Organised chaos of Lagos Island

So the big news is that we finally have a driver! Which is amazing. It finally means I don't feel landlocked anymore and we can go out like normal people. Although, having a driver doesn't actually feel that normal.

I've been itching to head into Lagos Island, which is the main CBD area of Lagos. 

First of all we went to the National Museum, which was super interesting (albeit a big dusty and cobwebby), with heaps of relics displayed the spiritual traditions of the indigenous tribes.  Unfortunately we couldn't take a camera in here, but anyway. 

We then began the wander down towards the markets. Along the way we saw:

1. The reason that you do not want to get sick in Nigeria. 

2. The reason I do not want to give birth in Nigeria.

Somehow this photo turned out looking okay. In reality this place looked like a 200 year old mental hospital. Not good.

Seriously though, it was an amazing day experiencing the richness of this busy city.... check out the photos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lekki Conservation Reserve

Last weekend we were gifted the use of a driver for the day which was such a blessing! We headed about 5km down the Expressway to the Lekki Conservation Centre... a small area of rainforest which has been protected from the sprawling urban developments of Lagos city. For the short time in there, I forgot where I was, the constant drone of traffic and incessant honking faded right away, and I could have sworn I was back in Papua New Guinea rainforest. A run down information centre greeted us, along with a number of ancient tortoises, who have seen more than triple my entire lifespan! It was quite a rainy day, and the guide who met us was rather confused by the fact we wanted to walk in a light drizzle. The gentle rain just added so much beauty to the rainforest, and although we didn't see any crocodiles or giant rats, we were lucky enough to get an awesome view of the mona monkeys as they crashed and leaped through the trees. An awesome climb up to a treetop platform, put us up in the tops of the trees... too bad it wasn't a couple of metres higher so we could have really looked out over everything. 

I felt my entire soul being refreshed at this place.... and it actually increased my homesickness a bit, as I realised just how much I took for granted all the beautiful natural surroundings of home. Luckily this place is just down the road though, and with the added addition of our new driver, hopefully more remote journeys are to come!

Lekki Beach

Last weekend we took a walk down to our closest beach, a 20 min walk away. Upon arrival, we're greeted by a couple of guys who wanted to charge us 1,000 naira (N$10) to go down. My awesome husband took control of the situation and we turned around to leave, only to be invited in for nothing.... The beach was so beautiful underneath all the rubbish.  Check out these photo's.  The rubbish washes in from the ocean. So sad!

You can't really tell in this photo, but there is rubbish everywhere!

We stumbled across a couple of cool shipwrecks, and a couple of guys wanting us to dash them because they live on the boats to make sure no one steals them (?!).... sorry guys, we're not going to pay you for that.

3rd day of school and we're closed!

On the main road on the way to school.

It rained last night. Not a big deal right? Wrong. Today was the scariest drive of my life. The puddles are deep when you are in a little Kia. Every road is wrought with deep holes, some roads where like rivers. The water floods over our bonnet. But you know what? After finding a couple of the roads were actually closed, or blocked by other cars who were stuck, we made it to work, on time. However, not everyone was so lucky.... our friends car got stuck, and water started seeping in through the doors! 
In the end, all the parents or drivers of the 550 children who come to our school were turned away and the decision was made to close the school for the next 3 days. Perhaps it's because the roads around our school look like this:

You try and get cars (there's no buses) for 550 children down this road. It's not going to happen.

The view from our place...

Here's the view from our very sweet apartment block. I love it. Despite these apartments are about NZ$400,000 and are full of lawyers and accountants (maybe the "Nigeria prince's son" too...) there are the awesome local markets and people who have very little, living right on our doorstep. I HEART it. The kids are rad. We even had our first beer at 'Special Joint'. I like that the beer here comes in big bottles. Flashback to crate days I swear. 

In case you missed the potholes on our street, here they are again. They're not shallow.

Oh! Here's some corrections to my previous posts....

Interesting fact #1 "Reclaimed land".... that is, the land on which we are living. I thought it must mean soil and sand. Wrong. Its landfill. I'm living on a rubbish dump. We all are. In fact, Victoria Island is no longer an island because the landfill joined it up with where we are.  Update: Actually, now I'm not sure again. It is sand. What defines landfill anyway? Anything that fills the land right? Well. Whatever. It's something.


