It’s a bright Saturday morning at the bus park, and passengers are trooping in. There’s an old Sharan minivan, trunk wide open, and a driver marshaling passengers towards it. It is not yuletide season, but boy, do these passengers pack heavy.

There’s a woman with a huge mattress, hard to say if it’s King or Queens size but no royal would complain on it. Another man with four Ghana-Must-Gos that just makes you wonder if he is the last Ghanaian left in the country. The fuel price must have finally convinced him that Ghana is, after all, a better country. Other passengers come with long sacks filled to the neck with stuff.

You look on with alarm as they pile the goods behind the small Sharan. No way in the world this would fit into the Sharan, you think. But as you scan the faces of the driver and the bus-loaders aka space-shifters, it turns out that you are the only person worried.

There are two bus-loaders: one of them is wearing thick silver rings on his fingers. Rings so thick that if Thanos had seen them, he might have reconsidered his folly. The other had a cigar in one hand and a cup of a shayi in another. Nothing in their visage suggested that they were even slightly bothered by the load.

Instead, they were quietly regarding the load, studying their dimensions and geometry. To them, this is probably a game of Tetris, a game of horizontals and verticals, a game in which perfect use of space is rewarded with more space.

Soon as there were 8 passengers, the spaceshifters swing into action, weaving their web of magic with thick ropes. Before long, the minivan looks 7-months pregnant. Having dispatched the minivan, they move on to their next task: a minibus.

This time, the task is even more daunting. One passenger came with a bungalow, another came with two cows, and you just sit there thinking: “Ah, no way!”

But the spaceshifters remain unfazed. Instead, they share a banter about the approach they would take. One suggested that they put the cows in the bungalow first; the other suggested that they put them separately. It’s merely a matter of philosophy to them, much like one would argue with a friend about whether the egg came before the chick or vice versa. Just office small talk.

Eventually, of course, they would load the goods, although you’re not there to see it. The bungalow on the bus, the cows in the trunk alongside a hectare of land, five palm trees, and a Mikano generator.

Abdulbaseet Yusuff is a Nigerian writer. His works appear in Indianapolis Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Cutleaf Journal, Brittle Paper, Pidgeonholes, and elsewhere.