Bayelsa O my Bayelsa

Wading through the traffic sitting at the back of a tricycle otherwise known as kekenapep and enjoying the breeze as the driver ducks and dives in front and at the back of other moving vehicles. I peep through the seeming window for breeze, which is covered by a tarp to avoid the scorching sun of Nigeria and getting wet during the rainy season, definitely needed in times like this.

Feeling so liberated from the euphoria of being in the open with no shields like that of a car. Bayelsa ooo my bayelsa the land supposedly meant to flow with the honeycomb but a sorry sight to visitors I ponder as we pass ancient and uncompleted buildings and eyesore surroundings full of spirogyra, muddy water, and beach like sand.

‘What a shame’ I think to myself. Gazing at the sand as we drive by, I am reminded of the beautiful beach sand of barbeach in Lagos where I spent my time as a child and pondering why bayelsa, most especially yenagoa, seems so less attractive.

My thoughts are cut short as a young boy on his home from school flags down the driver and utters his destination. Unfamiliar with my surrounding and where on earth he is going I am about to get back to my thoughts when the driver shouts back his price of 70 naira.

The boy pleads for a price of 50 naira, but the driver is reluctant and about to drive off when I and another passenger vocally challenge the driver to consider the boy for his price of 50 naira. The other passenger, male, gets more vocal by asking the driver if this schoolboy is expected to go steal the money to pay for the fare, and demands the boy to enter.

I try to reduce the tension by tapping gently on his hands holding on to the rails for fear of being yanked out the open narrow door like frame. The man rants on about fuel and I consider that he has a point after all the prices of fuel are being sold at almost 200 naira a litter in what used to be, but for a few days ago, the former presidents’ town.

How sad to see that even as president his own town of bayelsa suffers and the people living in poor conditions that could have been made better. A few minutes more and the male passenger taps the driver for this would be his stop where he would alight. To my shock he pays for his fare of 50 naira and that of the schoolboy of 70.

Smiling at him I utter the words thank you for he has just shown that even in this town where the price of accommodation being cheap, with soaring food prices that what is given for a hundred naira carrot is 2 lame looking sticks of 59 naira each, Samaritans still exist regardless of their own pains and struggles. 

To this end I am inspired to think more of others, helping out regardless of my own struggles so I can put a smile on someone's face at the end of it all.