2007
By Kene Nwabuoku
Mother had only one mantra when the month of December came rolling by:
"The 20th must not meet us in Lagos."
Every year, ever since Father moved to Asaba, the capital of Nigeria’s Delta state, December 20th never met us in Lagos. We always travelled to "the east" - a term used to describe all the eastern and parts of the southern states of Nigeria - before the 15th.
2007 was different.
Firstly, all primary and secondary schools in Lagos were scheduled to vacate on the 15th of December - a Friday, which would no doubt double up as both the end of the year party and report card collection day. On this day, a good number of children will start the day on a high note, buzzing with high energy and ready to wow the crowd with their dancing and acting skills. The promise of party jollof rice, awards and gift packs to be shared later in the day, will ensure the high spirit doesn't fizzle out. However, a good number of children will end the day with faces swollen like Ijebu garri and eyes heavy with premium tears after the evidence of their academic performance for the session has been handed to them.
Secondly, Mother had a church event scheduled for the 16th. It was an event for Sunday school teachers within the district, for which mother was the zonal coordinator.
Thirdly, 17th of December was a Sunday – the day of rest and the day for Jesus. Mother couldn't conceive the idea of travelling on the "day for the Lord". And so that left us with Monday, the 18th.
Without asking Mother, I was certain we would travel on Monday. By this time, transport fares would have increased to N6,500/seat as opposed to the N4500/seat we would have paid had we gone before the 15th. Every easterner knew that after the 15th, transport fares would hit N5000, then proceed to increase by N500 everyday until the 26th. For Mother, who would pay for three seats on The Young Shall Grow motors, leaving on the 18th was imperative.
But, earlier in the year, the government primary school where Mother taught Mathematics and Elementary science, had gotten a new headmistress who believed in a special end of year party/evaluation meeting for teachers. She had asked all the teachers to report on Monday, the 18th, with their evaluation report. That morning, I watched Mother, fuming like a molue’s exhaust pipe, drag herself to work. There went our N6500 transport fare.
By Tuesday, the 19th, we all woke at past 6am, an hour later than usual, for reasons we couldn't explain. Well… Mother couldn't explain, but between my older sister, Ngozi and myself, who had spent half the night watching movies on MBI, we knew the cause of our problem. We wouldn't leave the house until a few minutes shy of 8am and it would take us another 3 hours to get to Ojota Park from Ikotun Egbe where we lived. By this time, as every easterner knew, all the good and direct buses to Onitsha had left.
Our only option was to take the Agofure bus to Benin, Edo state, then enter another bus going to Onitsha and drop off at Summit-junction, Asaba. Mother hated entering Benin. The traffic in Benin was worse than Lagos, in Mother’s opinion. On this day however, one look at Mother's puffy face and I could tell that she was ready to pause her aversion. Silently, I also prayed she would. We had a truckload of luggage like we were moving out of our house and I didn't want to have to go home only to repeat the same struggle the next day.
We had our cloth bags - three of them. Then one gigantic Ghana-must-go bag, filled with gifts and provisions for Christmas, New Year and up until March so Father wouldn't have to go to the market. Lastly, there were the bagco sacks that contained food, snacks and bottles of water for the road because Mother couldn’t be bothered to buy roadside food, snacks or even water; piles of textbooks to give our cousins and the children in church, storybooks because heaven forbid we went a day without reading, and holiday assignments because we wouldn't return until a day to our school’s resumption.
But one call to Father to ask what we should do dispelled all thoughts of entering Benin. Father’s argument was that the road was already congested and he wouldn't want us to risk passing the night in a place where we didn't know a soul.
And so, in the year 2007, Mother, Ngozi and my 11 year old self travelled to the east on the 20th of December.