Interesting fact #2 When I thought that lady gave me an extra akara cos I bargained so badly? Well, that was actually a dash. A dash is more often a bribe that you pay to people... like, the Area Boys who charge you to go on the beach, or to the police who stop you for no reason. However, it can also just be a gift from a street vendor. How nice! I love these people.


We're definitely getting more known from our walks. Yesterday we stopped to by something and the lady called her daughter over straight away and said "She's been waiting for you, she wants to ask you a question!", but the girl just got so shy... "What? Now they're here you aren't going to ask them??" Mum says.  I broke the ice with the girl by asking her some questions, but it wasn't enough for her to come out of her shell.... maybe she wanted to practice her English with some real oyibos, and that can be pretty scary! I'm thinking that I might be able to give some free english lessons.... but not just yet.... gotta get my head around the fact that my own school starts in two days!


Speaking of school, I've got the most awesome combination of nationalities.... nigerians, british, american, israeli, pakestan, indian. Awesome. I'm excited.

Lizards!!!

Check these out. So cool. They are everywhere. They do press-ups. They could do more than Caleb I bet. Impressive.

Red headed agama.

Oyibo!

No matter where you go here, you hear the same greeting – “Oyibo!”. Which means “white person!”. It’s said in such a friendly way, almost with a touch of surprise… and I guess it is… there’s not that many expats wandering the local markets like we do. “Oyibo” translated literally means “peeled one”… as in, our normal black coloured skin has been peeled off…. as one Nigerian put it, ‘people are not supposed to be that colour!’  


Our Indian friend gets the same reaction - except hers is 'Yellow oyibo!' Classic. 


PC? I think not. 

Nigerian Chop (that's food for those of you not yet up on the local lingo)

Snail. They actually look like this, but cooked. And without the shell.

On our third day, the school took us our to ‘Yellow Chilli’ for our first taste of African food. While the goat head soup, and offal pepper soup looked really appealing, we went a bit more tame…. With fish pepper soup for me and goat pepper soup. One thing I’ve noticed is that Africans like soup. Most of the time, soup is actually more like a stew. And it’s very peppery! Spicy! MMMMM.  Also on the menu was goat legs… not actually goat legs, but the tendons and vessels. Didn’t try that either. Did try the snails though. Big fat juicy snails… despite being quite tough and tasting like soils, they tasted a lot like paua. Mmmm.

Akara. YUM!

We’ve discovered a few tasty treats from the street vendors:  akara – which are deep fried bean balls are probably my favourite. My first experience with batering for these, went a little something like this: “How much?” “10 naira” (that’s the equivalent of 10 nz cents)…. “I’ll give you 20 naira for 3”… to which the lady chuckled to herself and accepted the offer…. 2 minutes later we reach into the bag, to find there are 4 akara in there…. Obviously she felt sorry for my terrible haggling skills and wanted to let me know the correct price. Although, it’s kind of hard to haggle over 10 cents. 10 cents! Come on, that’s already a bargain!!

Efo soup. Those curly bits are skin. I gave those to Caleb.

 We've also tried cooking some efo soup (so it was a frozen soup from the supermarket... don't judge us) along with some pounded yam flour. You mix this yam flour with boiling water and it turns into a playdough like subtance, which you then rip off and dip in your soup. Efo soup consists of large quantities of 'greens' (unsure exactly what kind), pepper and hunks of meat. It's really strong in flavour, but looks quite unappealing....

Another amazing discovery are the incredible 50cent loaves of bread from the street vendors. These have saved us a couple of times when stuck in a go-slow with no food.  

The Nigerians that we work with are often in disbelief when we tell them what we have been trying. I think they expect us to come here and long for the food and comfort of our home country.  But then, why would we come here in the first place? If we wanted rice without stony grit in it, then we would have stayed home.

