Centenary celebrations

Tomorrow, on 27 February, Nigeria will celebrate its 100^th Birthday. More correctly, it will mark the centenary of the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Protectorates. Preparations for a grand ceremony at the National Stadium in Abuja are in place, complete with ‘international artists’ (see here – and don’t be frightened by the alarming music). I had naively assumed that this would be an excuse for a good party, but I have spoken to a few Nigerian friends about the celebrations and no-one seems remotely excited by the event. People are far more concerned about the terrible attack on a boarding school in Yobe on Monday, which left 29 students dead. Here in Abuja, drivers are more preoccupied with the enormous petrol queues (a driver from our office queued for five hours for fuel yesterday) and people are still reeling from the suspension of the central bank governor, Lamido Sanusi, ostensibly for ‘financial recklessness and misconduct’ but actually for asking too many questions about where the missing $20bn in oil revenue has gone.

As this article on Sahara Reporters makes clear, many Nigerians don't feel they have a great deal to celebrate at present. This piece perfectly encapsulates the current mood in Abuja, including outrage that the recipients of 100 'centenary awards', designed to honour all those who have made Nigeria great (including the Queen, Lord Lugard and Flora Shaw), include past dictators and corrupt officials:

'How could we explain to a child living under fear in Maiduguri or the one in Otuoke, who goes to school on an empty stomach or to the parents of the 29 students killed by Boko Haram in Yobe that Nigeria’s former presidents and military dictators deserve to be flattered for the role they played in steering the Nigeria ship to this big mess?

To start with, the centenary celebration is misplaced. First, the amalgamation of Nigeria in 1914 was a colonial selfish act, which was meant to benefit Britain alone. Are we therefore congratulating Britain for colonizing us or what? I beg to differ; Nigeria is not 100 but 53. There is a difference between a protectorate and a nation. At 53, the state of the Nation is one that calls for sober reflection.

The balance sheet of 53 years of bad leadership are: grave insecurity, hunger, 80% youth unemployment, lack of basic infrastructure, water and electricity, high rate of infant mortality, lack of vaccine against malaria, short life span and an almost empty treasury. It is absurd and an insult to Nigerians, especially those who have genuinely contributed to the country, that those who are indeed responsible for the pitiable state of Nigeria were honoured by Jonathan.'

It is not a happy time in Nigeria. There is such potential here, but also such huge barriers to progress - with endemic corruption being at the heart of the problem. The scale of corruption here is truly unbelievable (as evidenced by this article in Vanguard earlier this month), but what I find almost more depressing is the way in which corruption percolates through to almost every area of life. Every transaction, every interaction has the potential for a bribe. Absolutely anything can be bought: you can wait in a petrol queue for four hours, or pay a bribe and jump to the front. You can be arrested for drunk driving, or pay a bribe and escape prosecution. So try and get into university on merit, or elected by relying on a democratic vote, or a promotion within the civil service without playing the system and you are doomed to failure. A nation which does not permit talent to rise to the top is fundamentally flawed and the implications for education, governance and administration are clear. And I guess that's not much cause for celebration.

Lugard and Lifejackets

I was woken at 6am this morning by a loud beeping noise coming from the bedside table. I cursed Simon for leaving his blackberry alarm on and then, realising that it wasn't the usual ringtone, scrabbled around in the dark until I found the source of the irritation: the hotel telephone. This being the first working landline that I'd seen since arriving in Nigeria, I couldn't quite bring myself to believe it was actually ringing, but I eventually managed to locate the handset and answered it. The voice at the other end asked to speak urgently to Mr. Shercliff. Imagining it must be some sort of consular emergency, I woke Simon and passed him the phone. Having collapsed into bed only 4 hours earlier (for unknown reasons he had thought it a good idea to try out the 'Insomnia nightclub'), he grunted and took the phone. An extraordinary conversation ensued, in stage whispers at Simon's end, with his most frequent refrains being "I am not having this conversation now" and "I am sleeping" (which seemed slightly odd as Simon clearly was having a conversation now and was definitely not sleeping). It turned out it was the hotel receptionist, who wished to clarify a mistake in the receipt that he had issued to Simon at check-in the day before (Simon had paid the correct amount but the receipt had been made out incorrectly). Simon told the receptionist that he was not prepared to have the discussion at 6am and would come and talk about it when we went for breakfast. Despite Simon's (increasingly pathetic) attempts to whisper, Alex and Freya woke up. Facing the prospect of a very long day ahead, we managed to persuade them to lie quietly until the sun came up. At 7am, there was a knock at the door. The receptionist appeared, claiming that he needed to have the receipt now as the accountant was coming to the hotel in the afternoon and he could be sacked if the figures didn't match up. When Simon questioned why he had been woken at 6am and was now standing having a conversation in his boxer shorts, the receptionist said he needed the receipt now as he had to go to Church. An animated discussion followed, which ended up with the poor receptionist down on his knees, supplicating Simon to search for the missing receipt. This made Simon even more irritated (think Basil Fawlty/Manuel). The saga eventually ended with Simon rooting through the bin/my handbag/his wallet/the nappy bag/his trouser pockets and finding the desired receipt. Whether the poor receptionist ever made it to church, I'm not sure, but Simon was left with the distinct impression that customer service in Kogi State's finest hotel left something to be desired.

