Whoop! Road trip!!! I was so excited! I was going to another State! The journey was meant to be from Port Harcourt to Benin City in Edo State Nigeria, and the exciting part of it was that I was going alone. I had traveled with my parents earlier this year to Delta State, passing through Benin, but this was a thrill; I was doing it all alone and with public transport.
That morning, I wasn’t hungry. My dad drove me to the bus park; Bob Izua…yeah right, that is a person’s name actually, and that was what he named his business. I bought my ticket, next thing I know, my mum comes around. She actually brought my food, and so after a couple of mother to son minutes, our bus was filled up and ready to go.
According to the arrangements, I had, to carry one of my bags. I was cramped and all but I didn’t think it would be a problem. So as usual, typical of such situations, a woman appears and she started praying for us, or with us. She took a while, and after she was done, some people appreciated her efforts with generous donations. And trust me on this one, we needed the prayers.
It was about seven o’clock in the morning, and save for the fact that some person had to drop from the bus, then we returned back to the park to get a refund, but it so happened he got nothing but insults from some guy in the park; we had barely spent any time on the road, and a man was already sleeping! That early! Why? Didn’t he sleep the night before? I didn’t think he was tired, and so much so, so early, but I won’t get judging. I was on my way! Listening to gospel music; those Marvin Sapp songs and all, one of my favorites then tweeting and with a bible by my side, we were off! I was in for a trip really.
To be honest with you, after we started leaving Port Harcourt, no GRA (Government Residential Area) I could not get mileage of where we were at different points. By that I mean that I didn’t know the names of the places we passed through after leaving Port Harcourt. I had to ask other people in the bus. The bus had a mature audience I would say. Middle aged men and about four ladies. The driver was young though, and it was his first day on the job, so in other words, we were all used as experiments of a sort.
Two women sat beside me; a woman, from Delta state, Urhobo I think. I could tell when she answered a call a while back. The accent and everything. Then there was another girl, sitting right beside me. I cannot really place a finger on her age; you know, girls! You couldn’t rightly guess their ages till they told you. But she was going to write the same exam that I was going to write, so it would be safe to assume 18 or 19(if you ask me, I thought she was way older!). Well since she was sitting beside me, I expected to have friendly conversations with her at some point. I follow someone on twitter, who taught me the word, ‘set p’ but for the purpose of this write up, it would come to mean ‘familiarize’. I intended to ‘set p’ with the purest of motives.
So we had barely left Port Harcourt when this girl in question, did the strangest thing. She started sleeping. It wasn’t her sleeping that was the problem, and no! I don’t have a problem with people that sleep! I happen to be a very good fan of that hobby. But her head kept dropping and she struggled to be ‘level headed’ half asleep, half awake, and it seemed sleep was winning the battle, as soon her head was almost landing on my shoulders! Her struggled with sleep was so real. I was almost sorry seeing her like that.
there she was, inching closer…
Well, fast-forward the next few ‘nerve racking’ moments, okay not really ‘nerve racking,’ I waited in trepidation for the outcome of the present situation. I didn’t think I would know how to ‘manage’ such a situation, if ever it had to be ‘managed’; if she woke up with her head on my shoulder, what to say? Gesticulation? Should I chuckle and be like, “It’s alright, rest your weary head on my shoulder, thou perfect stranger’’ you know, for those of you that like gospel music, Kirk Franklin did a song; ”here’s my shoulder you can lean on me!” maybe I could sing that or say; “Hey stranger, pull your head together!’’. And for those that asked, now I really didn’t have a problem with a perfect stranger’s head dropping on my shoulder per se because what do you know? It is perfectly normal for young girls to travel in buses sleeping around on men’s shoulders, perfectly normal! . And now I’m afraid that some people might not get the sarcasm . *sigh* lol But I thought it would be pretty awkward it that happened.