The streets

The streets. Have I mentioned the streets yet?  We’ve been here for 2 weeks now, and I still can’t get over them. Just the fact that we are in such a developed area, yet can they build a street??  One thing I should mention is that the area we live in, “Lekki Phases 1” is “reclaimed” land. To the best of my knowledge that means that, once, there was no land here, only sea. Now, they have somehow used topsoil and sand to ‘reclaim’ it.

The streets. The main roads are cobbled. These cobbled roads are often in better condition. Apart from where the sand has given way under the road, causing massive potholes. 

Every other road is dirt. Here, the potholes are even bigger. Yesterday, Caleb got out of our car to help push a car out of one of them… it’s exhaust had so filled with water that they couldn’t get the car going. Luckily my superior navigating skills means I know the right places to drive to keep it shallow (cross fingers!).  

Therefore, driving is slow, running is a total lesson in how to avoid sprained ankles, and even walking takes intense concentration.  The main roads have drains running down the side of them, which guys dig out, and by the time they are 50cm down, the drains are filled with water. You have to jump across the drains when crossing the road. That is, if you aren’t already walking on the road, because you never know when the pavement is going to cave in….(the sand foundation on which the pavement is built gets washed out into the drains).  And aren’t drains supposed to, oh I don’t know, drain??? Not here. It’s just holes. There’s an empty section we walked past today, for sale. It’s a pond, complete with lily plants and frogs. In the middle of town. I love it. The one across the road was also pond… but somehow they have built the concrete foundation. I guess they must be waiting for dry season to finish it… as swimming across that pond to work wouldn’t be that appealing!

A week later...

Monday 30^th August - Wow, a week has been by since my first update. It feels like we’ve been here for at least 2 weeks. I’m definitely feeling a bit more local (my heart doesn’t thump in my chest when Caleb is driving anymore).  Yes, we’ve started driving. What an experience it is. Sometimes you drive on the right, other times on the left, there’s motorbikes, people, goats, chickens and other obstacles to avoid.

There has been the constant drone of generator for the last 3 days, as our transformer has been getting fixed. The city power supply comes on for limited amounts of time each day, so many of the other teachers here don’t have power very often at all… we’re really blessed to have a generator running. Although, even that is not very reliable. It goes on and off a few times a night… a couple of nights ago we were in the lift when it shut down. It’s a weird feeling, being stuck in a lift with no power. Actually, we got stuck in the lift today as well. As in, it got to our floors and the doors just would not open. We jumped, we pushed buttons, we tried to open the doors, to no avail. But a quick slam of the slightly opened doors kick started the lift back into life so we could get out.

One of the highlights of the week for me was going for our first run outside our apartment compound. We have been advised not to wander around the streets, despite our school staff telling us that it is safe to walk around.... but there’s no way we can’t go out. We are definitely unlike any other Westerners that come here.  Even Nigerians don’t walk for leisure, and they don’t understand why we want to. Therefore, to see a couple of Westerners wandering the local streets is something many have probably never seen before. Normally, foreigners can be seen driven around in luxury vehicles by their local driver (note, we are getting a driver too, but more on that later).

We ran the opposite way to the way we normally drive into our complex. It’s a maze of dirt roads, and roadside shacks where people are selling what they can in order to eat.

So, to see two white people RUNNING is definitely a spectacle. Nigerians and white people do not run here for leisure.  We had all sorts of jibs and jives called out at us… ignorance is bliss when you don’t know the local language. 

Since running down that way, I’m developing a real fondness for those streets. So, I’ve told Caleb that I want to keep visiting this area, so we start to become a familiar face and can maybe start to build some kind of relationships with the people there.

We’re also doing the same thing with the local markets down our street. No matter where you go here, you hear the same greeting – “Oyibo!”. Which means “white person!”. It’s said in such a friendly way, almost with a touch of surprise… and I guess it is… there’s not that many expats wandering the local markets like we do. “Oyibo” translated literally means “peeled one”… as in, our normal black coloured skin has been peeled off…. as one Nigerian put it, ‘people are not supposed to be that colour!’  

