Diary Of A Deltan Kuffa

Chapter Three

ABRIDGE ON A BRIDGE of metal straps bolt together into a massive towering X, placed at intervals on opposite sides.
Onitsha was just behind, Delta barely ahead. Smoke-oozing trucks, modern beasts of burden, crawled by. The more he looked, the more he became interested in the uninteresting—mad traffic; something else, some feet below, pricked his interest.  It moved unabridged, it danced, carefree and wild, and if you listened just enough you could hear it too, the symphony it danced to—The wind. He watched it snake through, dividing one hemisphere from the other...
vanishing with the horizon, River Niger.

The vexed words of a passenger—",you de madddd, don't shout at me,"— over the phone, two seats ahead, brought him back to the obvious cramps in his legs and the unforgiving heat. A Journey he started in the early hours of the day had spanned into endless hours. Mad traffic, that begged for armed soldiers, to manage this chaos  of defiant mechanical bulls on wheels. This wormhole sucked machine and man from one end and spat them on the other. It was slooooow. And like the proverbial Jonah, he had to wait what felt like forever, to exit this beast.

He, like the others were sitting ducks, in the eighteen-capacity Humma RTC Bus getting hotter by the minute.
sandwiched between trucks that puffed black smoke. Seated beside him, a lady wearing a white cap, crested with a religious emblem. Her lips mumble unnoticed,  prayers? Incantation? The former. Cramped along side luggage into one end of the bus like tuna in a can, yet he moved, in the relative sense.

His eyes moved across the cream coloured page.
"Still, Nsuka disoriented her. She thought it too slow  the dust too red, the people too satisfied with the smallness of their lives.  But she would come to love it, a hesitant love at first..." - AMERICANAH
Those words struck a cord, it felt like a personal note. The dust here stained the air with its red too. Loving this new place wasn't on his mind. This journey was needless he thought; th-this scheme, the government thought it wrong. Madness. But he had no choice. As he closed the book, Chimamanda's words echoed still. Would he ever love her?

Her sky stretched before them, he could feel it, the bridging, between home and this far away land. The sound here was alien, the cars didn't sound the same. If his mind wasn't playing games, perhaps he was loosing fuel.
Mass transit busses, headed home-ward, the blue inscription on them: in God we trust, maybe HE would send manna, even better, HE gave us variety. He flagged down a boy, who raced down. After the usual buyer-trader exchange was done, he tore open the wrap and ate the only sausage roll he knew how to, Gala; Just enough fuel to run by. The bus getting cramped by the minute.

Darkening clouds. Stand-still traffic. Abraka junction, was a few blocks away. There on after the engine of the bus could throttle with life as it whizzed away like a child with candy.

His phone rang, dad calling, his screen read
"... Where are you? Have you—"
"—I just arrived. Traffic was terrible."
"You'll be okay. Mummy wants to talk... "
" Oh. okay"
"Son, how you de?"
"I de oh, I just tire"
"No worry e go better..."
It would be better. And though hesitant at first, would he lover her? And everything thing she stood for? Maybe. However it panned out this Deltan kuffa was in for a ride.