Wednesday, July 1, 2009

The wedding, Nigerian police and my reflections

I was at a friend’s wedding this weekend in the far away town of Ado-Ekiti, it was fun, stressful and it set me thinking. It was also a sort of reunion for all my friends from University but before then let me humour u guys a little. My girlfriends, two whom are corp. members and i decided to travel to Ado together and so we did, early Friday morning we were already at the pack in Ojota before 8am and we got into a van/bus and waited and it didn’t seem we would leave soon, we then decided to throw down all them ajebutter airs and start hassling for passengers.
As soon as we started, it seems that everyone was really fascinated 3 fine gals in a park trying to market a transport service line, we virtually ended up stealing other transport line passengers, who wanted to be in the same bus with 3 interesting ladies; yes i tend to be very unhumble(anything like dat) about these things... lol. In all we manage to round up 13 humorous people of which 5 of them were old enough to be our parents but they were quite crazy enough. Our driver too was a young man and we had fun, gisting and catching up on gist until we entered Ogun state.

Suddenly we met a police roadblock that just refused to go away, they stopped the driver of our bus and asked for the essentials, license, papers n co.. He gave everything and they still wanted more. Instead of the police guys to come out straight and say they wanted money, they asked the guy for something else, i think the tint permit for the van, the driver gave a receipt saying that they had just renewed and the papers were not given yet but he had evidence of payment. One short police office didn’t agree oh! He just seized the drivers licence and everything that he would need to drive along the road without harassment. Just as we were looking on waiting for the driver as he was making calls to his head office, we saw all them police men jump into their van and kick off instructing the driver to follow them.

We even thought they wanted to move to a less busy place and then negotiate how much money they wanted when they started taking us to a bush filled area. Everyone in the bus started shouting at the driver that he was a fool for following them. One of the elderly men in the bus said that their station was way off route and another extra hours journey. Now for people who were supposed to make up the bride for her native law marriage that afternoon at 2pm, we started screaming at the driver and we told him to overtake the police van, which he did but the crossed us again, it was like the police chase in ‘Madea Goes to jail’ only that we were the ones pursuing the police van. After some time we decide to turn back and continue our journey, it seems that the police guys realised that we were not following anymore and they took one way and decided to cross us in front.

Funny, the passengers were ready for the police men, one mopol guy, opened the front passenger door and ordered the passenger there to get down, the passenger refused saying he had paid his dues and wasn’t standing up. The police guy thinking his gun brandishing self was intimidating had it coming for him, becos a s soon a s he entered the bus and ordered our driver to follow the police van, snide comments started flying the air, with the majority chanting insults and asking the guy where they were taking us to. We ordered the driver to park and we forced the police guy down. He was still talking big like he was going to deal with us, we seem to have been creating a scene when one official came and brought the drivers papers saying the oda guy should let us go that one said no oh! That one passenger talked to him rudely, see me see wahala oh, someone that is old enough to be your father is whom is rude to you, we didn’t mind that there were guns everywhere we were ready to shout and scream till we gathered support from locals when they finally released the papers.

I am sure they would still quarrel about the issue when we left, for goodness sake if they wanted money, i am sure we would have found something for him, but he was acting all lord and saviour unfortunately he didn’t get anything except wasted fuel and time. After that every oda road block we met we simply opened the windows and smiled sweetly at the officers speaking words of persuasion and love to the officers who would quickly laugh and send us on our way. We got to ado just in time and we settled down at her father’s house where the native marriage was goings to take place. After enough dancing and picking money and all she was married according to native law.

Fast forward to Saturday and she was all jittery and we were everywhere; friend so the bride making her up, decorating the car blah blah blah. Then we went to the house we were put up to dress up that was after sending the bride off to get married. With the way chics dressed and made up little wonder we got to the church just as the last set of photographs were taken, we had missed the wedding but we were happy she had gotten married.

Ms Ap got married a virgin and that got me thinking, there were still people who enjoyed the good old way of staying chaste till they say i do. We promised to stay that way but well things happen! But it made me really moody and stuff and then i promised myself that even though i couldn’t undisvirgin (today is a new day with strange words) myself, i was going to stay celibate till marriage. So this is saying have a happy and fulfilled life together and may one of the twins be my God son cos i know it’s going to drop soon with the glow i saw the morning after the wedding oh! It’s so on. Happy married life Mr& Mrs De and to all them fine Ekiti brodas well.... who knows.