It seems only like yesterday since I travelled to Calabar with several friends and strangers from other universities.
Despite the waning effort of time in its best ability to rob me of the precious and simultaneously miserable days I spent away from my school, I still vividly remember my experience in Calabar. Even more so, among the cloud of garnered foreign experiences that range from obsolete to important to a state, and in a state by the edge of Nigeria, I refuse to be robbed of the memories that help me justify my 7-day trip to Calabar.
I made a promise to myself at the beginning of the year, as most people have to conform to the pressure of having a better experience than the previous year. Among my many promises, one of them was to be “outside more”. A euphemism overused among Nigerians to refer to senseless hedonism, or a mild form of extroversion that can serve as enough highlights at the end of the year to justify all the baggage and tiredness that comes with being a Nigerian.
In my case, as I am quite introverted, my “outside” is limited to small hangouts, and also conferences. And here is where my story starts, a journey to a conference in Calabar.
The Trip From Ife
It was just two of us here from Ife who had the courage, and perhaps also the money — since transport is so costly and anyone who hadn’t been saving up for it would most likely just pass up the conference — who would go to Calabar. So, there we were, my ladyfriend, Fikayo, and I. We were to rendezvous at Ibadan and band with 11 other students from other universities, and then from there, we would all charter a bus the following morning which would take us straight to the venue in Calabar.
As planned, we all met at a lodge in Ibadan, a few minutes drive to the terminal of the transport company we made a deal with. For the rather affordable price we paid for the lodge, it came as no surprise to me that I could almost hear the millions of unloaded children who were never fortunate enough to make it into the condoms of the numerous people who, quite literally, came here. I could almost hear them say, papa, surprised that they ended up on cheap foams and sheets, and not the intended destination of the ovaries.
My bed was a mess, and I probably could have ended up pregnant from all the stains that coloured my sheet — if I were a woman.
Around 3 am, we woke up and started making preparations to get to the park early, and then hit the road early, because, from our estimation, Ibadan to Calabar was about 15hrs drive. We had also made some arrangements with some drivers who would get us to the park. Despite this being the case, it wasn’t until past 6 am that they arrived, and despite making it early to the park earlier than 7 am, it wasn’t until 7:50 am that we left for Calabar.
That we left the park that late can be attributed to everything that went wrong with the travelling agency, Peace Mass Transit, a horrible corporation that has no care for the safety and comfort of their passengers.
They had previously agreed to our plans to leave as early as 6 am, and it wasn’t until we were all at the terminal that we were told that buses don’t leave the garage until after 7 am. Now, as if this wasn’t already sufficient reason to throw curses at the entire management of PMT, they demanded that we pay some amount of money for our bags to be loaded onto the bus.
This to me is a lecherous attempt at exploiting people who couldn’t turn back on their travel plans, because the alternative to accepting their demands would be to draft a new travel plan, and that could mean that we’d have to reschedule our travel and I may have to return to that semen infested hellscape which holds more to-be babies than an abortion clinic.
I found extra annoyance, as did my travelling colleagues from other universities, in the fact that the PMT bus taking us on an 18hrs+ road trip thought it would be the best idea to attach so many goods and products to the bus that there was barely any leg room for the passengers. It was even worse knowing that two random people joined us, and these two guys were travelling with about 16 big cans of paint.
As we made our way to the park and were directed to our bus, we’d all seen the cans placed right by its side, but none of us imagined that those were travelling with us. To my surprise, they were indeed travelling with us, and they would rob us of the comfort of having the passageway of the bus to ourselves. Which, if you ask me, isn’t too much to demand, considering the length of our trip.
The same guy who loaded our bags arranged the cans and charged us for his primary duty, which should already be a byproduct of the travel payments we made.
Hit The Ground
We were on the road by 8:20 am. It was that late, as opposed to our initial 6 am, later 7 am, departure plan because the driver had to make a stop to buy fuel first — something he would do about 3 other times during the entire trip.
Next to me were some of our bags, stacked atop each other, so high that I’d have to break my neck trying to check on my friends who sat way back at the edge of the bus. I was robbed of any direct way of interacting with them by bags whose right place should have been at the boot.
This level of discomfort could only mean that I had to join the ranks of my travelling partners in the realm of temporary death as a means of passing time in this vehicle that is no better than a toxic relationship we have to endure until we get to our Destination.
I woke up a few hours after to find that most people were still asleep. I opened the window to my side so I could romanticize the trip by feeding the landscapes to my eyes. I found nothing except boring architecture and earthly terrains that boasted of nothing except their archaic nature.
However, this all changed after we got to Delta State. It seemed like the architectural design of each building was in line with the national theme colour of Blue which confers some sort of bonus upon anyone that uses it on their buildings. Talk about city planning.
We passed through many states, given that Calabar is at the edge of Nigeria and borders Cameron. We also stopped at different police, soldier, and customs checkpoints. Most of these checkpoints proved to be nothing except filling stations to fuel our already growing discomfort and annoyance in the car.
The police checkpoints especially. They were mostly just points of extortion and unnecessary delays that gave off the idea that they were there to make the roads safer to use.
I could at least show empathy and understanding if any of them had actually done their jobs, rather than briefly caressing our luggage, and then demanding that the driver pay some sum of money.
