Kate’s Diary 8

Kate’s Diary 8

Voyage of terror 2

After the rough incident with Paul and Chioma, I couldn’t stay in Abuja with the girls to flex as planned. I had to pack and leave, although I hadn’t enough money because I never planned on leaving Abuja too early and roughly like that. But I had to leave to avoid being murdered by two angry families. All packed on the wet Sunday morning, in the usual green taxi of Abuja, lost in sight of a beautiful city I missed exploring because of a mushy history and a hasty night. Heart filled with regret and remorse I sat at the back of the cab, clutching my heavy bags leaving my head to the car window admiring flashy cars over-taking the slow cab I could afford. Yet lost in thoughts of what fun it would afford. Yet lost in thoughts of what fun it would have been if things didn’t go wrong.

“Madam we don reach park O! Your money na one thousand naira” the taxi man interrupted my fantasy as we got to the park. If it was in my town, there was no way I was gonna give that man more than three hundred naira, but since I had no idea how things work here, I just gave him the demanded amount and stepped out into the wet park. There were a lot of cheap buses going to my state, but since after my incedent with those kidnappers, I don’t take such risk of boarding buses that not under a registered transport company. So with all the money I had on me, I bought a ticket and bordered a bus. 

It took so much time to get filled, since it was a Sunday morning, people go to church before they do other things and it was still drizzling too. My ipod was fully charged, so it was headphones on, the world off, country songs was my new found love, Kenny Rogars, Don Williams, Jim Reeves, Barry white and all of the country men made up my two hundred and fifty songs “country Jamz” playlist. Within like an hour and twenty minutes, the thirteen seater bus was filled, I was seated on the last row of the bus, the driver was a young man of about twenty eight years old or there about you know, the type that takes you there fast. I was happy; I really wanted to leave this city which put my life in great danger. so we took off; Slow and steady out of the city of Abuja, through knali then gwagwalada into the express. Afresh the journey, while I was away in thoughts not even minding the gorgeous dude beside me prolly going to see his family from school or something. Hell! I paid him no attention. For some reason our driver was stuck beside a huge truck and another following us directly behind. How he got to that spot is what I still couldn’t figure out, horning steadily for the truck to let us pass because there was a whole huge hole more of a ditch than a pot hole right in front of us and a thick bush on our right, the only way of avoiding the ditch was through the left flank, and the truck was on it with another on our tail that’s probably going to crush us if we slowed down. The truck driver still didn’t flinch until we ran into the big pot hole on such a fierce magnitude of velocity which totally wrecked the bus at the spot. The first front tyre which entered he ditch was torn into bits, unbalancing the car which almost flipped over, but somehow in the bid of loosing control of the bus the driver managed to stop it! wow! That was close, coming out of the bus in shock, I was totally mute. Some where abusing and blaming the driver. Others blaming the truck drivers; which by the way were not where to be found, while few were thanking God. I was mute, totally mute; shocked. We lost two tires, one torn into pieces the other deflated. We stood stranded on the highway and watch cars pass by. The few that stopped, or seeing no one was hurt, continued their journey, until another bus from the bus company headed to Abuja came and stopped. Our driver borrowed a spare tyre, adding to the other spare he already had, replaced the two ruined tires. With the help of the men in the bus, the spare tyres were fixed and we hit the road again within an hour or so.

