The nightmare journey

Nigeria is not the easiest place to get around by public transport and I had a couple of forgettable journeys. However, these were largely due to the discomfort of the journey rather than due to serious bad luck. However, this post is about my worst journey, which was from Jos to Yankari National Park (see next post for more information about the park) and back to Abuja over two days (24th and 25th).

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Yankari National Park is not an easy place to get to, but for the traveller with time it is possible to get public transport and hitch a lift to the park. I, however, had given myself about 24 hours to make a round trip from Jos to the park (about 230km) and back to Abuja (about 550km) and spend a relaxing afternoon, evening and morning in Yankari. So I hired a driver with the help of a friend in Jos enabling me to get a competitive rate.

(Nigeria’s drivers are particularly hard to bargain with. They continually cite the recent dramatic increases in petrol – due to reduction in government subsidies, as well as international price rises – as the cause for high transport prices. As an aside, the petrol rises have also led to a new and fascinating dimension in Nigerian politics. It has galvanised a number of million-man protests. These have been significant, first because of their peaceful nature and, secondly, it has seen the rise of the recently returned Wole Soyinka acting as a noble, charismatic figurehead of this movement, which is fighting for democratic accountability, as well as reduction of petrol prices.)

The journey, however, was a disaster, which all but ruined my aim to have a day of relaxation in the midst of Mother Nature at her best. The main road from Jos to Bauchi is good; the 130kms took about an hour. Then you make a turning 10km after Bauchi at a rusty sign for the park. Suddenly the road becomes sandy and pot-holed. The road best resembles rally-driving course. However, my driver, owner to a second-hand Opel, is not a rally driver and for a Nigerian is unusually protective of his car. So for about 100km we drove, zigzagging around the pot-holes at an average of about 30km/hr; about 3 1/2 hours of jaw-jangling frustration.

My afternoon was, therefore, not spent in a warm spring pool, but in a bad car, listening to crappy 80's music, watching 4x4's race past and getting a glimpse of pigeons and guinea foul as the best wildlife around.

When we arrived at the Yankari village, I checked in and planned to exploit the last hour of light by exploring the area and finding the Spring Pool. However, my driver pulled out a wild card - he claimed that I had to pay extra for his lodging and food for the evening. My counterclaim was that we had negotiated this in the original price. A stalemate developed and we found ourselves in the midst of a tense argument in the middle of the insect-hissing wilderness. If it wasn't for the expert mediation techniques of an employee of the Park, we could have been like this all night, or I could have been stuck in the park without a car and driver! I paid the guy an extra N1,000 (£4 - sounds measly I know, but I was in Nigerian money-mode by this stage of the holiday) , he took it begrudgingly and I meandered down to the Spring Pool in the national park.

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The next morning, after a game viewing, and another short swim at the Wikki Warm Springs, my driver and I headed back to Bauchi, where I would get a share-taxi to Abuja. I was aiming to get to Abuja for 4.00pm to get the 5.30pm flight to Calabar and start the penultimate leg of my journey.

The road from the National Park to the main road seemed to have got worse. There was heavy rain the previous evening and many birds sipped gently from the pot/watering-holes. However, I had mentally prepared for the journey.

Then, the car broke down, which I was not prepared for.

Initially, it seemed that we had run out of petrol in the middle of the national park, miles from either the main road or the hotel site and village. After a couple of starts and stops, however, we realised that it wasn't lack of petrol but something was wrong with the car's exhaust. The shaking and knocking caused by the pot-holes had loosened some connections. Having solved the problem with a few hits of the exhaust, we had to drive even slower, so we progressed at about 15km/hr.

I was getting significantly behind schedule, but at least we were moving and not stuck in the bush, in the baking heat, waiting for a miracle to save us. We made it to the main road without another hitch. The main road to Bauchi was pot-hole free and so we picked up the pace.

Shockingly, however, about 20km from Bauchi, the car cut out again. The driver pulled out his tools (a hammer, a screw driver and pliers), lay on his back and crawled under the car. After five minutes, he depressingly said that there is nothing he can do. "It's finished".

We agreed to leave the car, hitch a lift back to Bauchi, where I would continue with my journey and he would get a mechanic to fix his car. We were also with a mother and son who hitched a lift with us from the Yankari National Park village; the son wanted to get to his afternoon school and the mother to do some shopping in the market - both were losing hope that we would get to Bauchi before the school closes.

Within minutes of looking to hitch a lift, a car stopped. It had one space - the front seat. However, with only three in the back, this actually meant it had three spaces. The son and I shared the front seat and the mother crowded in the back with three other women. I paid my driver the balance, thanked him, and wished him well - despite the argument in the National Park, we parted as friends and continued to text each other over the rest of my trip. He waited by the car, waiting for his own lift back to Bauchi.

I was already running about 2 hours behind schedule, so I decided to stay the night with my friend, Hana, in Abuja, and make my way to Calabar the next day (26th).

Having made this decision, I was not time constrained and a little more relaxed. This was helpful, because the new car that I found myself in did a maximum of 50km/hour, was carrying a huge consignment of bananas in the boot and was about ten times worse looking and sounding than the Opel I had just left behind.

Predictably, the car broke down.

Fortunately, it was only a short inconvenience. We had run out of petrol. After about 20 minutes of shouting at various shop owners from the car, a man was decanting a litre of petrol into the tank.

Finally, I made it to the Bauchi Motor Park. I found myself an appropriate car - a 7-seater 1970's Peugeot - which would go to Abuja when full. Including me, there were only three passengers ready. After an hour, only one additional person had come. It was 3.30pm and we resigned to waiting for the final three passengers for a very long time.

During this wait, I walked around the crowded, muddy motor park. I ate some suya (which I thought was chicken and beef, but ended up being hard fish and kidney, which I donated to a couple of the street children with, like all street children, their multicoloured plastic food bowls) and found a place to have a de-stressing afternoon beer.

The beer did the trick, but I was knocked back out of kilter quickly enough. As I returned to the car, I had to avoid the filthy mud pools that had collected around the motor park, which I did expertly. However, a small bus crept up alongside me and splashed a pool of brown water all over my leg - I don't even want to think what is in these mud pools.

On my return to the car, there were still three empty places. I began to consider paying for all three places to get the car going, but suddenly a family - mother, father and three small kids - arrived to take up the last three places.

We all jumped in. As the family climbed in the back I was handed a small, wide-eyed one year old, who accepted me without a whimper. However, not in the mood for cuteness, and fearing the worst (car + pot-holes = kid-sick), I returned the baby to the parents.

The journey back to Abuja was horrific. Whilst the road was good, half of the journey was done under darkness, and all of it was done under ridiculously heavy rain. These two factors did not perturb our driver, who stormed along.

I managed, whilst it was still light, to get some sleep in the car. When I woke it was dark and it was raining so heavily the wipers could barely keep the rain off the windscreen. And we were travelling at about 100km/hr only 10 metres behind a huge truck, waiting to overtake it. Arrested by the sight, I involuntarily screamed: "Give the truck some space". The guy in the front passenger seat looked round slowly, the driver backed off a bit, but within minutes we were about 10 metres behind another lorry peering out every 20 seconds to check the oncoming traffic, with trucks hooting as they passed us in a thick, blinding spray.

For the next two hours, I had my heart in my mouth. It felt the driver was playing with my life.

We finally arrived safely in Abuja. I was 6 hours behind schedule and arrived at 10pm at Hana's flat. The Flat was a beautiful refuge, where I could shower, wash clothes, eat Hana's beautiful Italian dinner and recover from the nightmare journey.