However, with a day of sightseeing ahead, we were not to be deterred. We woke ourselves up with some strong coffee and set out on the group minibus to view the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers, for which Lokoja is famed. We spent about thirty minutes talking down the massively inflated price we'd been given (double what it should have been) and another half an hour strapping on bright orange lifejackets and boarded the little motorboat that was to ferry us out to the sandbank from which one can see the two rivers converge. The motorboat had seen better times - there was a rather farcical scene as the bench on which the row of people sitting behind us collapsed, sending them sprawling on to the floor. (Moral of the story: never get into a boat in Nigeria without checking if the bench you are sitting on is made from damp, decomposing chipboard). The driver of the boat had to maintain a semi-squatting position in order to see out of the cracked windscreen, and the fumes from the engine were so strong that most of the group ended up standing on the back deck, causing the boat to tilt alarmingly at times. However, we made it to the sandbank intact and I must admit I could indeed see the difference between the two rivers. Whether it was the Niger or the Benue that was the faster flowing and muddier, I can't recall, but there definitely was a difference. Alex was rather uninterested in the river itself, but was fascinated by the skeleton of a dead goat that we found on the sand. 

  

Mission accomplished, we headed back to shore and then drove up to the heights of Mount Patti, location of the famed telecommunication masts. I have been on some pretty hairy journeys in my time: the 'death road' to Coroico; some horrific hairpins in Bali; a number of very dodgy Iranian mountain roads; the Colombian 'Chiva of Death' en route to the Ciudad Perdida trek in Colombia. However, rather than becoming more relaxed about such escapades, I have actually developed something of a phobia about taking any road up a mountain that involves the prospect of imminent demise. This phobia is heightened when vehicle in which I'm travelling is any larger than a four-wheel drive and driver of the vehicle is not married to me (and therefore does not spend the entire journey instructing me to close my eyes and reassuring me that all will be fine). So whilst the rest of the party on our groaning minibus chattered cheerfully on around the excruciating bends, seemingly oblivious to the grinding of gears and fact that one false move could mean a fatal plunge down the mountainside, I struggled to contain a panic attack.

At the summit of Mount Patti, there is a 'Rest House' built by Lord Lugard, the Governor General of Colonial Nigeria from 1914-1919. A painted plaque informed us that the 'Climbing Mount Patti is an experience any tourist would never forget' (too true in my case) and that the 'rest house was used by Lord Lugard after every tedious day at work'. A statue to Lord and Lady Lugard commemorates the fact that, according to the same plaque (reproduced here word-for-word):  'It was on Mount Patti that the name Nigeria was conned by Flora Shaw - later addressed as Flora Lugard after she married Lord Lugard who was a British Colonial Administration - while grazing out at the river that stretched, before her in the late 19th century'. 

However, I was more interested in the history of the road, which had been constructed by Lugard and 'rehabilitated by the administration of Coloel Danladi Zakari in 1991'. Seemingly, I was not the only one who thought the road could do with a bit of work: a notice declared that 'The Capt. Idris Wada  [Kogi State Governor] administration is also working on giving the road a permanent face lift as indicated in the administration's agenda of making Kogi state a tourist haven'.

Knowing that the best way to counter one's fears is to confront them, I refused to reboard the minibus, abandoned my husband and two young children to their fate and begged a lift back down the mountain with Chief of the Kogi State Tourist Board, who had accompanied us up in his very swanky new black SUV. I rather started to regret my decision as we careered downhill at enormous speed, swerving wildly round the bends to avoid the giant potholes. In his enthusiasm to explain how Lokoja was set to be the next greatest tourist destination of Africa (as we passed piles of broken glass, rubbish dumps and crumbling, half-finished buildings), he removed both hands from the wheel several times to gesticulate wildly. I did have to admire the strength with which he believed in the tourist vision and both he and his colleagues were incredibly hospitable and welcoming and did their utmost to present a good impression of their town, and inform us about its history. Lokoja is not quite a 'tourist haven' yet, but we did feel very safe and well-looked after and the whole weekend was enormous fun. Just a shame we didn't see any of those giant hippos.

