“Madam, thank your stars,” the head of the group charged my mother the moment he handed the luggage back to us. “The crook was not lucky this time around; my boys caught up with him just as he was running away with the bag.”
“Thank you very much. God bless you,” my agitated mother heaved a sigh of relief, placing her arm on her chest.
She fired me a disappointing gaze as though she was going to bore a hole on my eyes. That aspect of mother was what I hated the most and I would rather prefer outright rebuke or thrashing than eye torture.
Our bus was filled in a few minutes later and it zoomed off almost immediately. I shut my eyes and tried to relive the gory sight of the live human head. Could it be real? I probed my young mind. Perhaps, I could have gone a step further by even touching the creature, rather than the display of fear…
“Wake up!” my mother jabbed me from my reverie. “You had better keep awake to enjoy the full view of the landscape.”
“I wasn’t sleeping, ma,” I replied, “Where are we now?”
“We are still in Ibadan,” her tone fell flat. “We should be in Odogbolu within the next one and a half hours.”
A foul smell like that of rotten beans travelled speedily around the bus. I quickly blocked my nostrils with two of my fingers. An elderly woman seated behind me was my prime suspect. The several wraps of Akara balls she had been indulged in during the journey must be responsible for the stench.
After discharging a significant mass of saliva through the window, mother joined a handful of other passengers to hurl insults at the anonymous offender.
As the driver was about to negotiate a bend, a sound, reminiscent to that of a pack of fireworks, echoed rudely in the jam-packed bus, emitting the same rotten beans odour. Without the aid of any seer, the original farting culprit was finally revealed.
The culprit, a middle-aged man clad in a grey coat and accentuated with a red bow-tie, cut the image of a professor. Sensing the stir he had caused, he quickly made open apologies to the passengers.
Mother shot him a glance and shook her head.
“Abajo (no wonder), he is even an Alakowe (educated person); I am not surprised at the degree of the unpleasant smell.”
“Not with the several mede mede (junk foods) they consume,” another passenger added.
The entire passenger burst into laughter.
“I apologise once again,” the Bow-tie man waved both hands in the air.
“You people should be grateful to God on my behalf,” he rebounded just like a wounded lion. “Is it not better for me to release the gas than for it to choke me?”
The passengers blew into more laughter; even the driver was not left out in the glee.
Finally, we got to Ijebu Ode. Mother and I alighted at the last bus stop and proceeded to board another bus. I turned instinctively, and the Bow-tie man was pacing towards us with a note of urgency.
