The Faces In The Wall.

It was quite a pleasant journey travelling from Benin city in Edo State, Nigeria, to the city of Warri situated in the big heart of the nation, Delta State.

The journey had started out like most of my voyages always do. With a feeling of nostalgia and an unspoken fact which consistently kept reminding me of how much I was not looking forward to seating in an eighteen seater bus with total strangers, on a three hours’ drive (two hours and a half, approximately. If the driver knew his salt.)

Especially in this particular case where my leaving Benin City meant that I was returning back to my work station situated in a small town called Ughelli in Delta State, after a week of unauthorized leave from work. And one would first have to arrive in Warri before taking another bus to the town of Ughelli. Thankfully, the trip from Warri to Ughelli is shorter and takes on an average of about one hour and a few minutes give or take. So yeah, I was not exactly thrilled.

The journey to Warri somehow managed to be exciting though. I was the last passenger to board the bus, which automatically placed me sitting by the sliding door, directly behind the passenger seat of the vehicle. Luckily, it also meant that I did not have to wait long before the driver pulled out of the bus park to join the expressway, driving through a series of small communities and towns as the vehicle sped along.

The driver was a chatter box, and I mean this in the most complimentary manner. He kept on talking as he skillfully piloted the vehicle along the expressway. At first, nobody was responding to his monotonous chit chat and it seemed more or less like he was talking to himself, but he kept on spewing out of his mouth all sorts of stories and when nobody would make any comment, he would automatically switch to a different topic, like a deejay switching rapidly between music tracks, trying to move the audience and set a relaxing mood.

I smiled when I noticed this, but I was contented enough just listening to the sound of his voice whilst he kept on talking. Soon, both passengers in the front seat joined him and a commentary ensued between the trio. The topics they discussed were as random as predicting winning lottery numbers and changed as randomly too.

They would be discussing about politics one moment and before you could even blink your eyes, the topic had changed to a debate about who the richest musician in Nigeria was. Next thing you know they are talking about religion and somehow from there they went back to discussing politics, a few gossips and sometimes important updates.

There was one particular story that the driver told about a thirty years old man who had decided that he could no longer bear the hardship of living life in Nigeria without having money, so he decided to visit a juju priest at an undisclosed shrine located only God knows where. Though I suspected that it was located in the figment of his imaginations, because somehow, I got the feeling that he was making it up.

Everyone else seemed to buy it though, and they were listening to the driver with rapt attention. Even a few who seemed to have drifted off to sleep previously were wide awake, eyes glued to the back of the driver’s seat and the back of his head visible above the head rest. Unless of course both passengers in the front seat whose heads were turned sideways in the direction of the driver.

Once in a while, the driver would turn around briefly, I assume to sneak a peek at the rest of his passengers, a cheerful grin plastered on his face.

Suddenly he said something so funny that everyone in the bus burst out laughing, myself included. There was the feeling of excitement in the air and everyone it seemed were inhaling a generous amount of it every time they drew a breath.

About an hour and fifty minutes into the journey, the bus gradually slowed down to a stop as we approached a police checkpoint. After exchanging casually greetings with the police officer, the driver went ahead and introduced himself as a personnel of the Nigerian Army, which immediately got us cleared to continue on our trip and earned him a new level of respect on the bus.

Like I said, it was quite a pleasant journey. We arrived safely at the bus park in Warri, everyone got off the bus, gathered their belongings and headed off in various directions.

I immediately boarded another bus going to Ughelli. The excitement from the journey to Warri was gradually wearing off and I was beginning to feel fatigued. Coincidentally, I was also the last passenger to board the bus and before long was on the way to Ughelli. The driver this time kept his mouth shut, leaving the passengers to find company themselves amongst their fellow travelers. I was already tired of hearing people talk, because it seemed like I had heard it all before on the bus trip to Warri. I soon got bored and could not wait to get off the bus.

By the time I arrived home to my one-bedroom apartment, situated in one of the most notorious ghettos in the town, (I know what you might be thinking. What am I doing living in a ghetto? Right?) I was totally drained of emotions, and I could not possibly tell you how I felt. I threw down my bags on the mattress lying at one end of the room and immediately grabbed an empty bucket and bailed some water into it from the drum tucked in a corner of the room which I used to store water. Then for the first time since entering my room, I went out.

To the public toilet block which served over twelve tenants. I badly needed to take a shit and silently prayed that the toilet would not be occupied, and thankfully it wasn’t. as I squatted over what can only be described as an improved version of the traditional pit latrine and stared ahead at the cement plastered wall opposite, trying to quietly go about my business but not succeeding as without warning loud farts permeated the air occasionally, sounding out my presence in the toilet.

I started to notice patterns in the cement plastered wall the longer I stared at it. At the top left side of the wall, I could discern a face looking directly at me, the face of a vaguely familiar man and in his eyes were the unmistaken look of disappointment. I stared at the face for minutes trying hard to remember whom it possibly was. Before I could get my memory to work out the identity of the man, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed another face gradually emerge from the bottom right side of the wall. The face of another man. But while the first image was displayed in the front view of the man face, the second was displayed in the side view and the man wore his hair long, the tip of his hair was almost touching his shoulders.

I turned my attention to this new face and like the first one before it, there was something familiar about it. Barely had I been staring at the image of the second man for a minute when another face began to become visible at the center of the wall. Not long after another one appeared and before long, the wall was filled with the images of different faces, both male and female. Wearing a variety of hairstyles and face hair for the men.

The faces in the wall seemed to be alive, and I could read every expression that they wore on their faces. I stared at the wall in amazement dashing my eyes from one face to the other. The picture of the wall covered in what looked like pencil sketches of random faces, resembled a work of art likely found displayed at a luxury art gallery and I was so impressed and pleasantly satisfied staring at the faces in the wall.

I do not know exactly how long I spent staring at the faces in the wall, but suddenly I realized that I was done taking a shit, so instinctively I cleaned myself up, got off the toilet seat and dragged my trousers back up to my waist, but by the time I turned again to continue to admire the creativity and genius that was the sight of the faces in the wall, it had disappeared. Gone like it was never there in the first place and all that greeted my stare was a seemingly empty image of a blank cemented wall.