and open the bonnet while the conductor who was sitting at the back with us also went to the front to meet the driver with a keg he took from under the sit, the passenger beside the conductor also got down and went towards the back of the bus.
I, on the other hand, was feeling hot and cold at the same time. One million thoughts were running through my head. I dialed my brother's number more than fifty times in five minutes, not because I was expecting a miracle,I just wanted to do something. I sent messages to people whom I know may question my poor husband about my whereabouts and I spent the last three minutes praying and asking for forgiveness of sins.
The worst of it was the other passengers who were less concerned about the situation. Some were sleeping, some talking to themselves and some reading stuffs on their cell phones not minding to say a thing as if they had been jazzed. Then I began to wonder if they were accomples or they just gave up easy for the worse thing that may happen.
At last, the driver his conductor and the other guy got back back in and the driver apologized for keeping us waiting. That movement, I felt relieved that he was not a kidnapper after all. But I already made a promise to stop night travel when I was praying for a miracle the other time. The question is did I stop traveling at night?
All images are mine.
Thanks for taking your time to read through
Yours truly@ elizy, a teacher, mother and passionate writer.