A mistake not to be repeated.

What do you do when you are all tired from the stress gotten from the farm where you have been since the day break?

The simple answer is that you find the easiest means to get home, get some good food, good sleep and then the rest can come.

Not in the case of me and my cousin brother who left home as early as 6 am just to catch up with the farm activities to make sure we cover a large portion before the sun gets hot.

That day was one of the glorious days a farmer would prefer. There was no rain to disrupt any farm work. The day was as bright as I loved it. This means we won't be running into hiding for any course, majorly rain fall.

Hey, bro we will have to spend a little more time so that we will just walk back home. So we could save the transportation given to us for something else. I brought the suggestions and it was fully accepted by Baba. My cousin’s name. We worked as usual but rested very well just to catch enough breaths before we could set up for the journey ahead of us.

It's a 5 km walk from the farm to the house but then we decided to take a short cut which we have never used before.

We use to leave the farm on daily by 1pm and before it's 2 pm we are home, so after taking a short rest we decided to start our journey, we walked from the farm to the road side and then ignored all cars crossed the road and decided to take a straight route into the bush believing it will lead us straight to our house in no time.

Ai image from Gemini

What we saw as small later turned to become a threat to us. We walked in the bush taking a straight path we walked on it until that pathway introduced 3 different pathways, one path left the other 2 paths right at that point we could only use head map as we don't have it on a sheet or a GPS just the two of us trying to figure out way out.
So with full courage I suggested we take the center which was also pointing to the right.

After a walk we discovered the road was leading us to another place all together so we quickly made a turn back to the starting point, then we took the left route, now fear crawled in.

Baba began to act funny as he was about to cry but then I had to encourage him that we will soon be home even though I know we are in the middle of nowhere. I can't point to a sure direction that will take us home, I was confused as so many thoughts ran through my mind like what if we meet a wild animal in this bush path?
We wandered in the bush for 3 consecutive hours. What could have been 30-40 mins turned into a couple of hours.

We made a head walk down that path I could see that the route will not take us straight home but turning back and starting again could be a dangerous decision so I said we just forge ahead I could see that the road is leading us to a street not that close but I wanted us to just go out of the bush I know my mother will be worried by now wondering what could have happened to us it's already 5 pm after a long walk we found ourselves by the road side walking from that very point to the house could take an extra 40 minutes which will cause more panic at home as the more time we spend without getting home the more the tension at home so the supposed saved money that was supposed to be used to buy maybe biscuits was still used it to take a motorcycle that drove us home.

Immediately we entered the house my mom took a deep breath and whispered Thank You Jesus. I could feel some relief in her when the question came.
What took you this long?
I looked at my brother and said to my mum we just had to work an extra mile which was a blatant lie. That was the saving grace of being punished for putting them through the emotional stress, but then that was the last we tried that shit.

That day's lesson was well learnt, we operated a route that is well known not minding the distance since that day.