First Impressions

Sunday 29^th August - Day 3. It’s 12pm and we’ve just returned home following our first African church service. I’m slightly deaf from the passionate preaching blowing out of the speakers a couple of rows behind me – a punishment, I can only assume, for arriving late, and slinking into the back rows. This is probably the most effective technique I have ever soon for ensuring your congregation is filling the front of the church.

Lagos is everything I expected in a developing city, and nothing is a huge shock. Actually, there is one thing. This is a wealthy city, the people are very wealthy. This is probably the first misconception that has been blown out of the water for me. I came to this place knowing there is the rich and poor, with a huge discrepancy between the two, and that is still very true, except the poor are a smaller percentage of the population than I thought it would be.

On first glance, as we drove down the choked up main highway, there are vendors all over the main road selling you everything from drinks and phone cards, to puppies, shoe racks and basketball hoops (it’s a wonder they aren’t killed, as there are certainly no lane markings and there are no rules), the majority of the roads are dirt (you think our potholes are bad, check out my photos), there is no reliable electricity, you can’t drink the water, Lagos certainly gives the impression of poverty. However, the huge houses and apartment complexes ($400,000 for a simple 3 bedroom apartment in a complex of 1,004! – that would buy you a beautiful apartment in the Mount!), the shops with astronomical pricing (and people spending up a storm), tell a different story. Because this is the norm, not the exception. However, this story in itself may not be accurate, seeing as how I’ve only been here for two nights now and I have been presented with only a smallish side of Lagos, from experience and from dialogue with a local. So I’m sure this current opinion will soon too, be reshaped on a daily basis.

We are in a 3 bedroom apartment on the 5^th floor of a large complex, complete with tennis court, swimming pool, bar, barbed wire fence and 24 hour security (at least four of them were on this morning).  We are surrounded by new development, and it’s going to be interesting to watch these apartments go up. In two years time it will be a whole difference suburb. Actually, new developments are going up EVERYWHERE to cater for the huge population growth as people stream to Lagos, as our HR lady said, ‘there is money to be made here, and if you can make it in Lagos, you can make it anywhere’.

The building itself is awesome, Caleb summed it up nicely as ‘a combination of all the right things put together in all the wrong ways’. Examples: we tend to use the stairs for a bit of extra exercise, however, this can be lethal, as none of the stairs are the same size, and are of differing heights and slopes; none of the walls are straight, or square and the door frames are definitely not nicely parallel, which makes for an interesting display of door frames and joinery which… do not join… and doors which, do not close. However, these blemishes are what makes this place what it is, and I like it.

Each of the bedrooms is large with its own ensuite, so please make sure you book prior to your visit to Nigeria as I’m sure we will fill up fast.

We have been really looked after by our school since our arrival, they have provided us with loads of little things that we certainly weren’t expecting, and have taken us out to show us around, and have taken us shopping, and we are off again shortly on another escapade out on a boat to a beach somewhere. Its been great to have these options, as we hadn’t really ventured outside by ourselves yet, our HR lady said she would prefer it if we would do our daily run inside the compound instead of outside at this stage as we are so new. I tell you, running around a swimming pool and tennis court is going to become pretty boring fast.

We went out for our first escapade outside the compound by ourselves today, after we heard a church congregation (which is a miracle in itself, as we have two very large generators right outside our window making an extraordinary noise) and decided to investigate. It was very loud and very fun, but I was distracted by the most gorgeous albino African toddler sitting in front of me who looked like he’d never seen a white person before and proceeded to play peek-a-boo for the duration of the service.

We got taken to a supermarket yesterday where ‘all the white people’ shop. Yes, lovely, however, these white people are all there on very high salaries with oil companies. If it wasn’t for the fact that we wouldn’t have any food for the week if we didn’t get our groceries then and there, then there is no way we could afford to shop there. Double the price of NZ food, and even our country is expensive! We just about threw up along with another lady who has been living in a different part of Lagos for the last two years, and resolved to make the journey back to where she used to shop, despite the fact it could take us 2 or 3 hours each way to make the trip (15mins if no traffic).  With petrol so cheap at 65c a litre, making a big journey would still be cheaper than where we shopped yesterday! I’d still prefer to shop at the local markets, so I’ve got to find  someone to  skill me up in local language...