Benjamin Ruined Our Journey Yesterday, Essay Example

For Benjamin, yesterday was not a day worth remembering. I was travelling upcountry as I always do once a month. Benjamin was the conductor of the bus that I was travelling in and I was sitting next to the driver (in this side of the country, we refer to driver’s assistant as a conductor). I think it was his first time to do such a job since he was not sure of anything he did. For this reason, the driver had a hard time trying to set things right throughout the journey. This delayed our journey, created embarrassing moments, and made the journey an adventure of a lifetime.

In this part of Louisiana, where racially prejudicial talk is rarely encountered and strongly condemned, this conductor, a black, found himself giving a lengthy lecture about how lazy black people are. He did not initiate the topic though. Some other passengers had been talking about the ingenuity of the managers of a New York construction company that is currently constructing a superhighway that connects Lipscape and Vandel; then, all of a sudden, the conductor literally jumped into the conversation and put those who had initiated it completely off. His comments did not only reveal his lack of basic knowledge, but also wisdom and sensitivity as well. Yet this is not what made our journey a long, tiring and adventuresome one. Rather, it is how he solicited new passengers to come on board and his two-time encounter with militia gangs.

Honestly speaking, I did not understand this man’s logic and judgment. Picture this: he alerts the driver to pull off at the bus stop that is full of waiting passengers. Instead of opening the door, alighting and soliciting passengers to get on board, (this is the norm here), he remains inside the bus, sticks his head out of the window and starts muttering some incomprehensible words that seem to mimic what every other conductor is saying. I wondered how he expected the passengers to find their way into the bus. When the driver talked to him, it was by way of insults. All of us immediately took the cue and tried to shout some sense into Benjamin head.

Paradoxically, the physical appearance of this man is not quite what you would expect based on this description. He is masculine, macho-looking and exhibits an air of confidence and a stern-looking face typical of all conductors. The rough hands and the old, rugged designer jeans complete the perfect look for a person who does this job. I have to confess that illusions always come in the way of my ability to make sound judgment. This is the reason why I was hesitant to judge Benjamin as foolish when he made some mistakes that you would best define as ‘stupid’ at the bus stop.

Benjamin was dead scared of encountering the militia-like gangs of youths that hang around bus stops in Vandel. I asked the man seated next to me why one should be afraid of people he has to encounter every minute of every day as long as he is doing the current job. The man shrugged his head and said nothing. I turned my head to the passengers behind me and I guessed it right: this triggered a heated debate on the militia-gang problem in this town, high fares, and more importantly, unnecessary delays caused by inefficient conductors like Benjamin. ‘It is too early to judge him’, the man seated next to me seemed to be saying.

Thirty minutes into the journey, truth was dawning on my friend and me. We could not understand how this man expected to make it in this career. Being a driver’s assistant requires one to be tough in every sense of the word. As his opinions on the racial question became known, it became clear that we were in for more embarrassing and annoying scenes along the way. At some point, Guit, as I learned the name of the man next to me was, would have none of the conductor’s talk and told him to consider shutting up.

It seems that this was a day full of surprises. As we came to learn, this bus was not licensed to operate in this side of Louisiana. The conductor had no clue where Lipscape was; if he had a clue, it would have made no difference since he was lacking in confidence to explain anything. The driver kept saying that he had a clue where this place was, that he had been there some years back. If he had no clue where it was, he knew how to conceal his ignorance. The driver kept asking me which way to turn in order to embark on the final road stretch that led to Lipscape. At this point, the experience was starting to become something of an epic journey.

When one hour into the journey the bus jammed, we were not surprised. We quickly consulted each other and agreed that there was lack of proper management in the way the driver and his assistant were operating this bus. When the driver blamed everything to do with this failure on his assistant, again we were not surprised. We, or rather I, knew that the driver was trying to cushion himself from any blame that we might direct towards him.

Declaring the bus’s problem as having to do with the ignition system, he quickly mobilized several passersby to help in pushing the bus along in the hope that by suddenly engaging the clutch while it was on motion, the ignition system would suddenly start functioning again. And it surely did, and I saw a sense humor in it. Not that I was not used to it; these things happen all the time in Louisiana. Rather, I was amused by the fact that immediately the bus broke down, the driver had claimed everything was alright only that the bus had run out of diesel!

Benjamin should have taken this opportunity to instill some confidence on him and his bus services on us and we would have in return expressed some confidence in his work. Instead, he kept quiet and some moments afterwards, he decided to ask us for fare. (Again, it is the norm for people to pay fare in the course of the journey. Operators of different bus services ask for fares at different points in the course of the journey. This system, as you must understand, is highly susceptible to abuse and misunderstandings and a lot of mutual trust is called for. It is common for passengers to pay in full only the journey to die halfway into the journey and no money refunded.

The image of someone in the person of Benjamin collecting fare from us was a frightening one for many obvious reasons of inefficiency. So low was my level of confidence in him that I refused to give out the money. Meanwhile, the driver was into some other more serious matters, in which he was counting on my advice: directions on the route to Lipscape. I know the route very well but yesterday, I gave the driver the wrong instructions.

Alas! Everyone in the bus suddenly shouted except me, poor Benjamin and the driver. I was more horrified to learn that I was the cause of the shout. I had given out the wrong directions! The next thirty minutes of the journey were uneventful. Then it all happened! The militia gang that Benjamin had encountered at the bus stop had been tailing us all along, we realized. One rugged-looking man, riding motorcycle with fancy decorations, pulled off in front of us, forcing the driver to decelerate and grind to a halt. Everything happened very quickly.

The gang carrying the rest of the gang members had quickly caught up with our bus by the time it stopped. Quickly, Benjamin was roughed up, ordered to pay a $1,000 dollar ‘fine’ for operating on the wrong route but he refused to pay. The militia had to beat him senseless for him to give in. Our journey ended here. Additionally, the driver suffered a severe bashing with a club on the head, the rest of us went into panic. All women were deep into shock.