Never To Experience Jornery

by Udeh Vivian (Nigeria)

I didn't expect to find Nigeria

I have this Short experienced jornery I never dreamt to embark on, in my life time. In my story here comes a faithful I planned to embarked on a City of Onitsha a sun shining state located in Nigeria. Although the distance to the state from my own location in the city of Enugu, a Coal city state in the heart of the great super Eagle was just 2 hours jornery. So I decided to begin my jornery in the middle of the day, that before the first moon in the evening will set I have reached my destination. Then I left to park around 12 mid day, took 15 minutes to reach the transport boarding park, it too another 15 for the Travellers to finish boarding and the vehicle finally left the boarding point around 1pm in the day. At normal range we are expected to reach our destination around 3pm with normal speed limit driving, just 20 minutes after our departure from the boarding point the vehicle stopped at the middle of a highway. The drive did all he can to fix the bus,all to no avail. He put a call across to the transport company to get another bus to transfer the passenger. As at around 1:35pm he put a call through, after using up to 15 minutes to do trials repair and the car the refusing to start, it took to transport company extra 1 hour to return unfavourable reply to the driver. The driver who was troubled and disappointed, with all the yelling and unfair words received from his passengers, not knowing what to do, boarded a returning vehicle to know why they refused to get another vehicle with a mechanic which he requested for, leaving about 18 passengers on the highway, which very wrong and harmful in all angles, either we get in an accident or encounter an armed robbery attack and verse verser. While all this was happening around 2:55 as the driver has left us with no hope, putting all the passengers on a fearing and angry mood on a harsh sun and very thirsty, were there's no were to get water. At around 3pm by then everyone was tired and getting fed up to wait, knowing fully well that entering that sun shining state in the night was very dangerous, some started boarding another vehicle to continue their jornery so as to reach their destination on time. When the remaining passengers was four men with me making it five,I became more troubled and tensed. I never liked boarding a vehicle along the way if not a registered transport company, I was confused on how to continue the jornery or not, knowing is the my reason to travel is urgent and important to me. As I was in the mist to take decision I checked my wrist watch it was a minute to 4 O'CLOCK, I hurried up to enter a passing vehicle at the moment. A jornery that supposed to take us 1 hour 40 minutes, with the passing along vehicle will take up to 2 hours 30 minutes. So I entered the bus with confidence at least to get in the state around 7pm in the evening not knowing another unpleasant experience is ahead of us. The vehicle I boarded around 4pm, on reaching a particular town around 5:38 we stopped to fill the empty sits with passengers, for about 20 minutes we waited for the bus to full, finally the last person entered around 6pm and we departed. On our way we meet a traffic congestion in a certain town name Abba Town at about 6:40pm. When we are happy that we are closer to the destination we are delayed for another 30 minutes in a traffic. With tears rolling down my eyes, I regretted why I begin the trip from the on set. As calls was coming in my mobile hand set back from home to know if my jornery was a success and from were I was going that I have missed the opportunity to enroll in the exercise, I prayed never to experience such ugly story while traveling until call to glory by God. Life experiences.