I can never forget the day I almost slept in an unknown village. The journey wasn't meant to be that way. It wasn't my first time traveling that road, but it felt like it was going to be my last.
It was a Friday morning; the sun was not ready to show its glory. It was peeping through the sky, giving it a golden color with orange clouds. I woke up feeling oddly unsettled. It wasn’t the usual post-exam fatigue that weighed on me; although my body ached from the chaos of the past week, it was something deeper, something in my spirit, man, or should I say my mind. Maybe it was the late night I had, scrolling endlessly through my phone to silence the nerves of the journey I was going to embark on to Lagos the following day. Or maybe it was intuition. Something about this trip to Lagos felt odd that morning, but I blew it off. I was just scared of the long trip, I said to myself.
I stared at the ceiling for a while, hoping the feeling would pass, but it clung to me like a wet cloth. I considered not going. I toyed with the idea of sending a text to my parent or just staying in bed until the unease melted away. But instead, I went back to sleep, hoping a nap would bring clarity.
When I opened my eyes again, the clock read 12:07 p.m.
Panic hit me like cold water. I was supposed to be on my way already.
I jumped out of the bed, and the drowsiness instantly disappeared. I rushed into the bathroom and took the fastest shower of my life. There was no time for breakfast, no time for doubt. I grabbed a few clothes, just enough for two weeks in Lagos, and stuffed them carelessly into my small travel bag.
Everything felt rushed. My thoughts, my steps, even the air around me.
I rushed to the bus stop, hoping a bus was readily waiting for me, but I was wrong. A few minutes later, a bus pulled up. I climbed in, sat down, and then stared out the window as it drove to the park where I would get a bus going to Lagos. I was lucky enough that, as soon as I got to the park, a bus was waiting with just one passenger left to complete the bus before they moved, and there I was. I immediately joined them before someone else took the space.
The bus took off after paying the bus fee, and the journey to Lagos started. The bus had four rows of seats in it, and in each row were four people; the woman sitting beside me had a child on her leg who was old enough to have sat down independently, but because she didn't want to pay for him, she carried him on her leg. A few minutes into the journey, she started looking at our faces, which she made very obvious. I didn't want to look back at her because I believe she was about to beg for something that I wasn't even ready to give.
"Please, can you adjust a little so my son can sit down? My legs are aching." She pleaded with us, who are sitting in the same row as her. I ignored her because the bus was tight enough, and the reason why there were four people in the row seat was that they wanted it to be comfortable for the passenger.
"Brother in black polo," she was referring to me, "adjust. a little na."
The man sitting on the right was sitting on my left; he had been trying to create space for the woman's son to sit, but I wasn't ready to purge. I acted like I didn't hear because I wasn't ready to make my journey uncomfortable. Probably this was the unsettling feeling I was feeling that morning, I thought to myself.
After a few pleas from her and other people on the bus, I adjusted, and now we were five on the seat, making it very uncomfortable because I had long legs. One hour into the journey, I couldn't feel my legs again, and at that moment, the driver drove to the side of the road. It's mostly unusual for drivers to park on the side of the road that early. "Is there anyone who wants to pee or use the toilet on the bus?" I thought as I turned around to see if anyone was trying to come down from the bus, but there wasn't anyone.
"Grrrrrr." The driver tried starting the bus, but it wasn't going on. He came down and opened his seat, and it was then that the bus was filled with smoke, and we had no choice but to come down from the bus.
The sun was already high in the sky, and the heat didn’t make the situation any better. Some people started talking in a low voice, saying "na wa o, which kind thing be this"
Others just stood under the nearest shade they could find, fanning themselves with anything they could find. I stood quietly by the side of the bus, with my legs aching, my shirt soaked with sweat. I kept staring at the road ahead, wishing the bus would just magically start so we could keep moving.
The driver spent a lot of time fixing it. He was under the bus, banging and twisting things while wiping sweat from his face with a grease-stained hand. Eventually, after what felt like forever, he got back into the driver’s seat and started the engine. Miraculously, the bus cried back to life. A small cheer broke out among the passengers, tired but hopeful. We all climbed back in, dusted ourselves off, and continued the journey.
But we shouldn't have celebrated that victory because it was short-lived.
After just 45 minutes of driving, the bus coughed and groaned again, then died completely. The driver pulled off the road, and this time, the sighs were louder, and the complaints began.
"Which kind bus did I even enter like this?" One woman said. "And my mind did not want to enter this bus o" the woman who made the bus so uncomfortable for me finally spoke. I also wished she didn't enter the bus too. Other people started complaining.
I looked around. We were still nowhere near halfway. After the driver raise his seat up, the same smoke started coming out again, and this time, the driver looked more worried than before. By this time, it was already 6:30 p.m.
Some passengers were pacing; others were arguing with the driver. A few sat on rocks by the roadside, shaking their heads. “This is how people disappear,” one woman muttered loud enough for everyone to hear. Some laughed nervously.
"Don't worry, there is a village close by" the driver said in the Yoruba native tongue, and this made people more nervous.
"Are you asking us to sleep in a village? Are you trying to kidnap and kill us" People started talking and shouting at the driver.
The fear had started creeping in. The sun had started setting, and shadows from the bushes on both sides of the road began to stretch longer.
After more pacing, sweating, and prayers muttered in different languages, the driver managed to get the bus moving again. This time, we didn’t go far before the bus broke down again, and now, we were in the middle of nowhere. Bushes to the right, bushes to the left, no sign of houses or even a proper road. Just us and the sounds of insects humming louder as the sky grew darker.
It was almost 7:00 p.m. by then. Some of us turned on our phone lights so the driver could see. It felt like we were in a horror movie. I kept imagining a group of masked men running out from the bushes or some wild animal leaping out from nowhere. My heart didn’t know whether to race or freeze.
“If anything happens here,” someone whispered behind me, “no one will even know where to start looking.”
Some people had started praying. I stood close to the bus, pretending to be calm, but I was counting the seconds in my head. Every little sound made me flinch. The darkness was complete by now, the kind that swallowed everything whole.
At exactly 7:11 p.m., after what felt like a decade, the bus miraculously started again but, no one cheered. We all just got in quietly, eyes darting out the windows, waiting for another breakdown that, thankfully, didn’t come. We drove into the next town like survivors crawling out of a war zone. when we got to the next town, luckily again, we found a mechanic and he help us fix the bus properly.
The rest of the journey was smooth. Not a single breakdown.
When I got to the bus stop I was meant to drop, I climbed down, stretched my legs slowly like an old man, and whispered a small prayer of thanks. I checked my time and it was 11:03 p.m. I watch as the bus drove off and I said to myself "anything that can go wrong will go wrong" even if I had stayed and traveled the following day, it might still happen.
As soon as I got to my parent home, I went straight to the bed and slept off. I was glad I got home in one piece.
Thanks for reading. My name is Fashtioluwa.
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