The long awaited time was finally here, but I was in a fixed dilemma, there I was with my skirt stuck to the metallic part of the rickety bus I took. I was struggling to break free from this hold and the bus conductor wasn’t making it any easier for me. So here I was, the very earliest of a Monday morning with my perfectly ironed suits struggling for freedom from this hell of a bus. The obnoxious passengers were hauling annoying remarks about me; apparently, my stuck skirt could be the cause of their delay on this first working day of the week.
Goodness!, this possibly couldn’t be happening to me, it had to be a nightmare, but truth is, I was stuck and seriously needed to be rescued, there was no way I was going to ruin this dress, it was that important to me. “Ok, madam let me help you out” finally, I thought to myself, there are some gentlemen in this car. At least someone was thinking, much to my delight, “careful”, I said as I watched him grab my skirt like the ordinary dress he was wearing, not that I looked down at what he was wearing, but you know that situation where you have really dressed up for an occasion and the people around have no idea how much that means to you, so that was my situation, don’t get me wrong.
Tiiiiiit! As if I knew that was going to happen, shreds! Rags! Ok, maybe I’m exaggerating, but my dress was ruined, much to the delights of the awaited passengers who wanted me gone. I looked up and saw some passengers seriously giggling or making funny faces at me, pathetic! And they call themselves grown-ups I thought to myself. As if that was not enough, the bus conductor was telling me to hurriedly get off this bus. Apology typically was a new word to him, someone might say why make a big deal about an ordinary dress. But it was not entirely about the dress, disrespect was boldly written on the face of this conductor.
“Do you not know the right thing to say?” I had every right to any apology, but this annoying son of Adam open his ignorant mouth and told me no one told me to make myself comfortable in that seat. “You know very well that this bus is this bad and you still ply it on the road for passengers to board!” I yelled at him, all my manners forgotten. “Who forced you to come on board? “He replied with same force. Ooops, that was least expected, so down I went alighting from this God forsaken bus to hell with all the passengers and their ignorant son of Adam.
Bag stuck in my armpit, hands busily trying to cover up my big patch on my left leg, the patch went all the way close to two inches from my waist. The supposed gentleman had really ruined my dress more than I could actually imagine. Try picturing this, a lady in a tight skirt which is torn all the way to the Middle East with some heels to match and trying to cover up her naked leg.
So that is the beginning of the blame game, to my surprise, most of the shops I thought were in the sale of clothes were not interested in my money so didn’t show up. How lazy could Ghanaians get? I asked myself as I walked in front of those stores. They never want to grow up; they never plan for how they can make themselves available when needed.
I should have known that the bus was nothing but a miserable looking bus trying hard to outlast its life span. If I had waited a few more minutes I would have gotten a better bus and I would not find myself wanting this much. The bigger picture has to do with the government; the government is to blame for everything, including my torn dress. They are responsible for every Tom, Dick, and Harry in this country and there is no doubt in my mind, they had to be! How could they allow such terrible looking cars ply our roads, they just don’t think of our safety, all they do is bring out policies they never work on, our road network so bad, the word bad would sue us if it could because this is clearly an abuse of the word.
So here I was walking the high streets of Accra and blaming the government for all the problems I was encountering. Truth be told, I am a contributing factor to all the rickety buses we have in our supposed city. If a bus came around and we collectively decided not to pick or get on board because we see it detrimental to our health being, we will not only be saving our dresses and sparing our roads this torture but lives as well. The nature of the roads is already bad, so why go through all that stress. What can I say, some of our folks are too ignorant to realize such issues are not just to be joked about; this country has a long way to go, educating our people so they would understand that is not all about my torn suit skirt.
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