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| Several Days in the Life of a Nigerian Visitor...or A Little of This, A Little of That | |
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8/12/08 - Lagos & Abuja, Nigeria We attend church service with the family and have lunch at the Admiral's in Lagos and travel to the family's home in Abuja |
(Shutterfly photo album - Nigeria-Lagos, Abuja, Jos) |
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The next day, Sunday, it was up early again, this time to go (back) to church for the usual weekly service. It was the family's day to do thanksgiving and the remaining Americans (Greg and Geoff left on a morning flight today) participated in the ceremony (are you surprised?), with Scott offering a yam and Caroline a very ripe pineapple. Post-service, we piled back in the van for a lunch of ram stew and jollof rice (very spicy, of course) at the house. After a little visiting amongst ourselves, the Americans begged off, in desperate need of a nap after 3 busy days in a row. We were taken back to the hotel, where we all passed out in our rooms and then enjoyed a pleasantly familiar meal together at the Italian restaurant in the hotel compound. On Monday, feeling rested after yesterday's wedding recovery day, it was back to action. First stop was lunch at “The Chairman’s” (aka “The Admiral”, aka “Favorite Uncle”) house. Trevor needed to thank him for being the Chairman of the wedding. While lunch was delicious (chicken, shrimp salad, moi moi, jollof & fried rice, Coke, Star beer and some Elvis Presley on the menu), the real treat was the tour of The Admiral’s waterfront mansion, the Admiralty, according to the sign on the front of the house. Multiple pools, bay-view decks, a dock for his yacht, 25-foot tall chandelier, walk-in closets and master bath far bigger than our kitchen at home and what we like to call “throne-style” gilded gold & red velvet seating, it was… something else. The tour concluded after he showed us the $80k china set that Prince Charles (his old classmate) gave him. Now time for another hair-raising adventure-drive to the airport… when traffic was bad enough that we slowed way down, it did allow us to see how the other half (98%?) live. People are everywhere you look in Lagos – an estimated million of them make their living standing in the middle of the road (where the dashed stripe would be if they had lanes) trying to sell things to passing cars…. Cell phone recharge cards, Cokes, Mont Blanc pens, bad motivational books, packaged sausage rolls – you name it. Kind of like we saw in Mexico, but on a far larger scale. At one point, running late for our flight, our driver attempted a shortcut through the Nigerian army barracks near the airport. About to pass through the guard station, the guard took a look and saw Scott and Brandon – Trevor’s brother – sitting in the back of the van. “No white men!”, he shouted… repeatedly. Our security guard started a loud and aggressive looking argument with him (in Nigeria, this is how all conversations are described), but lost the battle, and we had to turn around. We still made our flight with time to spare, and landed in what seemed like a whole different world – Nigeria’s capital of Abuja. Abuja has officially been the capital of Nigeria since 1991. Up until 1980 or so, it was a much smaller Nigerian town. To aid with the congestion problem in Lagos, it was decided to move the capital to Abuja, and the city was planned out to appeal to more of a global visitor. Streetlights, lanes, a few working stoplights, large, new multi-story buildings, a Sheraton, a Hilton. It reminded us much more of some of the medium-sized cities we’d visited in Mexico. Quiet and calm would be the best words to describe Abuja when comparing it to Lagos – where most drivers are honking their horns more often than refraining from honking. More conservative dress, too, with women in head coverings that fall to the waist, and the vibrant colors of Lagos giving way to more muted tones. This change is explained by the fact that Abuja is a sort of gateway city to the Muslim north of Nigeria. We spent Tuesday hanging out at John & Quincy’s Abuja home, in an upscale neighborhood at the edge of the city, where several foreign embassies were located. After lounging around the house all morning, unable to even figure out how to turn on the TV, we were taken on a walk around the neighborhood by the pleasant and interesting gateman, Francis. Later, we took a driving tour of Abuja, in the rain, which included stopping at another shopping center for croissants and ice cream (both reported to be delicious – and not spicy!). We spent a quiet evening awaiting the arrival of Trevor, Maria, and the rest of her family. Cook served us dinner, we ate, helped ourselves to the tabletop toothpicks and dental floss and retired to the living room where we watched several excruciating hours of men's and women's judo and similarly entertaining Olympic competitions on TV. Upon the family's arrival from the airport, while they dined, we delighted in pouring over the 3 albums of wedding photos they brought with them, and we even got to see pictures of ourselves, the family and other wedding guests in several Lagos papers! We have copies available for viewing for anyone who wants to come to Albuquerque and see the excitement for themselves. We (Scott and Caroline) carefully planned out our next five days, with much help from John. It was decided that we would fork over some US $s to John, who would convert our cash for us, hire us a car and driver ($250/day incl. gas), and buy us a cell phone. Our itinerary included driving east, up in altitude to the city of Jos on the Jos Plateau for a night, followed by a trip to Kano, in the north part of the country, to get a feel for the Muslim vibe and hopefully see the camel market, then stopping in Zaria and Kaduna on our way back to Abuja on Saturday. We had a 7am flight to catch back to Lagos on Sunday, where our flight back to the U.S. departed at 11:45am – we did NOT want to miss that flight.
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View of our lunch terrace at the Admiral's house from an upper
terrace
Laundry hanging out to dry in the Abuja neighborhood |