Into the highway on high speed, trying to cover up for the time wasted. The driver covered grounds on the smooth expressway. The rain slowly faded in hours as we approached a hold up. It was a long stretch” What was happening?” we all wondered. Hold ups like this are results of police check point which lately have been ordered out of the high ways. In impatience, while we still wondered, our driver took the narrow untarred road swiftly to the genesis of the annoying hold up. Still racing beside the long stretch to cut of the long wait; Approaching the source, were gunmen, not on uniform, not on any official identification started taking shots are our bus probably to stop us, so the driver in his own initiative stopped the bus thinking it would help mellow the angry gun men down but shots kept coming this time in random direction not just aimed  at us. Seeing this, our driver switched his gear to reverse but being the first to follow the untarred road, he gained followers who now turned an obstacle to his escape plan. There were cars and vehicle behind us in also another long stretch causing a reverse hold up; it was a nightmare and the passengers wouldn’t stop screaming. Shots were still being fired and confused drivers were busy having head-on collisions trying to escape, the whole express way turned into a jam packed scrap yard. People were leaving their cars and running on foot. We still didn’t know who these men were, the plan at the moment was to stay alive first, and any other thing comes secondary. I was seated at the last row of the bus beside the gorgeous dude who already opened the window and threw his bags out. he then turned to me and said “if you wanna leave, follow me” I was like “damn! This dude must think this is an American movie” but nonetheless, I followed him through the window still clutching my fat hand bag. As if I was ready for war, I had a pair of tight jeans on a pair of smaller on a normal blouse though. Making a run for safety the gun men were speaking a language I really don’t know, it sounded a little like Hausa but it wasn’t, so nobody really understood them. The gorgeous dude then again asked me to run fasters that the gunmen were yelling “kills em all, kill em all. They were speaking Arabic, prolly the Boko Haram bastards, i always reasoned to kill any member of the boko haram sect at any slight opportunity I get, probably not today anyway. It was hot bullets in the air again; I had to save my pretty sexy ass. The gorgeous dude who later introduced himself as Harford, was somewhat good with his hands swift like Mr. Bond, James Bond- We crawled on the floor like we were on some military training to an abandoned car; the owners must have left the car to make a safe run on foot. Harford got into the car and hot wired it; Damn! The dude was good. without being told I crawled around to the passenger’s seat, bending down to make sure a bullet doesn’t hit me, but the sound of the car engine attracted the attention of the gun men who started firing at us. There was a line up of abandoned cars behind us, probably why the owner of the car we were in left his too. Seemingly, there was no way out for us, but I somehow amidst the distress i trusted Harford. He already proved that he knows what his doing, so I sat tight. It was thick bushes beside us, the high way was already clustered up, I was still heads down when I noticed the car war already moving. I raised my head to see where we were going; Harford drove through the bushes into the woods. I was stunned! Was this the plain a monster drive road trip? Harford was driving in the woods dodging trees and bullets; it was quiet scary and extreme, Harford was all confident somewhat like Eddie, but he seems to be more calculative and accurate like he learnt his deeds. Eddie was just a fearless risk taker but Harford seems to be sure of himself and the outcome of all his steps. We drove roughly through the woods like that until we came out to a path. A lonely one just out of range for a bullet wound and safe enough for a slow cruse neither of us could figure out where we were but that wasn’t much of an issue to me, I’ve been in similar scenarios. I just wanted to know who Harford was and how he could be that fearless, who knows? He might be worse than those gun men. The last time I had a cute guy sitting beside me in a bus I ended up a kidnap victim running through bushes in a dark forest. So I engaged him in a lil convo while we drove up the path to find help.

        Harford was a newly recruited US marine, like one of those guys I watch on TV, wow! I was so impressed I could just kiss him for the record. He just came back to Nigeria to see his parents and decided to go on a bus trip just for the fun of fit since he’s been flying so long. Well I guess he’s having his fun. I didn’t know Nigerians could join the US army, I usual assume most Nigerians abroad are drug dealers or criminal out for serious paper chase, but here I am being baffled. We were still on our convo when we saw a pack of really rough looking boys with rifles dangling on their necks like gold chains -- on a road block ahead, boys, something like the “almajiri” boys I usually read on news – said to be dangerous. We pulled up at the road block and we were asked to come down from the vehicle which we gently obeyed. They started asking us questions in Hausa, I looked at Harford the languages expert and all I got was “I don’t understand Hausa, I only understood those men back there because they were speaking Arabic and I took some classes on that back in school”. Here we go, another death trap. I tried explaining in Pidgin English but these boys don’t understand any word of it. It was hell. One of them on the side acting like his the leader of the gang gave them orders, so the started searching us, after searching us and finding nothing they went to the car to search too. While some were searching the car two of them stood close to me clutching their riffles and smelling my hair like some retarded beings. I was scared, so I kept starring at Harford like I’m about to die. Harford seemed helpless, these boys were over 12 of them. Even superman can’t take them out that easy. So Harford stayed calm, until two of them started harassing me, one grabbing my breasts and the other running his hands through my back and grabbing my ass. I was red; not cause of the ass grabbing or the boobs touching, I could spare that, but these boys were so dirty their body odour is a natural insecticide and the mouth odor of the one standing in my face was lethal. I’ve been holding my breath at intervals and taking breathing breaks so as to not faint. Looking a Harford again, his face read different, he couldn’t just take it anymore. He quickly grabbed one of the dudes and smashed his head through the car window and the other he grabbed by the neck snatched his rifle and used him as a body amour as the other guys were shooting at him. I myself already laid flat on the ground and watch Harford take out those guys like a damn ninja. He shot the two guys searching the car, some took off and he made a run for their leader who he already shot in the arm. Harford cleared these boys out so fast I couldn’t narrate how he did it but the last of them now grabbed me from the ground and was yelling in Hausa. But it seemed like he was asking Harford to let their leader go. There was a gun to my head, just one mistake, I could be gone; I was already blanking out, this was worse than my other near death encounters. An almajiri with little or nothing to loose pointing a gun to my head? What could be worse? There were gun shots and I blacked out finally.

