We had to leave as early as possible. Otherwise, there'd be too many people trying to get buses home. To think 4:30 AM was good timing, we found more than 300 people had the same plan we did. Now, getting home was going to be a puzzle. But some other people had certain plans鈥攎alicious ones.
It was still dark, though there were lights around, but they couldn't suffice. Sticking together wasn't easy, and we were a group of twelve. On our search for a way to return home, we suddenly stopped. Someone's phone had been stolen from their pocket. "What?" Some of us exclaimed, surprised at the news. It was a gospel concert for crying out loud. No fear of God?
But one of us did something unexpected. She felt she saw the thief, and then she ran after him. I was shocked she did that. The rest of us were just frozen, and even the victim had already accepted what had just happened. Now we didn't even know what to do. We had no idea where she went; we couldn't leave, so don't get separated; it was still dark, and the crowd was dense.
Eventually, we found her. She had caught the thief. That's not something you commonly see happen. But she actually found the thief, despite his escape tactics that included switching shirts in the crowd. She, together with some other people, grabbed the thief by the trousers. Apparently, many other people lost their phones that night, and they had just found their suspect. We retrieved our stolen phone, thankfully, and then turned in the thief to the nearest authority.
Back to status quo, "How do we get home?" And then we began to walk against the current of the traffic, to where we'd likely find buses to board. But there was commotion there. It's what happens when massive gospel concerts get thousands of people in attendance. The commotion, of course, was by the aggressive drivers, striving to get passengers and eventually exploit them. It wasn't surprising to us anyway.
When we found a bus going in our direction鈥攖he long travel type that I don't remember what it's called鈥攁ll twelve of us entered, feeling thankful to have finally found a way to get home. But that was when another commotion started in the bus. The bus driver had not "settled" the so-called managers of the driving service around there, which was really just fabricated to exploit people and drivers around there.
At some point, we thought someone pulled out a dagger. It was at that point we all stood up to flee for our dear lives. It was just 5 AM, for goodness sake! Who has adrenaline at hundred so early in the morning?
It all de-escalated soon enough. Yet, my mind wasn't at rest just yet. I mean, we barely slept at the all-night concert, so we really needed to get home and sleep, but there we were, at alert unnecessarily.
Most of us slept in the bus, except myself and another. I didn't know about the others, but I had just one life, and I wasn't going to lose it in my sleep and on a bus that even had no windows. But thankfully, my "suspicions" of the bus driver and conductors were wrong, and we all got home safely.
What's the moral of this story? I really don't know, but I know "shine your eyes" and be on guard at all times is what I was reminded of that day.
