So last week, I was going for an exam and had serious plans of reading in the bus because I have been very busy lately and hadn’t prepared well. I planned to soak myself in Clinical Pharmacology during the 6-7 hours journey, that way I would not only refresh my memory on a lot of topics but also spare some minutes to surf the net and keep myself abreast with recent happenings.
The journey began smoothly after the usual rituals used to extort money from passengers in the name of paying for luggage with a lot of them refusing to accept what the passenger had initially but giving in to their pleas later (one man even priced N50 for his big Ghana-must-go, I sorta-kinda agreed with him shaa…lol, those park loaders can extort money for Africa).
This was immediately followed by the National Beggars Anthem (NBA). A mixture of both the sick and some supposed representatives of the motherless babies homes matched forward to receive their share of the passengers money. Then the session was wrapped up by the National association of those who had medicines that cured all diseases (NATMAD), they chanted their rehearsed lines and made away with some fortune in my very before…
Don’t worry, I didn’t spoil their market.
We drove off peacefully!
The drama in the bus actually started when the driver changed the music from Christian music to Naija hip-up songs. Mr pastor who was already basking in the spirit and blowing ‘senior’ tongues was brought back to the earthly realm by Flavor’s “Banana fall on you”. (Was it Flavor who sang it? Not sure tho…)
You can imagine what would happen next.
In protest he began shouting on the driver to desist from double standards and not let bad and good waters flow out of his life concurrently.
“Oga, they have played your own and you enjoyed it, allow him to play our own. That is how it is done in every bus, na turn by turn.”
It was Miss Slayer who was sitting next to him and directly behind me.
To my dismay, the both of them began exchanging words and soon Miss Slayer left him to join Uncle Flavor and his crew in their heartfelt ‘worship’. I just couldn’t stop laughing as Miss sweet voice also joined the band and so did others until the bus turned into a mini studio while song after song played on.
Mr Pastor busied himself with gentle sobs at how sin-loving the world had become and I guess he prayed silently for them too.
Shortly afterwards, Miss Sweet voice needed to obey the call of nature and began screaming with her tiny little voice for the driver to stop. But he just wouldn’t listen until others joined in solidarity.
The problem was now getting a perfect site for the ‘event’ as she did not want to reduce her bride price by carrying out such a holy task with the slightest trace of human being in sight.
All efforts to get her a befitting venue failed until she angrily ‘busied the call of nature’ as she was temporarily unavailable. So she refused to go down when a fair-enough site was found and resorted to entertaining our nostrils with the sweet smelling savour of stored up ogiri and okpei mixed with anger.
As if that didn’t suffice, she refused to open her window and so did her friends as though they planned it and the driver had to turn on the AC with windows open- something I was seeing for the first time in my life!
As I struggled to concentrate on the update on monkey pox I was reading, Mr Know-it-all began his Biafra and politics discussion. I wouldn’t have been bothered if he was a bit informed or enlightened but the manner in which he exuded his ignorance turned my head in his direction. I became terribly weak when he committed the blunder of saying that people in the North were evil as though there were no evil men in the East.
I wanted to reel out names of the amazing and lovely people I met in the north who did not just become friends but turned family and who I miss dearly everyday and also tell him how deeply I longed to go back to the north (yea, you read it rightly).
I was still hoping a strong wave of sleep would blow through and sweep them all away so I can grab a thing or two when the Policeman motioned for the driver to clear…
Ghen ghen…!
I didn’teven know we were at a check point.
“Make una come down for search.”
***
