This story highlights how it feels like traveling with ‘little humans” but the reality set in much quicker than we expected.
Every week on Miles and Moments, we share traveler stories to understand how far people have journeyed and the culture shocks they’ve experienced along the way. There’s always something to learn from each story.
Written as told
I had traveled with my family in a convoy from Lagos to Ila Orangun in Osun state.
We left Lagos around 11am and my children alongside their cousins were excited about the journey ahead, although I knew it was quite a distance and their excitement would wear out at some point.
So, while still within Lagos, the driver behind the vehicle I was in took a wrong turn, and before we could say, Jack, he had been arrested by the almighty LASTMA officials!.
We all had to find our way to the Lastma office, and after so much pleading and back and forth, the vehicle was released, and continued our journey.
Usually, when traveling such a long distance, I prefer to have a quiet and peaceful ambiance but obviously traveling with children cannot be quiet! By the time we approached Ibadan, these little humans got hungry and needed to eat.
We stopped at Foodco on the Ibadan / Ife Expressway to eat and then continued our journey.
A few minutes after we continued the journey, the children fell asleep except my 9-year-old daughter who insisted she wanted to stay awake all through the journey so she wouldn’t miss out on anything if she slept.
We got to Ikire and the noise from the roadside market women selling their wares woke the sleeping children, and as expected we bought the popular “Dodo Ikire” for everyone.
The kids were hesitant to try this snack because it seemed different from what they were used to but after some convincing that the dodo ikire snack was made from plantain, they gave it a try and really loved it.
We were told that we didn’t need to go all the way to Ife to navigate to Osogbo as there was a bridge we needed to look out for which leads us to Osogbo road; but since it was our first time traveling that axis, we were stopping at intervals to ask about this time-saving bridge, after about three inquiries at different stops along the express, we finally found the bridge, climbed it and faced the road leading towards Osogbo.
After some minutes on this road, traffic started to build up which was quite surprising because it’s not such a busy road and the road was expected to be free!
Unfortunately, we were wrong as we had spent about 1 hour and 30 minutes in this traffic which was due to a large ditch ahead of which a truck had fallen and spilled its contents on the road. We were held in his traffic till about 6:30pm before we got a headway.
At this point, the children were exhausted and were no longer enjoying the ride (nobody likes to be held in traffic anyway).
We finally got to Oshobgo at 7.25pm, and according to the map, we still had one hour and 15 minutes to get to our destination (Ila Orangun). “Ah, whyyyyyyy, I got tired”. At this point, none of the children were talking anymore, I’m sure they must have been wondering what kind of adventurous and tiring journey it was (I agree).
By the time we got to Ikirun, we took a right turn into a very narrow, dark, and lonely road which became scary because our convoy was the only visible set of vehicles on the road.
The bushes on the left and right were extended to the narrow express road and journeying on this kind of unfamiliar route at night gave us many concerns as regards our safety.
Finally, at about 8:35pm after an exhausting and fearful ride, we saw an old signboard that welcomed us to the much anticipated ‘ILA ORANGUN”….haaaa at last! We found our way to Abike Hotel which seemed to be the “best” hotel in the village.
We had initially planned to visit the lounge and have some fun but we couldn’t do so as everyone was too tired to do anything.
We all retired to our rooms to have a good night’s rest and get ready for the event we actually came for which was slated for the following day!
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