Hushed Echoes

At exactly 6:30pm, the bus finally pulled up at the bus terminal after twelve hours of tedious journey. All the passagers busied themselves, trying to offload their luggage from the bus.

In spite of their horrible experience with the armed robbers, they still had cause to give thanks to God for granting them a safe journey.

Merely looking at their faces, nobody could have believed that these were the same people who were fretting a few hours back, when they were attacked by men of underworld.

What could be more important than being alive? When there is life there is bound to be hope, as long as blood keeps flowing in human body so also would human beings keep attaching their hope to a future.

Therefore, a fall today would test our rise tomorrow.

Marco was not equally left out in the operation “offload your load” he was stooping down trying to pick his bag that was placed under the seat.

Stepping down from the bus, he felt a palpable sense of relief, he could feel the insistent pains all over, caused by his prolonged hours of sitting.

Ironically, his backache did not give him much concern like the mass of heads and streams of the vehicle that were parading the street of Accra.

For a while, he became dumbfounded as he watched with his mouth agape the different brands of vehicles moving to and fro.

Suddenly, he realised he had become absent minded at the sight of the magnificent building that adorned the street of this huge city.

“My God! This city is something else. What a beautiful place! It actually makes my town looks like a pack of refuse bin” he mumbled to himself as he lowered his travelling bag from his shoulder and searched for his friend’s address.

He could not locate the piece of paper anymore, he searched his bag several times without any success.

” How can this happen to me?” He queried himself looking up to the sky as if he were expecting a positive response from above.

“How will i explain this?” He questioned himself again, feeling more nervous and biting his fingernails at the same time, he stood there wondering what next to do.

He instinctively searched again this time around more tenaciously, he did it with a special attention, and luckily for him, he stumbled upon it.

“Thank God!” he yelled with excitement with a heavy breath of relief.

He moved forward and noticed a vulcanizers sitting by the roadside, he decided to show him the address and asked for directions.

“Hmm… see you are new to this place, I hope your journey was great, let me see the paper” He looked at it intently and continue; “okay lawanson! You still have a long journey, anyway go to the car park over there and enter the bus going through that route, Once you get there, show anybody this address, they will surely direct you to the house. Do you understand?”

” Yes, thank you very much” Marco said.

He stopped a bus and waited, thinking that the bus was going to stop for him to enter, he could not understand why they kept moving, even when the driver was announcing the same place he was going.

” Jump into the vehicle immediately they slow down, nobody will wait for you, this is a very busy city, enter now!” The vulcanizer admonished him.

With that at the back of his mind, he became tuned to the external varieties of Accra life, it was a different ball game altogether, which was incomparable to the muffled life he had been used to in his town.

This was Accra Ghana and he had to behave like one of the Ghanaians.Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.