July 07, 2008

Robbed

The most appropriate title for this post would be "An Eventful Bus Ride". It's funny that eleven days after I posted the piece "An Uneventful Bus Ride" I was robbed by armed men aboard a bus taking me back to school. I and thirteen other passengers were made to lie on the road, under the heavy rain for a little over ten minutes while we were dispossesed of our belongings by gun toting bandits. I have never been robbed before and I will never forget this experience. Lying with my face on the tarred road while one of the men searched my pockets roughly; murmuring prayers fervently along with the other passengers- a couple of whom were weeping, while the cold rain beat us; rushing back into the bus after the bandits retreated into the forests; hitting my head on the bus door in my blind hurry to get back into the bus so we could speed away from that scene. In that fleeting moment, nothing material mattered. All we were begging God for, was LIFE. We were begging for the chance to see our loved ones again, we were begging for the forgiveness of our many sins. Many minutes later after the shock of the whole experience diminished, we were wringing our wet clothes, laughing and talking about how scared we had been. Inevitably, we began to discuss the contents of our bags, wallets, the monetary value of our stolen phones. . . we were thanking God none of us were beaten or shot.

Dear Readers, I'm sorry I haven't posted anything for so long. It must have been disappointing or perhaps irritating to visit my blog and see nothing new. I'm really sorry. The robbers took all the traveling bags on the bus including mine. Contained in my own bag were all the notebooks I write in. Those were the most valuable things I lost. All my book ideas, the completed plot sketch of my novel "Lost Prose", the uncompleted short story series I was working on to post later on my blog. . . and so many other literary stuff I was working on. All of them were lost. I have bought a new notebook and I have started scribbling stuff. The yet to be titled short story series is coming on just fine, you'll read it later.

Another reason why I haven't posted any piece in such a long time is that I stayed back at home for five weeks while school was going on because I lost my dear Aunt and had to remain back for the funeral. I have missed lectures and i'm trying to catch up. I have an important exam soon so I might not be blogging actively, Please bear with me. I'll keep scribbling and i'll post as often as I can.

Thank you all very much.

Yours truly,
Osondu Nnamdi Awaraka

4 comments:

  1. Hope you're doing good mehn..that's really sad..But,I'm sure all the lost ideas will come back.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, la la, you didn' tell me all this. Now I know...I'm glad you are ok!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you Aloofar!,

    Thank you Afolabi - yes the ideas are coming back slowly.

    Onyeka, it wasn't my intention to hide anything, i just did not want to make a big deal out of it. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete