Undeserved Favour: Entry for Supernatural Writing Contest by Jerrybanfield

The Story of the Story

Life often takes us to unexpected places and this is the story of how I almost lost my life in a land far away from my home zone.
This story would be incomplete if I didn't tell you the back story, the "what got me here" part of the story.
I'm a 25 year old guy born into a middle class family in Nigeria, my dad's a lecturer and mum a teacher, tutoring actually runs in my veins but that's not what we're interested in. Crazy as it seems, it all started in 1970, there was a civil uprising within my country, people in the South East were at Logger heads with people in the North, I wasn't born then of course but my mum who was a kid back then gave me a pretty vivid description of her own experience of how it all went down; she recalls seeing streets and water ways littered with corpses of soldiers, being a prisoner of war, escaping like in the movies and being isolated from her family for a long time. Life was the wild wild west and it tore her family apart.
Historical accounts of the event are often lopsided, always dependent on the author's demography but the common theme in all of them was the insane level of bloodshed that occurred, numbers up to the millions were killed in this war as it cut across political, religious and ethnic sentiments. It still remains the most gruesome four years in Nigeria's history and expectedly left an indelible mark in its aftermath. The country wanted peace as the scores were "settled" but how do you fix a feud that lasts for four years?
Well, a lot of things were done; religious groups did their bit, NGOs, the UN, ECOWAS, AU and most significantly for this story, The Nigerian government also did theirs as this was what lead to the creation of the NYSC-National Youth Service Scheme.
The scheme was son designed to promote multicultural communication between people living in the most diverse nation in Africa; in this Scheme, every Nigerian graduate of a university would be deployed to a state far away from his current location to serve the nation in all sorts of ways within reason for a period of one year. The scheme was designed to foster unity in the injured entity that was Nigeria and to large extent, it did for some, but not so much for others, I digress.

The Call to Serve
So with this introduction out of the way, I'd like to go forward and start at beginning of my story, I'm a 25 years old guy who graduated from the University of Benin, I studied Mechanical Engineering. I live in a coastal state called Bayelsa state and was randomly posted to Plateau state to join the NYSC. I wasn't too pleased to be posted there, as I actually wanted somewhere else but no need crying over spilled milk, you know?
Anyways, after getting everything set, I was off to Plateau State, it's a 16 hour road trip that had a couple near misses, partial break failure, car breaking down in the middle of no where and narrowly escaping a highway robbery, but we got to Jos, the capital of Plateau safely.
The next three weeks were tedious, corp members are meant to spend this period being drilled by actual military personnel, apparently they go easy on us but it felt like torture being stuck in that camp. There was next to no communication with the outside world and we had to wear stupid white shorts and white plain shirts during the ordeal, it was physically and mentally draining. There were kiosks at a place called the mami market, one could purchase cosmetics, food, drinks and most importantly for me, Alcohol. I developed an unhealthy drinking habit during this period as it was my way of coping with the torture, I'd slip gin into virtually everything I drank; it got so bad that I'd drink first thing in the morning which usually starts by 4am, we did morning drills in an assembly and last thing in the night which are terrible because I had to share a room with 200 obnoxiously loud guys who were always excited. I needed this drink to numb the pain, I needed it to sleep, to cope with taking orders from random twats wearing uniforms and barking orders, for standing under the harsh sun or in the rain. I'm not proud of it but I had to drink to survive and for most part of the period, it worked out fine.
At the end of the three weeks in the abyss, you get posted to your Place of Primary Assignment we just say "PPA", this will be where you'll spend the good part of a year serving your father land. I got posted to a roadside community called " Panyam" in Mangu Local Government.
I was stipulated to be a Maths teacher in a new school for one year; the scene was surreal, large open field, lush vegetation, a lot of hills to climb and the peculiar smell of goat. Who Am I kidding? It was a village but a village like I've never seen before. It was gearing up to be an interesting year.

Charity and Gender Vanguard
Another facet of the life of the NYSC and one that is important to this story is called CDS standing for Community Development Scheme and there were different CDS groups, I was in one called Charity and Gender Vanguard and it was shortly after one of our CDS meetings, I flirted with the grim reaper.
I was already two months into my service and so I stayed with a couple friends who lived in Jos, the school wasn't in session so I didn't have to beat my own place in Mangu, Jos was only an hour away so I showed up on Wednesdays only for CDS meetings. The meetings were tedious and extremely boring but were compulsory to attend. I showed up for every meeting drunk, havering and jonzing through the two hour stand off. Alcohol became my coping mechanism and so far, it worked well.

Am I dreaming?
On of those Wednesdays, meeting had ended and I was about to head back to Jos, I paid my fare and sat at the last seat in the cab which was actually a minivan. I was totally drunk and felt very sleepy so immediately we got on the road, I decided to doze off for a bit; on that day though, I opened my eyes, right above me I could see was the clouds, they were moving and I could distinctly see this. There was no sound from the engine or contact from the passenger beside me, actually there was nothing but a niggling pain in my chest. I was in a dazed state as I recall, spent a few seconds that seemed like a whole day discussing with myself on what had happened and it wasn't until I turned my head the only part of my body that could move to the right did I see the vehicle I just got into squeezed like a licked orange. "I'm definitely dreaming" I said to my self as I closed my eyes and wandered into my subconscious, hoping I'd wake back up in the cab and I'll get back to finishing the bottle of vodka I left. The next time I opened my eyes, I was on a stretcher taking me to the emergency room. "What's happening? Where am I? Am I dying? My chest hurts, I don't want to die" I cried out to whoever was rolling me along, then a male voice replied so softly, I thought it was God "please relax bro, you're going to be fine". Of course it didn't calm me down, the anaesthesia did though, as he was talking he hit me with one of those needles and I was out like a switch.

The Pain in Chest
Again I woke up, this time safely on a hospital bed and I finally could reason calmly, "hello, how are you? Please can we call a member of your family?" The unrecognizable man said, "yes but I can't find my phone" I replied, "don't worry, we can use mine" he replied "please what happened to me?" I asked, "you were in an accident but Thank God for your life" he replied and continued, "the driver and two others are already in the mortuary, let's just be grateful for your life".
As I laid in the hospital bed, now knowing how my life could have ended just like that of anyone else, I felt a strong pain in my chest and ribs, distorting my breathing. I could have been dead but I wasn't. The unknown stranger finally got across to my dad who also got across to his friend from a long time ago who lives in Jos and he came to my rescue, he took me out of that clinic and got me admitted into a well equipped hospital. A scan was run and it was discovered that my ribs were fractured and had it been any lower, it would have punctured my lungs and I'd have died from internal bleeding.
I still don't know how it happened but perhaps its better that way, the not know what transpired. I ended up as the only fully fit surviving victim of the ordeal after four months of rehabilitation, while another died of internal injuries, the others had permanent complications.

6th of July 2017, I was the drunk guy who walked out of a ghastly car accident in his sleep. I received unmerited favour from fate that day, I had never been so close to death figuratively and literally, the reaper visited but it wasn't for me, this time...