Retrospect: My Journey Up North

 Maybe one day I'll be able to tell you about my journey up north - Katsina to write an examination in a night bus. 

It was when Boko Haram started. I was the only Christian on the bus. Deep into our voyage, someone at the back seat started a conversation about religion. I got really scared when I discovered we had extremists on board. They said very awful stuff. 

But someone in the bus opposed them, he was their brother. They shut him up and threatened to slay him beside the road if he dared say anything. 

I sat quietly with my tail between my legs,  silently praying and hoping that my looks or inability to speak Hausa fluently (then) won't betray me. 

"What if they ask you, who are you?" I asked myself. "Will you lie and deny your true identity?"

When we got to Malumfashi at about 10:00pm, I was stranded because I didn't know my way and the network was so bad that I couldn't reach my host. 

To make things worse, my phone's battery ran down (you know how BlackBerry battery was) and there was no lodge close by. 

The gentlemen (the passenger that opposed the extremists in the bus) saw how distressed I was and asked me about my where about. After telling him everything, he asked me to follow him to his house to spend the night but I declined. 

He look me to his friend's shop in the motor park and charged my phone. He also helped me locate my host's address and asked a trusted bike man to take me there. It was already 11:30. I finally reached my host's house at about past 12:00am, they were already worried and couldn't go to bed. 

I will never ever forget what that man did for me. I was a total stranger, in a strange land, who had a strange belief system but he choose to help me. His name was Halidu. I hope he's alive and posterity is treating him nicely.

© Samuel Thomas Jr (Lyricool Liturgy)