AN EXCITING ENCOUNTER WITH FLYING MONSTERS

So last Saturday, I went to an outdoor function with the Legionaries(Legion of Mary). It had started on a good note. Well, after the initial hassles with the driver popularly called ‘ticket’ by my hostel mates(the man is in love with asking for bus tickets before entering the bus), we finally got into the bus and ventured on a journey to the unknown(well, I would say that because we had never been to Owerre-Ezukala until last Saturday). We were excited. We sang praises and finally prayed the rosary. The guys behind me had so much energy that they talked throughout the journey. Not only did they talk, they sang songs ranging from high school musicals to some other songs I didn’t know the origin. I just busied myself with reading stories on wattpad, tweeting and pinging from my phone and then listening to music. We passed towns like Nibo, Ufuma, Isulo, Awgbu and the popular rich and beautiful town of Ndikelionwu from Chukwuemeka Ike’s The bottled Leopard. After driving for two hours, we finally got to the town of Owerre-Ezukala. Getting to the town, we began a second journey. We drove into the village for about thirty minutes before we got to a dusty inaccessible road. We had to get down from the bus, carrying our food, drinks and other items; we trekked for a total of fourty-five minutes before we got to the entrance of the cave. Some people dropped their things and began to take pictures at the entrance of the cave. As for me, the curiosity to find out what the inside looked like made me not the bother with the pictures plus the fact that my phone didn’t have a good camera quality.

 

The cave was underground, so we had to go through sloppy, uneven and rugged steps that numbered above one hundred to get to the main cave/waterfall. It was very scary. Missing a step would have been fatal because the edge of each step meant falling into a ditch. I finally got there. It was wonderful. Seeing water cleaner than the bore hole water we buy falling from the top of the cave, the river and then walking farther was a sandy area big enough to accommodate  more than three hundred persons(fact). To my greatest surprise, the DJ was already there spicing the whole place up with cool music blasting from the speakers. I moved my body to the rhythm of the music while moving to explore the whole place. I entered the main cave 1. It was creepily very dark. I took some pictures with my friend and with the help of my torch, I moved further but at a point, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I turned back and left the cave. Out there, I saw a lot of my classmates, we chatted, took pictures before I left again to another place at the back of cave 1. I will call the place cave 2. Not many people had the courage to go there. I dragged my friend Cympero with me. It was farther than cave 1 and we had to climb up to get there. Cave 2 was more beautiful than cave 1. It was underground and had many entrances. God is so wonderful. We were there for thirty minutes, climbing, taking pictures, chatting about the amazing beauty of nature, watching people exhibit the trait of jungle genes in them.

All of a sudden, we heard screams, thinking that those over there in cave 1 were having fun because the pageantry for Mr and Miss Legion was about to begin before we left to cave 2 , we ran. On getting there, there were monsters in the form of bees. Obviously, someone must have disturbed them in their habitat. People were screaming, fighting off the bees on their bodies and what we failed to realize at that time was that we only needed to be calm and the bees wouldn’t be able to sting. Chasing them away will only make them come back and the worse was killing them, the smell of that would only attract more bees. Also, the fear of seeing the bees was more than the fear of having the bees sting us. Unfortunately for us, those in cave 1 were now running to where we were bringing the bees with them. I got stung by one while running. The pain was severe. I learnt my lesson. I became calm after that and was not visited again by the flying monsters. An hour later, the screams reduced. We didn’t know that evacuation had started in cave 1. We started reciting the rosary calling our mother Mary for help. Fifteen minutes later, some people who managed to get out of the cave came to us and told us there was a way out of the cave. We climbed atop dangerous stones and rocks and finally got to the top of the cave and walked another fifteen minutes into the forest to finally leave the forest.

Stories that came later were that due to the stampede, some people eventually fell into the ditch, many sustained injuries and some had their faces swollen from the stinger, arms, legs, neck and other parts of the body. Not only lives were saved, our food and drinks were also ‘evacuated’  by some good and courageous Nigerians who covered themselves in black and made trips over and over again back into the cave. Luckily, we all made it back to the hostel alive by the grace of God. We carried our food back with us and by the time we were able to eat it, it was already going sour but what could we do, man must wack now, we still ate the food to our satisfaction.

 

 Important lesson I learnt was ‘do not go to where you were not invited.’ Also, young people are very unpredictable; possibly, someone out of curiosity had gone to the bee hive and started throwing stones there. When I went back to my room, I thought, ‘What if something worse than bees had come out, maybe python or lion because from what we heard from the villagers, there was so many dangerous animals who had their home in Owerre-Ezukala cave? What if …?’ I repeat, God is so so so wonderful and I can’t stop being grateful to him. Also, our Blessed Virgin Mary to whom we had called for help did not relent in coming to our rescue. This event wouldn’t stop me from going for more functions like this. I have a story to tell and I won’t stop telling this story. It was an experience. Advice to young people like me: do not spend your youth without having stories to tell when you get old. Join in trips, excursions and picnics. Life is too short.