Caboose

A horribly early start to catch the bus back to Abuja, getting dressed and taking machines to the bus station before it was light. For once the bus wasn’t horribly overloaded, so we had a fairly comfortable ride from Eket to Uyo, where we had to hang about while the bus for the next stage of the journey filled. We used the time to get some breakfast (rice and stew) and buy biscuits.

When we were eventually ready to go we realised that the bus was shiny and new, with the luxury of an aisle and legroom. It even had air conditioning. There was a bit of a scrum to get on board but by this point I’d given up on politeness and just grabbed a seat in the front row. We then had to sit through a long, tedious prayer from some pastor (who then started asking for money) before we could set off.

Things went well until something went wrong with the bus (apart from the driver refusing to turn on the a/c), we stopped on the road somewhere and then limped into Enugu, where the driver tried to find someone to fix it. This is where the disadvantage of the new bus became apparent, it can’t be fixed by somebody with only a hammer and a few bits of wire, it looked like they needed somebody with a computer to clear the fault on the engine management system.

After a couple of hours an exceptionally clapped-out bus turned up and we had to negotiate for it to take us to Abuja. Our original bus’s driver had only been given money to buy fuel, so we had to cough up an extra 400 Naira to continue our journey in extreme discomfort.

We didn’t get in to Abuja until around 9pm, and then had to try to persuade the bus company staff to refund the extra money we had paid. In the end Tracey and Jenny went back the next morning and managed to get the money.