The soldier checkpoints were less gruesome, if I make away with all the unnecessary moments they demanded that all passengers alight from the bus and trek past their checkpoints. For the life of me, I cannot fathom the rationale behind this single decision. They neither checked our bus, nor checked us ourselves for contraband, or anything that might have justified having us get down from the bus.
Each time we had to do this rodeo, it was a gruesome exercise because of all the cans of paint and other seas of materials that we, the passengers, had to swim our way out of. The solution to this was removing the cans of paint from the car each time we had to trek past a checkpoint. This exercise led to more time wasted on the road.
The soldiers that didn’t have us all alight would have us grinning our teeth and drawing a chuckle that mimics some level of amusement at whatever terrible joke they hurled at us. It was either we pretended that their hurtful attempts at humour stimulated our emotional regulators, or we risked hurting their ego and then paying the ultimate price of being further delayed.
When we weren’t delayed by road officers, we would come to a stop at different locations where our PMT driver would need to deliver any of the goods on the bus. He made at least 3–4 stops for occasions like this.
Other times, he would stop to engage in company activities like signing off at a specialized stop for company buses.
The other few times we came to a halt were either for fuel or for us to eat at restaurants. The latter provided some opportunities for those of us travelling together to the conference to have more opportunities to be acquainted.
Around The Corner
When we had all made peace with our situation, as far as the discomfort was concerned, I brought out my speaker and played songs that we sang along to. From time to time, it would be an abrupt switch from playing Chandelier by Sia, to playing Agbalumo by Seriki. I must admit, it was a really good opportunity for me to boast of my diverse taste in music. I came close to playing a Fuji song, right after playing a Billie Eilish song, but even I knew that I was asking at that point that someone should snatch the speaker from me.
One of the students I was travelling with from the University of Abeokuta casually referred to Abeokuta as “Abeks”. Upon hearing this terrible attempt to make modern a name that is synonymous with “under the rock”, I gave him a mild look of irritation followed by a thundering laughter that carried a wave of sarcasm in it.
This form of coinage is popular among Nigerians. Lagos is Lag, Port Harcourt is PH, and Ibadan IB. No one calls Tokyo “Tok” or refer to Paris as “Ris”, but leave it to my travelling buddy to try and make something cool out of a place infamous for its collection of ancient rocks that will make Thanos look at his Infinity Stones and shiver in jealousy.
I found similar irritations in people who were bent on drumming the unacceptable idea of referring to Calabar as “Cali” down our throats. You can’t just do that. Any more of this bastardization, and I will personally lead a campaign asking Britain to colonize Nigeria for a second time.
We got to River Niger Bridge. They had previously just opened the second bridge, so I was provided with an adequate view of landscapes of a peaceful flowing river, and past that, palm trees huddled together in the richest colour of green I’d seen since bundles of cash.
At different points where we had to slow down, all ages of roadside sellers pounced at our bus and chose the aggressive marketing strategy that usually took the form of shoving whatever ware they had to sell in our faces.
Since I sat too by the window, these sellers came in waves that left me with thoughts of snatching from anyone that so much as put their item directly in my face, and then asking the driver to drive off in a drive-by fashion.
In no time, Imo State came next. This particular state is quite memorable only because of its vastness which made it seem at a point that we were going in circles. I kept muttering to myself, as I later opened up to one of my friends on the bus that if the state was divided into 3, there would be enough lands to rival other already existing 36 states in Nigeria.
I knew I wasn’t far from our destination in Calabar after I checked Google Maps around 1 am, and it revealed that we were 2 hours away.
The bus slowed down, preparing to exit the tarred stretch of road for the gavel strip beyond it. It was getting hot in the bus, as it increasingly did, the closer we got to Calabar. So I winded down the window next to me. To no surprise, I was met with choking dust that powdered my skin to a smooth texture. It was no surprise because of the parcel of stones along the road that made the car bumpy and made it seem like we were one giant stone away from floating in the air.
We rattled our way along the corrugated road down to our hotel in Calabar where the conference was to be held. And just as this cathartic feeling of relieving myself of the stress was building up in me, my nostrils were invaded by the foreign odour of something burning. At first, I thought it was the tyre, but then as the car halted and we were all asked to get down from the bus, I found out that the breakpad had developed some faults.
I checked my watch, and it was just a few minutes past 2 am.
The driver struggled with the brakepad under the tyre until one of the conference delegates, who, get this, happened to be a mechanic, came to our rescue. Together with the driver, along the dark-pitched road, they managed to fix the car and come to our rescue. We got back on the bus and resumed the journey.
Mentally and physically exhausted, I gave in to my tiredness and fell asleep.
Some time passed and I was woken up by murmurs that sounded like chattering words giving directions to different people. Our bus had apparently come to its final stop, the car park of the hotel. Around 3 am, after a long enduring 18hrs+ journey, we were finally at the hotel.
We were received by friends and organizers of the conference (CC).
I was directed to my hotel room where I met a few other people. At the entrance of the room, I was met with heatwaves that can only be explained as the ultimate form of the hotness foreplay that I’d been gradually exposed to as we drove further and further into Calabar. I was agitated and sent me into a fit of anger that my face refused to spell right to my well-meaning roommates due to the absence of adequate illumination.
Among the few unfortunate rooms at the hotel, out of over 40+ rooms that delegates of the conference were occupying, mine happened to not have a functioning AC, or a fan. And this is where my true 5 days adventure in Calabar began.
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Cheers!
