Nail-biting in Nigeria

I recently (Friday 18^th May) returned from what could possibly be my last visit to Nigeria.  As I did that I felt somewhat compelled to revive my blog and capture a few of my recent Nigerian thoughts.  Inspired in part by my sister-in-law’s (Lesley) recent very inspirational appearance on the blogging scene [http://viverapericolosamente.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/2012-just-do-it/], coupled with my dear wife’s delightful posts (and great writing!) about our adventures in Africa [http://cmdelmar.blogspot.com/2012/05/i-dids-of-march-i-jokingly-told-derek.html?spref=fb], I figured I should pick up and then close off on my Nigerian chapter from encounters I experienced here back in 2008 during my first visit to this part of the African continent.

I met for dinner with an old friend and ex-Unilever colleague (together with some other colleagues) last night.  My friend, Nana, captured some very appropriate aspects of how I’ve felt again this week being back in Nigeria, following his recent relocation here from Ghana [http://nanaaweredamoah.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/eko-encounters-a-tale-of-one-wrong-turn/].  I can’t help but find that this place (Lagos) is an assault on one’s senses.  Although the population of Nigeria is 164-odd million, of which 20-odd million live in Lagos, I still somehow find it more congested and chaotic than Mumbai (India).  I’m not sure why.  I’ve only visited Mumbai once.  But there’s something so broken about Lagos that just makes everything that happens here appear to be that much more congested and dysfunctional.  And so it also seems to take so much longer to do anything.

Take for instance the inevitable travel within the city and close surrounds.

Whilst I stay in a hotel on the Island in Ikoyi, most of my work takes me to the Unilever factory about 50km west on the way to the Nigerian border with Benin.

I arrived on Sunday night.  As I capture these thoughts it’s now Thursday night and I’m sitting at the airport ready to leave for home.  In these 96 hours that I’ve been here I’ve spent 20 hours driving that 50km to and from the Factory four times.  That’s a sad 20km/hr average for my journeys.  Unilever safety regulations forbid you from working on your laptop whilst in road transit in Nigeria, so this reduces one’s productivity time to a tight few hours in the office (or, in my case, the Factory), which is NOT terribly productive at all.  So I’ve spent these hours often transfixed by the passing chaos on the streets around me in my Chauffeur-driven car with my security detail alongside him in the passenger seat.  Albeit that we’ve taken mostly the same routes every day I continue to see things and places that I’d not seen in my previous days’ trips.  I can’t help but want to share some of them with you, albeit that they may have no meaning to you at all.

Enduring the daily traffic jam to / from work

Drive it to destruction ... one of MANY abandoned vehicles  in the middle of "nowhere"

Navigating the roads ahead of the rainy season

Needing a place to sit

One can buy almost anything somewhere along the road ...

Contemplating life at the end of a busy day

So much of life seems to happen alongside the main routes.  But looking down the side alleys and consciously trying to notice what was happening there I realised that life’s not restricted to these obvious main routes.  There’s a hive of activity happening not even a block away.  The place is just crawling with people doing life.  And many, it seems, probably don’t travel very far from where they live right there.  Or so it seems.  Some appear to have just gotten stuck where they are and not cared to move on.  And so they’ve ended up just ageing there, minding for and seeming to take a genuine interest in some of the little kids playing on the litter-strewn pavements, separated from the main road by a canal-come-open-sewer.  How do these people make a living?  What do they do that differentiates them from the next person that makes them marketable or capable of earning an income to stay ahead or abreast of the poverty line?  And the single informal Trader swamped by the hundreds of similar Traders around them all pedalling their similar-looking, non-unique wares.  What on earth would convince me to buy from one person and not from the next?  Clearly there’s something I don’t understand about the dynamics of this life-style that I miss out on as I am escorted past them without my camera even being able to take focus on the little girl squatting in the middle of the pavement outside of a busy shop front and relieving herself, or the kids dressed in school uniform lined up in neat rows outside of their roofless school building receiving morning instruction from the teaching staff on the days activities.  Something of this LIFE that happens amidst the chaos of scooters dodging vehicles, nobody having right-of-way, the car horn being the primary mode of communicating one’s intentions / anger / apology / presence rather than the use of an indicator; motorbikes having horns that even a 20T truck-and-trailer would be envious of!  To say it’s mayhem is a complete understatement.  But somehow it all works.  Even if it does take an inordinate amount of time to work.  When you drive, you drive fast.  When you stop, you stop for long!