        I woke up in a house full of runs and priest; Harford was smiling down at me “Welcome come back”. I asked where I was, it was a church. I got up, there were many other people in the locked up church with some young armed men on guard.

        For some period now, this community has been experiencing some sort of attack from some unknown men. It was those unknown men that blocked the highway and opened fire on travelers. So people rush to the churches and mosques in the community for protection since the gunmen attack any other places apart from mosques and churches. After I fainted Harford killed the guy that held me at gunpoint and then drove to the church with the aid of some of the villagers. So I stood up to look around the church. The church was filled up to the brim; there have been attacks for four days now, so the whole villagers ran to worship houses. There were many sick people in the church, fever, hunger and strange illness that the church can’t even contain. I walked past them wondering “what the hell?” In a corner, there was a chained girl sitting by their self muttering some words that sounded like complains. I stood and stared, this little girl of about 13 to 15 years looked mentally ill, I was shocked, I haven’t seen a mentally ill person that young, I mean completely insane. As soon as we had on eye contact, something strange happened, she got violent and starts screaming some words that made no sense.

        Beautiful priestess, Jonah priestess

        Crooked path designed unharmless

        Strange clouds follow this mistress (pointing at me)

        On sole purpose to make her restless

        You know they don’t, I know they don’t

        Terror past present and disaster up front

        The last is dead the linage for prompt

        The mantle is on you; and its danger blunt

        Beautiful priestess Jonah

        You know the shrine; you’re the owner

        It your job, you can’t shy. Get bolder

        You choose race, oh your path gets colder

        Its in you the evil in your blood

        The answers don’t lie in modernity or some blog

        You must dance to the time of the spiritual drum

        Beautiful priestess can’t run faster than the gods that run

        You can’t run, you can’t run, you can’t you can’t run

She kept repeating “you can’t run” until she was sedated. I was confused. This insane girl was talking about me. She sounded like she knows me. She knows I’ve been through some ill experiences and she sounded like she knows why. Why did she say I can’t run away from it? What am I running from? I was lost in my thoughts standing there when Harford tapped me on my shoulder reliving me from my mind maze – a priest wanted to see me. It was already getting dark…

‘Help was coming’ they rumored. I was already tired of the church. What was the mad little girl saying? So I walked into the priest’s office in the church building. He sat me down and narrated to me how the possessed girl’s prophesy previously about people usually goes as she saw and prophesied it. The priest himself is yet to determine if the gift is from God or an evil spirit, but nevertheless, he is the only person who understands the girl’s prophesy. The priest now explained the mad girl’s gibberish. Explaining that I am a descendant of native shine doctors and priest, that the mantle of being the chief priestess of the shine has fallen on me since the last person died. He also shocked me further pointing out that the life threatening escapades I find myself or lately in as a result of the shrine. Saying I’ll continue being disturbed unless I go to serve the shine like my forefathers or go for a serious deliverance which he can help me arrange. I taught so hard. There was no way that could be true, my parents are good Christians, my grandparents too, my great grand parents, I didn’t meet. But I was told they were great farmers since my parents started telling me about my relatives there was no fetish linage they mentioned. The mad girl probably got it all wrong. Yes I know I’ve been involved in some mishaps, but that doesn’t link it all to me being a priestess. There was no way. Besides, the mishaps might be a bunch of coincidence of me being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the priest insisted, claiming that the girl is never wrong. He said I needed the deliverance if not; one day I’ll loose my life to the whole incidents stuff. I got so furious; I walked out on the catholic priest. Just then the said ‘help’ being soldiers from town arrived, they picked as much people they could, deployed some of their men to secure the civilians in the church. Harford and I got into the car we came with and they escorted us back to I safe part of the highway and me continued our journey.

By Nnagoziem The Vyrus Udensi