I will begin by stating that this tale I am to tell

I will begin by stating that this tale I am to tell you I don’t know how it ends, if it has an ending, and I don’t know the origins. Like Jon Snow I know nothing, but I promise to tell this tale because it’s the excitement of every tale teller to be surprised with the listener as he or she discovers the same truth at the same with the listener. Let’s take a gander, shall we?A young man and his young wife, perhaps a few years into their union, leaves their home at the break of dawn moments after the crow of a cock nearby prompted a reply some distance away from it’s colleagues. In this new day, under the blue sky dotted by cotton wool clouds, they boarded their car, a jalopy with a mix match of fading colours, and drive towards their destination. They maybe going to observe their farm in anticipation of the next planting season or maybe to tend to a sick relative who needs emergency attention, it could be that they are out to scout for potent medicine men in far away communities. It’s possible they are going near their polling unit for the general elections on the morrow. Young couples, that’s all I know about them; nothing else. I don’t know if they are traders of human parts, Coke addicts and Jollof rice worshippers, peddlers or if they love the President enough to vote him in. I don’t know if they’re loving couples, rich couples or Kamasutra loving couples. I have no information that suggests they’re in want of children, having relational issues or going through the motions of a divorce. But we all can agree they are going about their business — this man and his beautiful wife, driving at a respectable speed in the coming lane. The day is gray, no rain clouds, no sun, just gray. The kind of day meteorologists would point to a tiny spot on the map and happily say: Cloudy conditions at twenty five degrees Celsius, there will be light rain showers across this region during the day and plenty other blah-blah. If you’re of the people who take these weather reports as absolute truths then you will more than always be in for a rude shock when the heat waves looms in at noon and continues until the day dies as opposed to initial predictions. Happened to me and Kesser when we were 12. The weather correspondent came on TV, sunned her reddish gums at the viewers and told of an impending rain, we chose to stay indoors and not go out to train in the field. The sun that shone that day could barbeque a frozen fish. Lads that gave zero fucks about weather reports came to the pitch and had a run out with the coach. Unsuspectingly, football agents with foreign affiliations came out that sunny day to scout up-and-coming gems. They picked two guys for trials in their camps overseas. One of them, Akuna, an average player by my standards, was among those picked. I gather he’s in the UK lording over the English third division, lucky chap. Never again did I give zero fucks about meteorologists and weather reports, Kesser too. But that’s by the way, let’s go back to our story — the one with the man and his wife driving to their destination. It is said that one who knows much speaks with silence. Did she, the wife of the man in the passenger seat, know of what is coming that she kept mute to herself since the car roared to life? Like I stated earlier, I make no claim whatsoever to be in the know of things, especially of things to come but the sober in this woman’s eyes, the hollowness in her tired face, and her sagging jaws told a story of doom. I’m given to understand this isn’t her default mode, this mourners look, this mood of silence and brooding. “Whats the issue? You seem not yourself today.” “It’s nothing, I’m fine,” she says and let out something close to, but not exactly, a smile. The husband isn’t on the same mood as she; his outgoing personality will charm even his enemy. Steering on his right hand, guava on his left, a wide ear to ear grin colourful as the beads on his wife’s waist plasters his face as he greedily spears another bite at the flesh of the guava while humming to a nursery rhyme of yesteryears, clearly relishing the nostalgia. He motions for her to get one of the guavas on the dash board she declines. He continues his one man party. Unlike the man and his wife sitting comfortably in their car seats, a bus load of repulsive humans squeezed into pairs of four on makeshift seats that gave no ample leg room is speeding along and bouncing over potholes in the asphalt. Amongst the passengers are market women with their farm produce, a student sardined in between two women with pillowy mounds, a lady that nothing interests, another that everything interests, a couple of men with total disregard for feminity, and, well the driver of the bus who has tribal marks that were either badly drawn by someone lacking joy in life or he was rescued from the claws of an angry cat. These humans, a very lofty term to describe their collective savagery; each of them wearing different colognes, some, perhaps bought theirs from a cosmetic store or road side traders and hawkers of wares, others produce theirs bodily making the bus a boiling cauldron of odour. The bus lurch forward, groaning like a poorly tuned trombone. They drive past the towns, past the villages and hamlets that are nearly deserted, past where palm wine and bush meat sellers are stationed to sell their goods to ‘na enjoyment go kill me travellers,’ past the lands where the soil is rich in humus, past the mufti wearing policemen garrisoned around the bullet riddled children’s hospital doing nothing else but mount a roadblock and routinely collect bribes from motorists and other road users. It seems the driver is well versed plying this route, he has the skillset in oscillating through potholed roads that has more death traps than a mine field. He meanders to the left and to the right, which is now an orthodox style of driving on this road as other motorists also sway jauntily, evading obstacles like the android Temple Run game. It takes untold discipline to drive through this route.For much of the journey there is relative calm and silence in the bus save for the car radio blaring pleasant music to no one’s ears but the drivers. Music from foreign lands are often strange to the ears, so the passengers keep to being mute, enduring the torture until a phone rings and the student hollers at the driver to put off the horrible music to enable him take his call. In the acerbic tone he was spoken to, the driver promptly essay a reply in a stream of comments that hinted on the general behaviour of people who do not own a wheel barrow. Hell loosens it’s cords and insults fly towards the driver from all corner of the bus. “Do you know who I am?” A man in the middle seat of the middle row exclaims in a constrained eloquence and then goes on yapping about his economic importance. I tell you this because I’m truth loving: You can hardly be in a public space and not hear the phrase “do you know who I am” at least once. Someone bashes another’s car