I love mid-term break. FINALLY, a chance to escape the constant horn-honking, the dancing roads, the concrete jungle that is Lagos.
We decided on a trip to Benin, the neighbouring country. After plenty of hours scouring various websites and forums, we decided to head to the border, and get the 48-hour transit visa, and renew it once in Benin.
We hit the road just after 5am in order to escape the infamous 'go-slows'. The slums of Lagos turned into beautiful tropical country-side, the roads lined with coconut and banana trees. We reached the border about 7:30am, and after going through the Nigeria exit procedure, we headed to the Benin visa office. From there, it was back and forth between the different countries, as we tried in vain to get one of these transit visa's. For some unknown and totally unheard of reason, we were denied. 'There are no visa's', 'the visa's are finished' we are told, over and over again. We saw African guys in front of us offer a 'dash' for a visa, with the money basically thrown back in their faces with a big fat 'NO'. We eventually ran into another teacher from our school, who frequents this border as his wife is in Togo. But yet, he too (having purchased a transit visa only 3 weeks earlier), was denied. We still don't know if he got in, but regardless, after 4 hours spent at the border, we got back in our car, and formulated Plan B.
Travel Nigeria. Why not? We live there, let's explore it! Turned out to be the best plan, and we are so thankful that we had this opportunity to walk this track, completely off the beaten track. A place empty of tourists, cities full of children who have never seen a white person.
First we headed to Abeokuta. A simply beautiful African city, famous for it's big rock. Instead of trying to describe this beautiful city, I'll let the pictures do the talking...
I just love the greenery, the iron roofs, the 1940's architecture, the narrow roads, the wonderful people and the fact that there are houses built on boulders!
From Abeokuta, we sent our driver home, and proceeded to use public mini-buses and okada's (motorcycles) for the rest of the journey, much to the horror of our HR woman at work, who we kept updated every few hours.
The next day, and 3 okada's, 2 public buses and a shared car later, we arrived in Ibaden. With the help of a very friendly local, we made it to the IITA - the International Institute of Agriculture. This tropical paradise, was just a beautiful place... a private reserve complete with lake, fruit plantations, swimming pool, fabulous restaurant, and golf course. I am still trying to work out how I can get a job at the school at this research centre.
From there, it was back into the cities and to a place called Osogbo. Ibadan and Osogbo are nothing special as far as cities go.... but they do give you the true African city experience. It can't really be described... only experienced.
The thing I was really impressed with during our trip was the helpfulness of the people when trying to find our way somewhere, and also the reliablity and efficiency of the public transport system, within cities, and between cities. Basically, mini-buses and shared cars run between motorparks, and leave when all the seats are full. So you never have to wait long, and you don't have to walk far at all. It actually puts these 'developed' transport systems to shame, if you ask me!
There were two highlights for me in Osogbo. First of all, the Osun Sacred Forest, which was a project of an Austrian woman in the 1950's who began restoring and recreating sculptures and Yoruba shrines, with her own artistic spin. The result is a beautiful, crumbling array of unique stylised shrines among beautiful African bush. Unfortunately they wanted to charge us $25 to take our camera in, so all these photos were taken on the road leading to the entrance... If you want to see them for yourself, we'll take you there....
Unfortunately, I have no patience with the Internet this evening, so you will have to wait for some photos of this place.
The other highlight in Osogbo was the discovery that the 'African' food we have been eating in Lagos, is not real African food. Oh no. The food we ate here, where there are no white people, was far different from Lagos food. This food was hot. Unlike curry hot, or any other hot, it was pure chilli and pepper. Wow. I swear the inside of my lips was blistering so bad, I had to open my mouth wide to avoid touching the food on my lips, it hurt that bad! Actually, the whole dinner was an unforgettable experience as well. I had no idea what I was ordering. We ended up with the incredibly hot catfish pepper soup (whole catfish, btw), an even hotter chicken wing (I could not even touch this, go Caleb!), and pounded yam. As Caleb has said, yam is good - boiled, fried, mashed, roasted, any way, BUT pounded. However, if it wasn't for this yam, there is no way we could have eaten the food... it needed SOMETHING to absorb the heat. Wow.
That's it for now... I've got to get to bed... I'll try and do a part 2 over the next few days. Better yet, I'll try and get Caleb to do one!!
