"Good Day", Abi?

My car had broken down, gear box problem, but I needed to get to the library, I had a lot of reading to do. Being a medical doctor (in the making) entails a lot of reading and more reading. I just had to get to the library somehow, anyhow.

I thought of the 3 means of public transport available. I hated okadas, not enough protection and with the silly crash helmets now, that you had to share with approximately twenty thousand other people patronizing this sector. I wasn’t very keen on catching any hair/scalp infection just yet.

Taxis didn’t ply the library route so my last option was the bus. However this didn’t come without its qualms. The bus stop was close to the market which was quite a distance from my house. Since my cousin was leaving home too to pick a taxi to her friends’, she decided to walk me.

I was ushered to an empty bus and stepped in. This was a new experience for me so I just sat patiently and waited for the bus to fill. The driver was already in, there was a guy sitting beside him up front smoking what looked like a joint (spliff, crack, whareva…) definitely not a cigarette. He looked dirty and unkempt. The driver muttered something in low tones and he moved off and out of the bus. That’s when I got alert. I had a good mind to step off the bus, everything looked suspicious, so as a sharp Nigerian I took out my wallet, removed a large part of the money I was with and pushed it down my socks and into my shoes. I wasn’t taking the change of getting robbed by some market touts. We dey Naija O! and sometimes you need to apply a little wisdom to survive. With this I relaxed a bit. The bus started filling up and soon we moved off.

On the way, the driver took a wrong turn off the major road, I almost protested but then everyone else was sitting calm, I think I must have broken into sweat somewhere. Then I heard some people behind me discussing the state of the road ahead, and how bad it was that the past government didn’t do anything about it. They obviously plied this route often, so I relaxed a little. But this route was so long, winding and bad,…thoroughly bad. I thought the bus was going to come apart as it creaked with every bounce and turn

“Library!” I shouted, taking a cue from one of the passengers that dropped earlier. The guy passed the library a little, I had to shout again. By this time I was getting a little tensed. Obviously he didn’t hear me the first time, as this time he slowed down and came to a halt. I stepped off, paid the fare and heaved a sigh of relief as I walked back to the library. I just had to do something about my car, I was not sure if I could take that another day, but 30grand gear box no be beans now. I shrugged this off my mind as I took a seat in a secluded area of the medical library and proceeded to retrieve my cash. I took my shoes off, then my socks, but an empty socks stared back at me. With the state of my mind at the moment, I immediately thought…JUJU!!! These people have jazzed me and taken my money. But I couldn’t remember falling asleep, or going into a trance or something of the sort. Impossible, it couldn’t be, I shook the sock over and over again, trying to maybe dislodge the money somehow, I looked on the sole of my foot thinking that maybe it stuck there or something, but who sai!!!

My heart rate increased, how was I going to get back home, I had to have lunch later. I stood up, pushed the chair back and then looked down. Staring at me from my empty shoe was a neatly folded pile of naira notes. I shook my head, smiling to myself. It then dawned on my that in the desperation of the moment, I had probably pushed the money straight into my shoe thinking it was in the sock. I noticed one or two eyes looking in my direction as I lowered myself back to my seat, thankful for the separating partitions between the desks.

Na wa oh! I thought to myself, what a was to start my day.