Memories of Misery (Part I)

My grandmother was a staunch and strong believer who never believed anything could happen without the permit of God. When we were young, we would sit beside her while she told us many in-depth moralizing stories of the virtuous from the Scripture and famous fables.  As she would say, “this world is a journey for every soul to voyage. In anything you do, make sure you maintain perfect relationship with your Lord. He has your return.” We would listen with absolute earnestness while our hands were folded at the axis of our chest like someone engulfed by night wintriness, and our eye balls widely fixed on her lips as we sipped from her stream of religious and morality-coated wisdom.

We would maintain absolute silence and decorum under the heart-warming tutelage of moonlight. These legacies laid by her are what I built my faith and trust in God upon. And since I had grown up to see the world as a dungeon for the pious and an abode of luxury for  the cohorts of fiend, I always  assumed everything that happened to me as part of my destiny which had come to stay in the diary of my memory.

It was on Wednesday 29^th of January 1985. I was preparing for semester break after going through the overwhelming stresses and lethargies of laborious reading for second semester examination of the academic calendar. I had packed my travelling luggage together with my books in one place while expecting a friend whom we both agreed to take a leave together and bid farewell to our citadel of learning for a while.

I went to my department to check the newly pasted result of one of  my courses  offered the previous semester and  used  that opportunity to cash some amounts from my bank account before setting my feet on the road back to my hometown. I came back to my hostel and found the other guy waiting for my arrival. We both took our leave and boarded a bus leading to school gate where I could get a direct transport going to Ibadan, but I needed to hastily come back to my room for a neo-classical novel Robison Crusoe by Daniel Defoe from a senior colleague in the department and a collection of poetry, which I gave to someone before the commencement of the examination.

I rushed down to the motor park to catch up with my partner whom I left my luggage with. The motor park was jam-packed by other students who were also going back to their various homes and I was fortunate to board the first bus while looking out through the open space of the door as the bus headed out of the campus to the school gate, where the ‘Agbero boys’ of Ibadan and Lagos buses were busy waiting for students going to their various destinations.

No sooner had we alighted from the bus than two drivers came to us like hungry lion waiting for jay-walking antelopes. We considered the old bard man in a white dirty long sleeve shirt with trousers already ragged and dirty because his bus was a little bit beautiful and far from dust, compared to that of the other man whose his was otherwise.

He looked us with bitter grudges but we did not care who ox was gored. I quickly took the chance of the front seat beside the driver because that was only where could give me the look of everything going at the front while ‘Dosun, my friend took his at the back seat.  I decided not to involve in the gossips raised by one slim and dark-skinned woman with a young lad of two on her laps, rather I took my Robinson Crusoe while the motor moved with ease and fresh air lured some the passengers to deep sleep until we got to mid of the road where there was a fault in the engine and the bus stopped abruptly.

The driver, having noticed where the problem was enjoyed me and one man who grey had filled his head to get down while other dozing passengers regained their consciousness after a short period of slumber. And within ten minutes the problem was battled down and we embarked on our journey again, though I often looked back at my colleague who was busy reading another collection of poetry.

 As we covered three more kilometers, I could not but succumb to sleep and all what required to do was to position the book I was reading somewhere at the front together with the bottled water I bought before leaving the motor park.

On getting to Iwo road in Ibadan, every passenger alighted at the same time in a motor park and found their way out of the place. I headed to where I would board another taxi going to where I could get a direct conveyance to my dear hometown which I had missed for some months back. But not too long I took a short trek over the Iwo bridge, I discovered that I had forgot the book I was reading while in the first bus. With eagerness I ran like a madman with my heart already engulfed by despair because I did not know if I would catch up with the bus.

I crossed to the other side where motors and big vehicles were running mad on the road, but didn’t care about them, even at the approach of one Okada whose rider- a very obese and chunky tall man with front teeth gone and lips blackened by marijuana and excess kola perhaps- was very eager to find his way out of the vehicle-compressed road. I managed myself to the other side of the road and quickly went to one man who I thought should be friendly but the thought was otherwise when I  asked him if one white eighteen-passenger bus that just stopped there had gone or not. He responded me back with a broad petrifying cracked voice common among those ‘union’ boys:

    “Eh eh, wetin you want? Wetin be your wahala?”  He spoke in a sick pidgin. He should have known I was a student. “Sir I just alighted from a bus not too long but I forgot my book.” I replied him with a panic-engulfed and quivering voice. He looked at me for some seconds and said:

       “O’Boy forget, your book don go. The buses wey come from Ife don goo. You feey check sha. Alaye no worry jare. Shey na just book no be your manhood sha?” “Sir the book is very important to me. I am a student going home for break and I got the book from someone I promised to return it back to when we resume.” I replied him. 

       “Wetin my concern? I be someone from university? Abeg pack nonsense commot” He said with cacophonous voice.

I was crest-fallen when he said this and pleaded him to lead me to the chairman of the motor park. Having looked me for a while with sympathy, he directed me to a tall stunt man in his sixties who I quickly went to with absolute enthusiasm and hope that the driver might have dropped the book in case the owner came for it. I rushed to where he was greeted him with humility and he also received me with a luring smile. I told him my problem and he asked if I boarded the bus from the motor park. I responded I didn’t know for we usually boarded bus at the front of school gate.

“My son, I can’t do anything on this to be sincere.  Had it been you boarded the bus from our motor park we could help you keep it till your return by contacting Ife branch. I am sorry.”  He said with sympathy which I could see from his eye. I thanked him and left the place with my heart encumbered by sadness not knowing that was the beginning of my misery.


                       ***Read The Second Part Of The Story Here***