Hans-Sachs-Straße - Emirates.com

the bus lumbered out onto the road
and stopped. The driver blasted
the horn, then started rolling again.
Everyone started running for it, so I
ran too.
This time, we raced through
customs, then drove to the Senegalese
immigration section. Just
before we got there, the Nigerians
got up, leaped off bus and disappeared
into the crowd.
At the immigration office, we
handed over our passports.
“Is this everyone?” the officer
asked, looking around suspiciously.
We all looked around too, as if we
didn’t know what he was talking
about. He went back to his office.
Names were called. Passports were
retrieved.
We drove back the way we’d
come, and just before we reached the
highway, I saw the Nigerians running
at top speed. One by one they
jumped back on the bus. But just
as the last one got on, a policeman
on a motorcycle raced around from
behind and pulled us over. Four of
them jumped off and ran away. Two
others stayed to plead their case.
The rage inside the bus was
palpable. Everyone started yelling,
and it felt as if the crowd was on the
edge of becoming a mob.
“Nigeria is the worst country in
Africa,” Omar said.
The concrete road
had disintegrated
into a million
tiny rock pillars.
Sometimes the
bus shook so much
I could barely see
One of the Nigerians looked at
me. “Can you translate?” he said.
“Can you tell them we paid the
driver, and he has our passports?”
Yousuf came onto the bus and sat
next to me. “Nigerians are very dangerous!”
he said. “Very dangerous!”
Another Nigerian came over.
“What is wrong with these people?”
he asked me. “Tell them they are just
making things worse.”
One by one, the Nigerians came
back to the bus. There was more
88
Open skies / march 2013
yelling, more vitriol. The Nigerians
made some phone calls, and after
two more hours of haggling, the
fees seemed to have been paid. The
policeman got on his motorcycle
and drove off, and so did we.
A silence descended as we
headed into Senegal. We wound
around through low hills on a good
road before it straightened out and
turned very, very bad. The concrete
had disintegrated into a million
tiny rock pillars. Sometimes the bus
shook so much I could barely see.
When we stopped for lunch, one
of the Nigerians bought me an orange
soda. They were nice kids once
I got to talk to them, glad to get out of
Lagos, all heading to Cape Verde and
maybe beyond. Basically, they wanted
what everyone on the bus wanted: to
reach the promises at the other end.
The bus drove all night, and it
was late when I drifted off. Around
4am we stopped to drop off some
people. Far ahead, I could see the
lights of Dakar. I waited for us to
move on, but nothing happened.
“All the men!” the driver
shouted. “All the men outside... and
the boys!”
We got out and went around to
the back of the bus. Cars whizzed
by us on the freeway. We pushed.
The bus crawled forward. The
driver let out the clutch once,
twice, then three times.
We kept pushing. On the fourth try
the engine caught. The driver revved
the motor. A loud cheer went up, and
the horn blared in the night. Then we
rolled on, at last, to wherever each of
our roads would take us.
Frank Bures is an award-winning
writer who lives in the US