One evening it took us 3hrs to make the journey home.  It turned out that a fuel tanker had somehow lost its load at a major intersection.  As we finally reached the location of the incident there was a crowd of inquisitive bystanders dodging massive pools of fuel that lay more then ankle deep in the road.  Life was still happening in the vicinity whilst this explosive threat was pouring down the street.  This delay did mean that we ended up arriving at my hotel well after dark, something I’d been directed to avoid at any cost given the heightened tensions and terrorism threats in the country.  This journey did afford me the first sightings I’d ever had in Nigeria of modified shipping containers that had been fitted with windows, mounted on old truck chassis and converted into “buses”.  I also got to see my first Nigerian / Lagosian freight trains loaded with illegal “passengers on the roof leaving town.  I’ve seen a car being washed where even the inside door panels were being hosed down thoroughly.

One evening I only got out of the Factory later, only for my driver to discover that the car battery had gone dead during the day whilst he was waiting for me.  After a mad rush about looking for jumper leads they managed to hunt down a Unilever employee who had leads; this seems to be a rarity to have these available on you.  Clearly I was “in luck”!

Unilever issued a travel advisory on my 2^nd day here, changing the security status of Unilever employees from green to orange (alert) status, restricting travel into the country and certainly outside of Lagos without the Chairman’s authority.  Seems lime I made it in just in time, else this trip would have been put on hold indefinitely.  I’m not sure if the fact that I got to travel to Nigeria without question on this trip means I was lucky or unlucky in this one!

I was discovered and stopped on Unilever premises by Immigration Authorities and asked to see my papers.  Everyone in the Office (at the Factory, where this happened) was amazed that the Authorities were even on Site unannounced!  I came away unscathed and averted time in jail.  And apparently this is a good thing.  I heard from an authoritative individual today that the police service no longer have dogs or horses.  The staff (apparently) use the money to go and buy food for themselves.  Is this corruption or quiet desperation?  By inference one would not want to land up in jail for even a short time because its not sure what you’d be fed, if you’d be fed at all!

Catching a lift on a motorcycle seems to be the cheapest and most prolific form of transport.  Lagosians most certainly have an innate skill in being lifted because despite the terribly adverse on-road / off-road nature that such travel might take whilst navigating the massive and numerous pot-holes, crossing centre medians to career down the oncoming traffic lane before dodging into side streets, or just mounting the pavement to speed up the trip, the casual passenger(s) find no need to have to hold onto anything.  In fact some continue conducting business on their cell phones whilst being taken on these insane joy-rides, often even laughing and engaging with the distracted driver!  Four years ago I managed to get a photo of a passenger carrying a massive framed mirror, wedged between the passenger and the bike driver.  This time I sadly missed two classic pictures; one was the proverbial live-stock (usually a goat) being carried by the passenger.  The second was a passenger transporting a fill sized front windscreen of a vehicle, wedged between he and the driver.  How do they get that right??  I’d also previously seen a bull in the rear of a Mercedes station wagon with 4 adults in the vehicle.  Today I saw a lady loading a bull into the back of her station wagon.  Even my Nigerian colleague who was driving with me looked on in disbelief.  And here I think twice about loading my dogs into the back of my car and taking them down to the beach!!

I’m not sure why all of these “sightings” warranted comment and were imprinted onto my mind’s eye.  I wondered whether some of this happens in my world back home but I’m just so absorbed with my life that I don’t even notice it.  I’m not sure that’s the case.  I think I’d notice a lady with a bull in the back of her car.  But I think one appreciates and registers these unique sightings when one has time on one’s hands (or when you’re not behind the wheel yourself!), and when you have unique sounds, sights and smells around you.  Lagos certainly affords one those opportunities.  But it’s still a place I’m happy to visit and happier to leave.

This trip was certainly sweetened by the ease of my Sunday arrival and speedy and easy transition through customs (20mins vs 2hrs!)  You can’t be in a rush in Nigeria.  But you can always still be surprised when things do go that much smoother than planned.

I’m glad to now be headed home to be with my beloved wife who I can’t blame for not wanting to join me on this trip (despite the offer).  The luxury and delight of our recent adventure to Kenya will be a tough one to replicate.  But I know she’s going to be super-stoked to have me home again.  And I’m going to be too!!