Well, it didn’t happen anyway, thankfully. But it wasn’t the ‘shoulder’ drama going on between me and the girl that was the only thing happening in the bus. The Urhobo woman I talked about earlier and that man that was sleeping, almost immediately we left the park; an elderly man he seemed, in fact pretty much everyone in that bus was on the driver’s case.
‘’Driver put on this AC now’’ she at first complained. Nothing was done and we kept moving. Further ahead, she complained more and ever so loudly. The other elderly man chipped in at this point, ‘’driver put on the AC now! We paid for it!’’ other voices could be heard that corroborated the man’s point, as if they were just realizing, ‘’yes! We paid for it’’. The driver then made us know that he hadn’t enough fuel, and quite logically, using the AC would finish it faster, but that he was looking to buy when we reached a certain place, I don’t know the name. But yes, in actual fact we paid for the AC. There were two options at the park when buying tickets, a bus with the AC on and one in which it wasn’t going to be on. The latter being obviously the cheaper. We all needed value for our money.
They were other issues with the bus driver, which the passengers tattled about, the Urhobo woman’s lead being the prominent of the lot. She talked about the driver’s speed, his age and all sorts. Then there was a certain point we met road traffic. We were stuck in there for a while, so some guy opened the bus’ door and out trooped people one by one. Some were stretching; some went further to look at the traffic situation while some took the opportunity to empty their bladders. I would like to use this opportunity to state that it was all men that came out. I came out too. So while some eased themselves by the bush, I stood there, and decided not to take part in such activity, because I was a good citizen. Okay I wouldn’t lie, the thought probably crossed my head, and I was a little pressed, coupled with the fact that there were no public toilets or mobile ones around…you know I blame the government! But even if I wanted to ease myself, I couldn’t now because the traffic was clearing, and the driver put on the bus and began moving almost immediately.
We all rushed into the bus, all of us still outside, all except that elderly man I talked about earlier that was sleeping. He wasn’t that old anyway, but for the sake of this writing, I’d like to refer to him as ‘the elderly man’. He was still easing himself by the bush. He finished and quickly tried to make his way to the bus. I would say he almost or literally jumped into the moving bus! The bus was still moving as he entered so he held on to the door and a seat and since the bus was filled with passengers he had to bend over and almost slump over some other passengers. He just basically lounged forward headlong with his hands clutching the sides of the bus that he could. He was almost squatting, the bus door still open! His eyes roaming to and fro staring at us, which was the only thing he could do in that awkwardly hilarious position, waiting for the ordeal to end, which was for the bus to stop moving. It did and he got to his seat. Some people laughed, it was a very funny sight.
We only moved a little while, to come to another stop again due to traffic congestion. As we stopped, from various directions came people hawking various things. It was amusing what they hawked; fried chicken! Yes someone was hawking fried chicken! It was covered in cellophane though. Then something that looked like moi-moi (bean cake, I think! which other way could I explain the concept to non-Africans? I am asking Africans now) with eggs in it, groundnuts; boiled, roasted, sachet water, fried maggots! It was a weird some lot the things they hawked at that stop. I was shocked. The girl sitting beside me told me that the maggot was what some cultures used as food. I never believed that anyone would buy the fried chicken left exposed like that, and I began talking with the girl sitting beside me about the odds of this happening, when the Urhobo woman and the other elderly man both bought the chicken! Two pieces each I suppose.
they looked much more ‘attractive’ than this to be honest…
I think the Urhobo woman was ripped off! As she only later discovered that she bought chicken butt. She ate it anyway, and went further and bought maggots! Fried maggots, two sticks; they were stashed like ‘suya’ (suya is roasted beef) that kind of fashion, spiced and garnished with onions, pepper, spicy things and stuff. She bought two sticks as takeaway. These hawkers were in business!
I had not finished seeing things! I guess we were still in Rivers State when we reached a place with several makeshift stores just beside us. It was a village setting, and communal lifestyle kind of thing. They were selling fish, garri, yams, oil, snails and tortoises!
