what a day!!: What a day!!

what a day!!: What a day!!: "My alarm clock blared so loud I could have shot at it if I had a gun, why do I keep it so far from the be..."

What a day!!

My alarm clock blared so loud I could have shot at it if I had a gun, why do I keep it so far from the bed anyway? I asked myself, I would have to get up to turn it off, now I remember, that was part of the plan to help me get out of bed every morning, if it was close to the bed, I could easily turn it off and fall right asleep immediately. I grudgingly got out of bed and turned it off; it was going to be one long day.

 I picked up my phone to see if I had missed any calls or messages (I usually turned it silent at night, so my sleep won’t be interrupted), the phone was dead, ‘oh’, then I remembered it had gone dead before I left the office yesterday afternoon for an impromptu engagement. I won’t even get the feedback from the evening meeting that was to be held at my office yesterday, I had asked a colleague to text me the issues that would be discussed, Drats!! Now I would have to hurry on out of here, so I could get to the office early enough to charge my phone and get all the dish on yesterday evening’s meeting, plus all the early morning gossip before work kicks off in earnest.

So….there I sat….behind the okada driver (Bike driver) …I could have died from the stench that was threatening to block my nose and my airway….God!  what on earth could it have been?....Suddenly I noticed the okada man hail another bike rider and it dawned on me…Oga rider and the chewing stick which was permanently stuck in one corner of his mouth must have been the source of the foul smell..Well, with the stick sitting in that position, it wasn’t a wonder why his mouth smelled so badly, he probably brushed like that every day and he didn’t even have the courtesy to keep it sealed, at least while I was still on the bike….so I had no choice but to hold my breath till I arrived at the bus station where I would get off… I have never seen time crawl so slowly as I struggled with holding my breath…My swimming instructor would have been so proud of me if he had been there; I held my breath like my whole life depended on it. 

I got off at the station about 7mins later, and my heart dropped when I saw the crowd of dwellers who obviously had the same plan that I had, to wake up insanely early enough to avoid the traffic jam being caused by the road construction, so I could get to work on time, but alas, here we all were with sleep still in all our eyes, frowning at each other for having stolen ‘our so-called ingenious idea’, I felt like laughing at myself, ,I could still have been in bed sleeping if I had known coming out this early wouldn’t make any significant difference.

The most difficult part of the morning for me usually is getting into a bus or taxi, it seems almost as if everyone, guys and ladies alike, have all secretly taken courses in karate classes except me, because the way they fight, shove and bruise themselves just to get in a vehicle is appalling, you get to work looking like you’ve never heard of an iron before, with rumpled clothes and shoes covered in dust.

This particular morning I got lucky, as soon as I crossed to the other side of the road, a taxi pulled up and I literally jumped into it, right before it got the chance to park completely, even I was surprised, I had to laugh out really loud, ‘First victory of the day’ I thought to myself, getting in to a taxi is very instrumental to getting to work on time, and I just accomplished that without any hassles, the taxi filled up in no time with more than twelve people pushing to get in at once.

After having spent thirty minutes trying to move one kilometre from the park, and with his patience wearing thin, our daredevil driver initiated an illegal cut out of the usual route and started driving at break neck speed on the construction site, trying to cut off the traffic and catch up somewhere in front, unbeknownst to him, the road safety officials, who had figured many drivers would want to do just that, had their huge Hilux vans packed along the construction site, hidden behind a huge sand carrier. Just when we pulled up at the point right before the connection between the two roads, they pulled him over, we had to sit it out, while he sorted himself out, they argued back and forth, asked for his papers, license, everything they could possibly think of, and after what seemed like an eternity, (and perhaps some sorting), they let him go, and we continued our already delayed journey.

Then it happened, we were hit behind by another overzealous driver who was trying to overtake our vehicle, it was nothing really, just a barely noticeable scratch, hardly a dent was made on the car surface, our driver parked his car right there in the middle of the road and flew out of his seat as if he had been looking forward to this all his life, I wondered if he would have passed through the windscreen, had it been that the his rear lights were knocked out, next thing that ensued was the most heated argument I had ever witnessed, followed by a serious fight, the two drivers were rolling on the ground, in the middle of the road, holding up all the other drivers, who parked to enjoy the fight, while their passengers screamed at the top of their voices at the fighting pair, more out of the fact that they were late for work than because they cared. I was completely infuriated, couldn’t they dialogue and get it over with? I guess they aren’t so different from the touts who came to ‘make peace’ between them by hitting them with big sticks across their backs, some with the intention to make it worse while others just enjoying the fight. At this point I didn’t know which was worse, the fact that I hadn’t slept well enough in a bid to get to the office on time or the fact that I was even later than usual, I was totally exasperated, we couldn’t leave the taxi because it was at a point where cars were not permitted to park and pick passengers (even if they did that would have been another survival of the fittest battle), yet we couldn’t move on because the two drivers were not tired of fighting still. Could it get any worse? 

After a very long impatient wait, we were finally on our way, the drive till this point was uneventful, no one said anything to the driver, and we each seemed to be lost in our own thoughts, even the driver too. It was while thinking this and looking at his face that I noticed the sudden look of alarm on his face, I turned sharply to stare at the road when Oga driver suddenly swerved left and braked a few seconds too late, a little girl was running across the road, and in a bid not to hit her he ran into a parked car, ‘Holy  Moses’ was all I could say, everyone in the car started speaking almost at the same time, as we all snapped out of our revelry, ‘what kind of journey is this’? I thought. The owner of the parked CR-V strolled up, without a look of worry on his face, come to think of it, he looked like he was smiling, he was too calm for words, though his car wasn’t harmed, he couldn’t have known that from where he was standing,  ours on the other hand looked like it had seen a ghost. When he got to where we were, he actually started lecturing the driver on road safety rules and blah, blah, blah, at this point I had had enough, luckily I was not too far from the point where I would have gotten off, so I decided to walk, I started walking briskly as if trying to out walk time itself.

I got to the office and noticed something was out of place, the building was too quiet for this hour, it was already past ten, normal office hours started by eight, something was just not right, I rode the elevator to the floor of my department, and couldn’t find a soul in sight, not even at the reception, my eyes scanned the hallway and rested on the notice board which had a note in the middle addressing everyone, ‘According to the decisions taken during the meeting held on 11^th February, 2011, concerning the issue of pests and rodents, the building will be shut down from 12^th – 14^th for fumigation, which will begin by 12 noon. Everybody please take note’.  I looked at the calendar, the date was 12^th. I couldn’t help but laugh. What a day.