After yesterday's entry, I tried to catch some sleep to no avail. I tried several positions yet to no avail. So I decided to have hot spicy noodles and fried egg courtesy Aboki (Dongo) who speaks French. I never knew noodles could serve as opium for sleep.
I slept in the driver's seat of another bus en route Niger. They along with several other buses had a stop over. After about 2 hours of sleep, we were set to take off again. It was about 4am, when we finally set off.
We had barely moved for an hour when I woke up from my supplementary sleep with the sudden call 'clear.' Three other vehicles along with ours made a sudden you turn. Robbers were ahead.
We moves a few hundred meters and met a truck of armed men who claim to be police men. They seemed to have caught the information about robbers and paused a while to 'strategize.' After a few minutes, we turned to continue our journey. All the buses drive courteously behind our police escort.
We maintained that formation for almost another 30 minutes. On the way, we met a deserted white station wagon. We weren't sure it belonged to the robbers. Someone suggested its passengers fled for their lives. Thank God for safety.
At about 6:05 am, we entered Kaduna. I sighted a trailer fully and extra loaded with sacks of items looking like groundnut. Just then, I remembered the groundnut pyramids we learnt about in Secondary School. I pray Nigeria once again returns to agricultural glory.
Finally, we arrived Plateau state 7am. That's 23 hours after take off. The 12 hour estimate was misleading. We are in our state of deployment, but it would take another hour or 2 to reach Mangu, the location of the camp.
About an hour into the Home of Peace and Tourism, we arrived at a military check point just in front of a primary school. We saw little kids carrying massive stems of sugarcane. We tried to take a snapshot. In fact, I asked the Lawyer with us to take the shot. He did but Oga Soldier knocked on the bus' window, asked us to park and requested for the phone. He said no calls allowed, no pictures and video recordings. I perfectly understand considering security issues around the country. He had to delete the picture eventually before we were allowed to go.
Another sight worthy of note is an array of smoking hills. It seemed to me like an active volcano. Unfortunately, we didn't get a shot.
We arrived our destination 8:53am, 24 hours and 53 minutes after take off.
- FreshestOtondo, reporting from the Home of Peace and Tourism
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