It was intriguing, yes and I craving a tortoise at that moment for a pet! They were so big; I mean some were really huge! And they were alive, tied together and dangling, struggling to escape likely. I asked the girl sitting beside me how much they cost and if she’ll let me put one in her hand bag if I bought. I was just pulling her legs, but she just gave this sarcastic look that said, ‘’yes you can’’. Soon the bus was moving but if I had the chance I would have loved to buy a tortoise. It just caught my fancy at that moment. And yes it is the same ‘shoulder girl’ I’ve been referring to as the girl sitting beside me. The ice had been broken and we were on talking terms already. She offered me groundnuts as some point, the Urhobo woman also, but I declined on very obvious grounds.
At this moment I would love to talk about the deplorable state of the roads.
Construction work was done at various points and in different parts of the road, that gave you an impression that something was happening, but all this so called construction work was done in the most haphazard, disorganized, uncoordinated and dangerous manner. Motorists’ safety wasn’t in the least guaranteed and the way the work was done, you should think they’d have an aim; but not so! They just seemed to be working on various ‘patches’ of the road. Different construction companies seemed to be handling the same stretch of road; some parts were abandoned, and some, work seemed to have always been going on but never coming into completion.
you could see this sort of thing…
Potholes were almost everywhere! And it rained at some point so everything was a bit messy. We were flanked by bushes almost all the time; the roads were really narrow, so it was a struggle for cars to manage such little space. But there were so many bridges that we passed. Some were part of the whole ‘grandiose’ construction scheme.
The bridges in themselves were nothing to write home about, but seeing the various rivers, and the canoes and people in it, the fresh water and marshy swamps, all the trees and species of plants that grew in such environment, it reminded me of the Eco-system and the stuff I learnt in secondary school about ecological niche, community, succession…Biology…well it took my mind to our Biology teacher then, Miss Akande… I remembered her at that point. 
Passengers were still complaining about the driver. He was moving too slow for their liking, at least some of them, and then we came to another log jam. Now everywhere was blocked. They were so many lanes and people weren’t patient, so drivers took the lane of on-coming vehicles. And so did we. Time waits for no one. Deep down somewhere inside I was glad our driver did that. Morally I knew we were wrong, but you cannot afford to be nice on Nigerian roads. If you decided to wait in the line, other people will still use the wrong way and block it up front for you. Somebody recently told me that everyone you see on the road is an animal, and that was not very far from the truth with the things I saw. I wondered if the people waiting in the proper line had any hope of leaving in the next hour. There were various ‘illegal’ lines around them.
I was happy because, up to this point it was the tenacity, skillfulness and familiarity of the driver with the steering and the roads that had brought us this far. We had to cut various lines, some pretty much dangerous driving to keep us going ahead, if not we would still have been far behind stuck in some abysmally frustrating traffic. So if you don’t have all these skills, don’t set out on a journey here in Nigeria. If you’re not too familiar with matters of the road and terrain, you cannot just wake up one morning and decide to drive yourself with Google maps.
So at that point there were already three lanes plus our own, so we started moving using the line of on-coming vehicles. We didn’t start this craze, neither did we end it, and quite naturally others followed behind. We thought we were on our way as we kept moving whilst others stayed in the very jam packed lines. I didn’t think that they were very wise.
These tweets do say much don’t they? and some people can relate to it.
https://twitter.com/AnnabelleKayy/status/391234887770193920
https://twitter.com/AnnabelleKayy/status/391235048697249792
Then we met a hurdle. Soldiers with guns at some point stopped us; All the people that were using the wrong road. We were told to go way back to where we could now find the line and start again. We had come too far. But it was common sense, we had blocked the way for on- coming vehicles, and so if they had to pass, we had to go back.
Then we started going back! That was brutal, after everything I thought. Other cars had come to take the space that every other vehicle that left the proper line had left, so it was going to be a long journey to the back. So with angry soldiers brandishing their guns and hurling insults, we kept going back.
