chapter FOURTEEN

When the engine pulled up at the station, Taye could not believe it. He checked his watch and it was close to five in the evening. He considered the speed of the train normal but did not know how on earth he had missed the level crossing where the derailment of a goods train had disrupted his journey the other time. He very much wanted to see that spot again where Bose, Santana and himself hitch-hiked to Kaduna by road.

Taye came down at Minna and headed for the food vendors who lined the platform to buy something to eat. On his way, behold, beside the main station building was this small shed which housed a black and golden, short locomotive engine. Taye was attracted to the shed to have a look at the unusually smallish railway engine. As it tuned out, it was a monument and a plaque pasted on its frame reads, "Wushishi tramway, the first steam engine to work in Northern Nigeria". 

Taye also learnt from the information on the plague that Wushishi Tramway was built in England and delivered to Nigeria on the 2nd of August, 1901.

The time Taye spent reading the plaque on the monumental train engine and looking the engine over did not allow him to buy the rice he had planned to eat when he came out of his seat at Minna Station. He was still inspecting the pioneer engine when the warning bell — three strokes was rung by a uniformed staff of the railway at the station. Taye and indeed frequent users of the Nigerian Railways knew the meaning of the strokes of the hand-bell. First, one stroke, means fifteen minutes to go, three strokes, five minutes for the train to move and lastly, four strokes and the train will move at any moment. So, when the three strokes struck, Taye reluctantly left admiring the old engine and hurried into a kiosk nearby where he bought a loaf of bread and a bottle of spring water. He started running back to his coach and on the way, he met a young boy hawking fried fish, which he also bought before rushing up into his compartment. Almost immediately the train hooted and moved. Then came the familiar jolt which reminded Taye as a classic example of inertia in physics. 

Everybody in the train seated or standing jerked backward, as the train pulled away from rest.

Taye put away the loaf of bread, bottle of water and fish in his bag under his seat and resumed his pose on the window, beginning once again to amuse himself with the hurly-burly on the platform outside as the train moved slowoly away. The engine revved and Taye imagined the thick black smoke polluting the atmosphere outside the train. It hooted again and again and the speed increased as the train crawled into the bush shutting away Minna town.

As soon as the isolated buildings at the outskirt of the Niger State Capital were out of sight, the passenger, as if a starting gun was shot, brought out, what they had bought at the station for supper. Aroma of different types of delicacies filled the air. Taye cast a casual look around and in that split-second. He identified faces and certain sections of the compartment with different aromas. In his estimation, fried fish, bean cakes, fried yam and possibly plantain were the stuff the students at the far corner were eating. Rice and beans, Taye guessed, was being consumed by those sitting behind him. The sense of smell was so well developed in Taye that he could smell even water. The effect of the aroma of different kinds of food that took over the fresh clean air of the coach made Taye to lose his appetite and forgot in the meantime the bread and fried fish he bought at Minna Station for supper.

The evening sun that appeared on the horizon arrested his attention. The sun looming in the distance was reddish and the size of a football. Then he saw outside, smoke emitting from the top of the engine because the train was in a bend and descending into a valley. Taye's coach in the long train was on the higher ground which would soon follow the engine and the other coaches into the valley. He became a little uneasy, worried by the rather high speed of the train. Taye believed that the driver was over-speeding and thought that the driver should be mindful of the steep gradient of the terrain.

He however was not the driver and he knew next to nothing about driving a train. In fact, Taye realized that he had never been in the driver's cabin of a train. He therefore resigned himself to fate. He began to murmur psalm twenty four silently and withdrew from the window.

The beautiful ball of the sun became obscure as the train entered the valley but it appeared again as the train laboured out and climbed through a cutting. When the train was clear again, Taye looked back at the town they had left some ten or so minutes ago. A clearing about twice the size of a football field was only what he saw. He was about taking his eyes off the field when a building appeared, then another building and more buildings arranged in some order. The buildings were painted cream yellow. Taye guessed the row of buildings were in  school compound. He searched frantically but there was nobody around the corridors or on the large field. He however noticed that some of the windows of the buildings were open. Then Taye saw the tarred road just outside the large compound. He shifted attention to the road and followed it with his eyes. Much of what he saw clear, but then the road was running towards a point where it meets the rail line. The train hooted and Taye confirmed that the highway actually crossed their path. Soon they come to the railway crossing where a few cars queued on both sides of the gate. A big "police check-point" signboard, unmanned, stood in the middle of the road. The train increased its speed and the rhythm of the wheel on the rail track as well as the wailing engine with its occasional hooting made a ludicrously bata music with a fast tempo. Taye followed with his mind the sounds now being produced. Para-poro-paraporo para fooooooo-huuuu-parar-para-para-poro-poro-poro-pa-- on and on. Outside, the sun was half sunk behind the trees and Taye was still gazing at it when suddenly darkness enveloped the earth. For the first time in his life. it dawned on him what it meant by nightfall. He checked his watch to learn that it was close to a quarter to eight. The train hooted. Three long, loud blasts and the Zungeru Bridge stood out in silhouette. Zungeru is part of Nigeria's history, Taye reflected, it was the birthplace of Nigeria's first indigenous Governor-General and later  President of Nigeria at independence on October 1, 1960. Taye knows from research that Honourable Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe, the erudite Zik of Africa was at different times in his life, a policeman, journalist, publisher. nationalist. author, politician and elder statesman. He was born of an Ibo parentage in Zungeru while his father was working with the Nigerian Railways. 

The train slowed down as it crossed the bridge on the Zungeru River and was still moving slowly when it entered Zungeru Station. The stop over at the station was so brief that any passenger who attempted to disembark would have hardly got to the platform when the train whistled again and pulled off. Taye took it that the train merely stopped to pay homage to the birthplace of a frontline nationalist and foremost Pan Africanist.

Zungeru soon receded into the past as the train sped into Jebba at a little after eight o'clock. Apart from the lamp poles on the station platform and the sprawling Jebba Paper Mill nearby, it was a monotonous stretch of darkness all around. 

A fried fish hawker approached Taye outside the window urging him to buy, and that reminded him of the fried fish and bread in his bag. He hurriedly brought it out, unwrapped it and began to satisty his appetite. Taye ate as if he had been starved, finishing the big loaf of bread and drinking the spring water that was now warm in a jiffy. 

He felt very satisfied and stretched his legs in readiness to sleep but the light in the coach was too bright, making it difficult for him to sleep. He was used to sleeping in darkness and that reminded him about home. At this time in Kaduna, Taye thought, super would have been over about two hours back. If his old man had not traveled, as he often did on short notice, it would be time for the evening prayers before the little ones began to fall asleep. Taye decided therefore to be with the rest of his family in spirit.That was the last he knew that night because somewhere in the middle of the Lord's Prayer, which he was reciting silently, he suddenly fell asleep. 

The train was hooting to enter the ultramodern Okuku Central Station when Taye was woken by the persistent hooting of the train as it approached the large station.

Taye lifted his left wrist and brought it to his eyes. Eight zero eight. He watched the two tiny dots between the first eight in front and the zero flashing until the other eight changed to nine. He pressed the alarm button and six point zero appeared. He checked his bag in the stowaway compartment and dragged it out. The woman with the kid asked if Taye was about to come down and he replied in the affirmative explaining that he was changing to the central line. The train finally came to a stop inside the station. Taye said goodbye to those remaining in the coach and went down to the platform.