We got to the park a little past 7am, yet barely managed to secure a seat on the third bus leaving for Onitsha. After all the hassle for money, passengers going to pee a million times, and the loading of our luggage that covered the entire floor of the bus, we finally hit the road at 8am on a bright and sunny morning. As for the fare, Mother had paid for two back seats at #7500 each and begged the passengers in front of us if I could perch on the bags wedged in the space between their seats. The plan was that Ngozi and I would alternate perching, but I knew Ngozi, there was no chance in heaven that she would give up the window seat she occupied to perch on some luggage - she was too posh to that!
This was the first time - in the seven years since I started travelling to Asaba – that I would be leaving Lagos on the 20th and I already hated it. To start with, I was perching. The bus hadn't even left Lagos and my legs were already cramped. I had nowhere to put my head when I started to doze and minus sitting on uneven bags of provisions and boxes of clothes, I was perching next to a family - a young woman with twin baby boys, a teen girl about the same age as Ngozi, who looked like the nanny and an elderly woman who I deduced was the young woman’s mother. The kids wouldn't stop squirming and crying and the elderly woman wouldn't stop using me as their second nanny especially after she learnt we were also going to Delta state.
“We are going to Agbor. We are from Agbor,” She had told Mother earlier, after we had been introduced.
We had been excited to meet our fellow “kinsmen” at that time, but with the constant "Nwam o, please help me hold this bag, let me feed my baby," or "Nwam o, God bless you for me, please help me hold this food, let me pet my baby", I began to wish our paths never crossed. My big head was already aching from trying to contain all the anger and frustration I felt. Mother would rub my knees occasionally as a show of solidarity, while Ngozi snickered. And when I finally found a way to rest my head on Mother’s thighs, I ensured it didn’t come up for a long time to the dismay of Ngozi who was made to carry all our bags. When I finally slept, I dreamt of Father — he was scolding the elderly woman for using me as a nanny.
***
By the time my head came up, all I could see around me were trees and bushes, a sign that we had left Lagos and were somewhere in Ogun state. As the bus sped along, I was grateful because every distance covered meant my perching time was reducing; albeit not fast enough. Soon, Ogun state was behind us and we were being welcomed to Ondo state by numerous billboards of the local politicians. However, where Ogun roads were laden with potholes, Ondo's were untarred! The more distance we covered in Ondo, the slower the speed of the bus until we started to crawl.
This was the beginning of the infamous onwa december traffic as buses and cars, tankers and trailers, took turns to navigate the dry and dusty red earth forming a queue. After long minutes of crawling, trying to jump the queue by driving inside the bush, then begging trailers and tankers to let us rejoin the crawling march, the queue finally stopped moving.
It was just a little past noon, going by Mother’s wrist watch and Sagem phone. Ngozi, who knew the drill better, quickly brought out the big packet of Mini-gala and Caprisonne Mother had bought and divided them amongst the three of us. This was indeed breaktime and if all went well, according to Mother, we would spend about two hours in the traffic then by some miracle the road would free up again and the trip would resume. But it was 2007, we should have known that nothing was going to go as usual.
A Dangote container had fallen up ahead while trying to navigate the road and it would take a gazillion men to move it off the road. Restlessness brought about by dust and heat, more than any altruistic motive, made the young men and women alight from their various vehicles, to begin the long trek to the beginning of the whole problem. I watched, in fascination, as strangers chatted away about our shared problem, football, the government, family and just about any issue that came to mind. Soon, we became one very big happy family (of strangers), sharing our snacks and food amongst ourselves and looking out for each other. When the drivers of the various vehicles also joined in the trek, everyone got the silent memo:
“We will sleep here today.”
1, 2, 3, 4 hours later, we were still stuck in the same spot. Ngozi was now fast asleep while Mother fanned herself and one of the twins in front of the bus, listening to travel stories from women she would never see in her life again. I sat, with my legs stretched out on the passenger's seat, reading one of the storybooks Mother had given me as a Christmas present. Then without warning, people started running back to their vehicles in a frenzy.
“Soldiers don come o! Soldiers don come o!”
