“A man must know when to retreat”
A figure clad in ill-fitting green trousers and an oversized white tee walked down the sidewalk. If you passed along in a vehicle and did not squint enough, you'd think that it was absurd that someone would be sweating with such intensity on a cool evening.
What you wouldn't know is that the young corper was barely two days old from the orientation camp and was being forced to roam a foreign city.
The convenience of the use of a tricycle as a method of easy transit came along with a heavy price. The lean purse of the young corper bleeding and growing leaner with each N300 ride through town.
The corper slowly came to realize that a bus ride would cost less even though it came along with the possibility of getting lost. But he reasoned to himself that there is no life without risk. Without adventure.
Armed with this philosophy and Google Map, the young Corps member embarked on an ill-informed and ill-fated journey to collect a pair of shoes he ordered. Trekking through his city had already wrecked the sole of the previous pair he owned. He had hoped that his new shoes would be delivered to him and had fought and despaired at the female voice telling him over the phone that he had to explore a new side of town. Alone.
He contemplated and considered the consequences of losing N3000 that he had paid for his footwear.
That would amount to 10 meals consisting of eba and oha soup. His mouth watered at the thought and he shook his head wondering why he chose shoes over sustenance. He squared up his shoulders and walked over to the bus stop.
After almost having his feet being crushed by red-eyed drivers and his mother cursed by their wife-beater wearing conductors, he stepped back towards the curb and considered a tricycle ride. It would certainly save him time and it was safer to learn the route back home from behind the wisdom of an experienced driver. Those were the arguments of his palpitating heart.
"A man must know when to retreat", muttering to himself he hailed a tricycle.
Having collected the shoes he stood by the roadside again, a more experienced man. His feet poised to quickly jump backward should an oncoming passenger hungry bus swerve towards him. In his head, he calculated the route and how much he would haggle for as payment for his transport fare.
Three minutes after taking a yellow bus with cramped seats equipped with a stereo reeling out loud afrobeat songs with horrendous lyrics, he alighted and stood confused by the road.
What happened was that barely two minutes into the journey, the bearded conductor, wearing a wife-beater as custom demanded, asked him in a flurry of Igbo words questions he did not understand.
He blinked in response and for seconds was unsure of how to communicate that he did not know what had been said. He then settled for mispronouncing the name of the street he lived on.
The assistant driver turned away and with three quick slaps to the side of the bus, stopped the vehicle and instructed the corner to come down, cross the road and take another bus moving in the opposite direction.
"They just wan confuse you, bring #30."
He parted with the money unwilling, as it was a third of a quarter of what he planned to pay. He sighed and crossed the road, cursing his decision to wear his pristine new white shoes instead of his orange boots.
"Please tell me when to drop", he pleaded with a young lady in the bus seated beside him. But it seemed that he took the notion of good neighborliness too far expecting that the fake eyelashes would lift up in time from the iPhone to point out his bus stop.
"Oh my, I think we just passed your stop. "
His desperate pleas to the conductor yielded no results as the bus moved further and further away.
He was pushed out of the bus at the next junction, the automobile zooming off even before his feet touched the ground. Fist shaking and palm spreading he cursed their profits for the day and pleaded with God to make the girl's eyelashes fall off.
The corpse began his long trek home, lost and hungry, he stared at the unoffending pair of shoes which looked back at him in innocent silence.
Cross with the ineffectiveness of his anger, he decided to jog home. It was a great time for exercise and a sure way to relieve extreme emotions. His tired feet came to a halt five minutes later when he realized that the short distance he had been told to walk was actually a long trek.
"A man must know when to retreat", he said as he put his hand out to stop a yellow Keke.
