There are several chartered buses waiting at the airport to take the Nigerian contingent to Sandton in Johannesburg. 10 of us get into one. The time is about 6 O’clock in the morning. Our bus is the first to leave the parking lot but the last to leave the airport. For some reason the bus driver can’t seem to understand the payment system. We finally leave some 30 or so minutes behind the others. We drive out just as dawn breaks through the chill greyness of the morning, with the rays of the rising sun flooding yellow across the land of luminous trees and vehicular flickering head lamps. The trip should take no more than 30 minutes or so. Most of us dose off. The car stops somewhere, I open my eyes, and I see the driver and the South African tour guide sitting beside him in front asking for direction from some pedestrians on a street that looks so completely unfamiliar. We are surely are not on the smooth superhighway that i have driven on two times now in the past three months.  We are in some Ghetto, something from the pictures I have seen of Soweto. The surrounding houses and environment immediately tell me that something is amiss. ‘Whats going on?’, we ask. The silence from the front seats confirm our worst fears. Where are we? How did we get here? Are we being kidnapped or what? Everyone is wide awake now. We are lost! We are supposed to travel through some of the most beautiful roads and environs leading into Johannesburg, not some suburban roads and environment that scream poverty and under-development. This is not the South Africa on all global television networks inviting the world to the country of the Serengeti, the safaris, the Cape and the Table mountain.

Let me cut a long story short. We are all mad at this point. Abdulmumuni Aminu gets very angry. If the South African driver and guide have something sinister up their sleeves he is ready for them, he yells at the top of his raging voice. He is ready to kill if they do anything suspicious, he screams. They panic! The thought of all the talk about the insecurity in South Africa flash through my mind and, I am sure, that of every one else in the bus that is now a cacophony of curses and abuses.

The driver starts his confession. He is new in Jo’burg. He was hired from the local intercity bus garage and he told those that hired him he does not know anywhere in the city. They assured him he would be given a guide to direct him. He is in the city from a neighbouring province outside Johannesburg to exploit the business opportunity that the World Cup presents South Africans. The guide also confesses he is new and apparently knows his way around Sandton, our destination, and not the route that leads to it. So whilst we slept they drove us away from Johannesburg in a direction even they do not know – the blind leading the blind! We tell them to take us back to the airport. The driver says he cannot find his way back. We are thoroughly lost at this point!

We leave the bumbling pedestrians who are unable to give us any directions. We continue down the road and see a sign that says ‘Metro Police’. We follow the signs. We find a police station after some 5 minutes. We go in there and find only one policewoman on duty. It is early in the morning!  We tell her our story and predicament.  She stares at us in bemusement and bewilderment. How on earth did we arrive at a place so far away from where we should be? It is like going to the North Pole and heading South she tells us! She calls for support. It comes eventually in the form of two policemen in a patrol car. They cannot take us to Sandton because it is outside their jurisdiction, but they will take us back to the main highway that leads to Sandton and show us further directions. The driver now finally admits that cannot even be helpful as he does not know anywhere in Johannesburg. The vision of a raging and the bloody-eyed Abdulmumuni must be flashing through his mind! The police get permission from their head office to take us beyond their territory. It is now almost two hours since we left the airport. We finally feel secure in the company of the leading patrol car. The city is fully awake at this time. The traffic is dense and crawling! We snarl for another hour and finally arrive at the Radisson Blu Hotel, our destination.

So what really happened? Almost 20 years since apartheid ended in South Africa, a vast number of Black South Africans still do not know the city of Johannesburg well. It was a no-go area for them and as they are attracted to it by the opportunities thrown up by the World Cup, they do anything to get a bit of the action, including taking up jobs and assignments they are either not familiar with or know absolutely nothing about as in our first-hand experience. All is well now though.