The runners were singing with excitement as they tried to locate their vehicles while those in the vehicles scrambled into their original positions.
The coming of the soldiers must have made moving the container a breeze because within an hour we were out of the traffic, speeding towards Ore, one of the famous rest towns in Ondo for travellers. The time now was past 4pm and the sun was already preparing to close for the day.
When our driver announced that he wouldn't be stopping at Ore for food and pee break, the entire bus agreed. The anxiety was palpable. People were already making alternative plans for what they would do should the bus not get to Onitsha that day. Most were still going beyond Onitsha to as far as Abia and Enugu states - places that would require a few more hours to get to from Onitsha.
By the time we got to Benin by-pass, it was already past 7pm. The sky looked as black as Mother’s long dead Sagem; for which Ngozi was to blame because she had used it to play Space Impact. We had managed to put a call across to Father at least, before the phone gave up the ghost. After three passengers alighted here, the journey to Delta state began.
The elderly woman and her family could no longer contain their excitement. The next stop after the by-pass was Agbor. Once again, she resumed her errands, asking me to help hold this bag or another as she packed their belongings together, while simultaneously reminding the driver every two minutes about their stop.
I was the happiest when the driver got to their junction. Finally, I would get some peace and quiet; as well as space to stretch my legs! But as I watched them leave with the family members who had been waiting for their arrival, my heart began to race with longing for home. I was eager to see Father. I wanted to stretch my legs on the warm bed he would have prepared for us and listen to the stories he would tell of all the troubles he went through to make us dinner.
I was also eager to see my grandma, but most especially my cousins. We needed to compare whose Christmas cloth and wrist watch was the finest and whose trip was the most eventful. When Mother urged Ngozi to transfer our belongings to the now empty seats beside me and Ngozi climbed over me to occupy the window seat, I didn't complain. I just hobbled closer to Mother, suddenly fatigued.
"We will soon get to Asaba," Mother rubbed my arms gently. "In about an hour or two … max 10pm, we will be home," she smiled.
But just a few minutes after that declaration, as if the heavens wanted to remind Mother that she didn't work in their office and knew absolutely nothing, the bus stopped again; at one of the army stops in the next town after Agbor. According to the driver, something seemed off with his brakes. But for something that had been said as a joke and sounded trivial, it would take another three hours and the expertise of one of the soldiers - for whom we had to pool money to "appreciate" - to get the problem fixed.
By the time we finally arrived at Summit junction, Asaba, it was 11pm. Since there were no more vehicles in the park, Mother asked the driver to drop us off at a police stop; at least if we couldn't get a ride home, we could sleep at the police station.
"Madam, where you dey go?" One of the officers asked in Igbo, sizing us and our bags.
"Okpanam Road, sir. Officer, abeg help us! Help my children, today don show us pepper!"
"Hmmmm, no wahala, madam. But you go buy fuel for our motor … N5000."
"Ah, Officer! Abeg pity us! I use God beg you, abeg pity us! Only N1000 dey my hand so. My children never chop since morning. We just dey come from Lagos!" Mother began to cry, winking at us from the corner of her eyes to do the same.
It happened, that in the year 2007, we got home at midnight in a rickety police van which we had "fuelled" for N1500. As we approached, we saw Father sitting at the entrance of our street with a group of vigilante men.
"If my family would be sleeping outside for the night, I have no business sleeping on a comfortable bed," Father joked with the officer, even as he shook another N500 into his palms.
As Father hugged us, then walked us home with stories of how he had made the sweetest pot of egusi soup with big chicken, I couldn't stop thinking of the other passengers on their way to Onitsha and if they would get home to their loved ones against all odds.
Kene Nwabuoku is a writer and medical radiographer on a mission to spread joy and hope in the world. She aims to not only make her readers smile with her stories but to also inspire them to live purposefully, seeing joy in the everyday mundane things.
- All rights to this story remain with the author. Please do not repost or reproduce this material without permission.
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