MY NYSC EXPERIENCE episode 5 By Beebah

The ride to Jigawa state is a trip to remember.

I arrived the bus park by 4:00 in the morning. I saw my fellow otondo-to-be, arranging their luggages inside the bus.

The attendant who is in charge of our bus cordinated the arrangement of the boxes.

I moved close to a lady who was sitting quietly beside the bus but appeared to have been there before me, her name is Aminah, she told me the bus would be moving by 5:00 am as they are still waiting for others.

Since it was time for Salat already, I decided to pray before the commencement of the journey.

About 30 minutes later, the bus was set to leave and we were called in while the attendant collected our bus tickets.

Journey proper

We left the park at exactly 5:40 am, it was still dark and very cold, such that my cardigan had little or no effect.

A Christian lady and one other Muslim guy led us in prayer.

I could barely see outside but the feeling of travelling in that hour, in an hummer jeep with the sound of dancing trees felt so good.

The sky is already clearing out and the day became brighter and we were already heading towards the outskirt of Ilorin.

We approached a town called Jebba and I tell you, I haven’t even heard of the name before, neither have I visited until now.

The roads were really bad. The people were speaking a different language entirely and out of curiosity I had to ask If we were still in Ilorin.

I learnt we were already in Minna!

Just then I knew I haven’t heard or seen anything yet. There was a heavy traffic on the road as they were trucks, tankers and heavy containers on the road side.

Before I go on with my story, I’m sure we are all familiar with this popular nursery rhyme:

seven rivers in Africa,

seven rivers in Africaaaaaaa,

Nile Niger,

Benue, Congo, Orange,

Limpopo, Zambezi

Lol… I hope you enjoyed my little throw back music. Trust me, It was intentional.

You see that Niger, Yes! that Niger gangan, I came face to face with the popular River Niger.

We approached the River Niger, I mean the Mungo park river Niger.

I was excited that I saw history, i saw the large river, but as exciting as my view was we were hold up in a traffic that lasted an hour.

Trucks were badly parked on the road side and they had to go in search of some drivers to come and help take their trucks off the road.

You have to believe me when I say we were in that traffic for about an hour stand still.

To worsen the case, a man who was transporting some livestock also on the bridge started unboarding them off the container and making them walk on the bridge.

Apparently we had to wait for the cows, goats, calves, to walk majestically before we could move.

Soon we left the great river Niger bridge and we headed towards Niger state.

We got to a very dusty area, the place was very dusty such that the drivers trailing that roadside had to switch the lights on to notify others.

Some Al-majiri boys appeared from no where and one could hardly see their faces as they were covered in dust. They begged us for money and ran after the bus. I felt pity as we all contributed money in the bus and threw at them.

Niger state is really a big one if you’d ask me. We were already approaching noon and the driver said we were still in Niger state.

I was surprised and angry. This time we were already compaining, some people were already sleeping as the journey is indeed tiring.

We begged the driver to stop anywhere that we were hungry, the old man told us he isn’t stopping until we get to Kaduna.

Who knows when somebody wee get to Kaduna now

The time was 12:45 pm and we were still moving round and round Niger state. In my mind I had already concluded that we are not getting to Kaduna until afternoon.

At about 1: 25 pm, he announced the good news that we were already in Kaduna and he’ll soon stop for us to eat.

Kaduna is another Journey on its own trust me

I’M SURE YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO LEAVE ME IN KADUNA

WATCH OUT FOR THE REMAINING PART OF MY JOURNEY

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