Being the country that we are, most cars found a space by the side of the road that was meant for the on-coming vehicles. The roads were bad, so there was just enough space to clear off the road and wait for on-coming vehicles to pass instead of going to join the legitimate line. We tried to look up a space for ourselves as people had already smartly taken up almost all, and formed a fourth lane at the other side of the road, while the real line was at the other side.
Now this huge truck was approaching us. Others had fitted themselves, and we were tense to do so too. The truck kept horning and approaching us, and thankfully we found space. It was very narrow though, so we had to beg the person behind us to dress backward a little, which he did, and the person in front of us to move forward a bit.
But the person in front of us will not move. At first we thought he didn’t hear, so the driver kept horning, but he would not budge an inch. We couldn’t really understand. The Urhobo woman suggested that someone came down and talked to the person in the car.
Well someone did, and it didn’t take long before he was back. The man had refused still. Meanwhile the huge truck was still approaching, so we had the option of going back or just steering clear of the road, in this space that could now be seen as contentious.
Many thanks to our driver we managed the little space and could clear for the truck to pass. Then the explosions started. One man, he wore a hat, he was born in Rivers State; he had earlier led the spicy discussion of the crises happening in Rivers State, the state I was traveling from. The gist was about a law maker who had bludgeoned his colleague with a maze. It was funny, but serious, the political imbroglio that was going on in the state among the governor, president, police force, lawmakers, in fact it was so complicated, like some people’s relationships.
He came down from the bus to give the man in front of us a piece of his mind. He did exactly that, and I didn’t hear, exactly the words he used, but he got the guy in the car enraged and out he came furious.
This man squeezed his face so much that he was such a monstrous sight; he wore quite oversize shorts which did buttress the point that he was not a very serious fellow. He was wearing a big white polo shirt also, and the next thing I know, he starts fuming, shouting, with spit coming out from his mouth ready to exchange blows with the other man that had just talked to him.
His wife, and some other man who were evidently in the car, came out. In contrast, his wife was nice looking , calm and all, the other man with them very tall and I wondered why they could not talk sense into this man’s head earlier, and advise him to just move a bit for us. But I soon found out why.
His wife tried to restrain him but the angry man pushed her away; he was about even starting a fight with her. Some other people tried to restrain this angry man but he would not stop. He didn’t look like somebody that was very strong, and his attack was very clumsy. He hadn’t even thrown a punch yet, but he was breathing heavily after some misses. Throughout the scuffle I gathered that from what the man, the angry man said, he was aggrieved because the man from our bus had told him that he wasn’t a man. Now this was just ridiculous! What the? Was he fighting for legitimacy or to validate his male status? People baffle me all the time. Maybe most people on the road are truly animals.
Finally, the diatribe was settled and the guy on the hat came back to the bus. He was a married man. He told us later about his wife and daughter. He also said that if he was in his zone, Rivers State, he would have handled the man in question. I wondered if it was a threat, that man didn’t look like anybody that would be dangerous. Well you can’t really judge people by looks. Earlier in the brawl, he was not in the least trying to dodge the angry man’s punches, but brazen faced, he stood his ground. What has the geographical location; Rivers State got to do with anything? People are so weird. After a while, the line we were in moved. Somebody then said, referring to the very angry man in front of us, ‘’why did you move now, idiot.’’
We had another incident almost immediately with another supposed ‘animal’. This time the man hit our bus with his car purposely. He bashed us! Then the Urhobo woman started complaining, she said that it was because the driver was young and new, and that if it was the older drivers they would stop and deal with the man that hit us properly. No part of me wanted that driver to stop to settle any kind of dispute that afternoon, no part of anyone in the bus wanted that, even the Urhobo woman as she also said so. We were already running late, and the man was trailing behind us. He actually hit us because he had wanted to enter our lane; a uniform man was controlling traffic, and had allegedly told him to enter. But our driver didn’t allow him, so due to pent up anger and frustration he hit us. He was still able to enter the line. His problem was that we were in front of him, and that the police had passed him, so he had every right to be in front of us. He was even blaming us after hitting us! This was just a whole new crazy world. We reported it to some of the soldiers we met on the road, but they told us to sort ourselves out.
