Our journey started off on a good note with me feeling less enthusiastic and the passengers hearing me repeatedly say to my house mate "I hope this Journey is worth it". I woke up quite early that day, wow after a long time of sleeping until midday I just had to be up by 6am. At 7am, we were already in CNL chevron Nigeria limited for kick-off. I forgot to mention earlier that it was actually a tour for CNL’s language class to ile-ife...the language class consists of Spanish, Yoruba, Hausa and French.
After we were given our tourism polo shirts and caps, we started our journey at about 8am.
With my earphones plugged into my ears and some rock music playing I did not even notice that not everyone I saw earlier were seated in my bus,only then did I realize that we were in a convoy, it was really ‘The Dream’ as my friend will say. The convoy consisted of a two mopol hilux vehicles and two coaster buses with the buses in between the mopol vehicles but we were moving at 80km per hour according to chevron policy.
I can remember hearing something funny one of the expatriates asked the tour guide" why are there so many police check points on the highway and what are they collecting from the bus drivers". I was also thinking if I were the one asked such an embarrassing question about my country’s police what will I say and If you were in the shoes of the driver,WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?...Anyway,the tour guide answered well..."He said, the police men were collecting gifts from the bus drivers because they had committed an offense in the past and in order not to be arrested they had to provide gifts"... I burst into laughter and got myself thinking ‘bribery and corruption’ had just been given a new name. What happened to Christmas and Valentine's Day giving of gifts?...lol
The journey was not a funny one, 4 hours of pain, I hate sitting down for too long in fact my ass is still recovering from that day's journey. The road was not too good, the bus ride was too cold because of the long hours of usage of the a.c but who am I to complain because sitting with CNL staff was just "IT" for me. We finally got to our destination, Osun state... We headed straight to the university of ile-ife, Getting into the premises,I was like WAOH!!!This is the "IT" school. So ancient yet so beautiful. The expanse of land was enormous, Covenant University/Canaanland compared to this is nothing. Anyway, I liked the setting of the school because of how their buildings were constructed according to the hilly terrain.
It was actually a short visit, from the department of agric science to the museum where they used real animal skin to make animal sculptures, it just reminded me of the movie ‘Night at the Museum’.
After a quick moment at the museum we went for small chops and apples courtesy CNL, it was marvelous "these oil companies really know how to take care of their staff. Next we headed to the zoo still in the same school, so many animals even though some cages were empty due to extinction...lol just kidding!! Lions, hyena, monkeys, crocs, snakes antelope and the likes. We were actually rushing because the main reason of the tour was to learn about the Yoruba history.
We took a tour to the national museum were pictures were not allowed. After that, we left the museum we went straight to the Ooni of ifes palace, I was not too interested because I hate Yoruba history but I could not give a deaf ear. We were told stories about their tradition, the different Oonis, moremi: how she fought for her people, oranmiyan and d likes. The last stop was at oranmiyans chief of staff, actually the place where the guy changed to a stone and disappeared or something like that. We did not see the stone because we were meant to perform some sacrifices before going in...something I culdnt do because of my belief and maybe twas the same with others.
The journey home was slower, we stopped at Mr Biggs for lunch and headed for home,I missed pinging because of poor network. We left ife by 4pm and got to lekki chevron at about 9pm it was not funny o but God dey. I made new friends and I guess they were really impressed by me.Anyway,that earned me another invitation to Badagry!!!Oops..ddnt see that coming. I kinda look forward to the trip but that will be if am free. At the Long run,the trip was worth it!!! The pix will be uploaded later.
No comments:
Post a Comment