The traffic had cleared, and several times we were within range of the man, and tried to talk things out, but the man kept insisting that he was right. The driver checked and well, it wasn’t much damage. The Urhobo woman educated us, and told us that the driver may be required to pay for the damages, but on a positive note, the driver could just apply hydraulic oil to a cloth and wipe the damaged area. The last we had of the man that hit us, before we lost him, was a person from our bus shouting out to him; ‘’this man, God will punish you this afternoon.’’
An Urhobo mask (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Rond point de Ring Road, Benin City, Nigeria. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
We entered Benin city in the peak of the sun, and the driver picked up a person on the road that he apparently knew and this was not even a commercial bus that ran such journeys, imagine! . My brother Ik was to pick me up from the bus station, or park and he began calling as soon as we got to Benin; my parents also. Once again, I had to ask other people in the bus! I didn’t even know when we entered Benin! They had to tell me.
The trip got boring at times though, then the sun came out and was really harsh, and the bus was quiet. Even the Urhobo woman was quiet. And I’d like to say, I don’t have any problem with the ‘Urhobo woman’ why, she has given me so much blog material. But the some other ladies in the bus broke the silence and started singing along the song playing on the radio. It sounded like a classic though, you know them Whitney Houston kind of sound and the song was really high pitched. I so hate afternoon radio and the songs they play.
the ‘shoulder girl’ (left) and the Urhobo woman beside her
We stopped at an eatery of a sort, and as I came out of the bus, some guy took a picture of me. He was a photographer and he was like, ‘’nice shot! See the way the thing just capture you! Let me print it for you now!’’ in my mind I’m like duh! I have a camera, and I can take selfies, for free! . But I did feel like a celeb for a second there, you know stepping out of the bus and having a candid photo taken of you; priceless. The Urhobo woman took a couple pictures though. So we stopped at the eatery for a while, to eat!
It was actually a fast food restaurant. I wasn’t even feeling hungry, and I thought it was probably butterflies in my stomach. So I figured that if I wouldn’t have a full stomach, I’d have fresh breath, so I just bought gum at the stop. Others bought rice, and all of that. The girl sitting by me asked me why I wasn’t eating; well I told her that I didn’t feel like. I went back to the bus and waited.
Everybody came back to the bus, and the driver started the engine. We were about leaving when people realized that the Urhobo woman was unavoidably missing. Then we started the waiting game. We waited for quite a while and wondered whether she was in the toilet. The other elderly man I talked about earlier made jokes. She came back after a while, apologizing. She actually had to go eat in the first floor of the building, the most accepted Nigerian local food; garri and soup. Others could pack their rice in the take away, and finish it in the bus, which they did by the way, but she couldn’t and had to finish the garri there. Garri is not served in takeaways.
Even before we reached the bus station, people began dropping, one by one, those who had other routes to take outside the periphery of the bus park. We finally reached and there was my brother waiting for me. Packed my bags and was about leaving, took a last look back and saw the ‘shoulder girl’. There she was, talking with her dad and it was the last I saw of her. Didn’t even get her name I later realized.
That was the journey between Rivers state and Edo state ladies and gentlemen! Yes, we did pass through Delta state, but I would say I didn’t see much of what I would call ‘beautiful’. Nigeria is a beautiful country no doubt, and earlier this year when I traveled with my parents I could attest to that, but maybe, beauty didn’t lie in the path we chose for ourselves that gracious day. And there you have it, every trip having a story to tell, and knowing deep within me, that coming back would have it’s own
stories, and it did.
emordiuche 