   (Photo credits: all the decent ones were taken by Nick Horne)

Truly, there aren't many towns like Lokoja

So, having arrived in Lokoja, I can categorically confirm that:

a) Truly, there aren't many towns like Lokoja;

b) It looks nothing like the Master Plan;

c) The giant hippopotami appear to have left town.

Our great achievement of the day was making it Lokoja intact. When I read in the guidebook that 'the road to Lokoja is another blackspot for accidents, and there are loads of wrecks on the side of the road', I took it with a pinch of salt; the same could be said of many African roads. But the Abuja-Lokoja road (which is the first stage of the road link from Abuja to Lagos) is being upgraded to a dual carriageway designed 'to reduce the number of deaths due to reckless overtaking manoeuvres'. Unfortunately the process of constructing the dual carriageway means that the road is currently more dangerous than ever. There are portions of the road where new carriageway is open and others where it remains under construction. Unfortunately, there are no signs to indicate when this is the case, so an unsuspecting driver can be merrily cruising along what he assumes to be a dual carriageway when a freight truck appears over the brow of a hill heading straight towards him at 100kph. Not an experience I'm particularly keen to repeat. Although I guess we do need to get home somehow. 

So it was with some relief that we arrived at our hotel, which I was delighted to discover had been awarded the title of 'Best Hotel in Kogi State'. Admittedly, the check-in procedure lasted approximately two hours longer than anticipated, there was a fairly loose interpretation of the term 'reservation' and lunch was rather more leisurely than planned, but it felt like such a relief to be here that I didn't really mind. Despite having booked a family room, we were offered two rooms several hundred yards apart - one for us and the other for Alex and Freya. (Given how early the children are waking these days, I was quite tempted to go for that option, but we eventually settled for a mattress for them on the floor of our room). Another member of our party went to her room to discover that someone else's clothes were still in there (amusingly, the hotel staff were adamant he had checked out even when confronted with the missing person's belongings). One couple found their sheets unchanged; in another room the bed was neatly made but a large footprint was clearly visible in the middle of the bed. Even young Alex sensed that check-in was rather more cumbersome than it might have been, asking at one point 'Are we all staying in different rooms or are we all sleeping together?'. However, beds were eventually found for all guests, lunch was consumed and we were introduced to our guide, the head of the Lokoja tourism board, Mr. Joseph, who was extremely welcoming and provided us with a personal tour of the town.

Lokoja is a busy, provincial town of approximately 90,000 inhabitants. There is clearly a thriving local economy - the town has numerous banks, ATMs, restaurants, churches and hotels, and small roadside stalls of every descriptions selling everything from yams, bananas and onions to sofas, fridges, mattresses and wheelbarrows. Imaginatively named local businesses included clothing shops ('Gussy Up Clothing, Leather and Accessories', 'Confidence Boutique', 'Home of Wears'), bookshops ('God's Armory Bookshop', 'Caring Hearts Bookshop', 'Shepherd's Heart Books') and food retailers ('Treasures Bakery','God's Care Supermarket'). My favourite of the numerous accommodation options was 'Decency Hotels Ltd' offering 'Exotic Rooms, Hospitality and Friendliness: The Peak of Decency'. However, although the town is clearly making an effort to attract visitors, one can't help being struck by the piles of rubbish almost everywhere, even at the 'tourist' sites.

The first of the afternoon's sightseeing activities comprised visiting categorically the worst-maintained cemetery I have ever seen - an expanse of dirt covered in broken bottles, litter, rubble and discarded plastic chairs, under which a few fragmented gravestones were half-hidden under twisted rusty railings. The European Cemetery was better cared for, but still in very poor condition. It contains graves of African missionaries and European soldiers, many of whom died of malaria and disease rather than in battle, although there are four Commonwealth War Graves from the First World War here. 

We looked around the site of the first hospital in northern Nigeria (established by Lord Lugard in 1900) and the first Primary School in northern Nigeria - which, remarkably, is still being used as a school today.

We also visited Freedom Square, home to the 'Iron of Liberty', marking the spot where slaves were set free by European and African missionaries in 1900, and the Holy Trinity Church.

Lokoja's strangest tourist site is a roundabout featuring a bizarre statue of what appears to be a giant gourd and a red-lipped fish. Despite energetic enquiries, I am still flummoxed by the symbolism of this concrete creation.

        

    

We stopped off for a drink at a bar housed in Lord Lugard's former staff quarters, built in 1901. Lord Lugard's Residence was next door and both buildings were built on stilts, designed to keep the floods and reptiles (and presumably giant hippopotami) out.

We returned to the hotel for an evening meal and a few relaxing beers in the pleasant outside area. Simon and I took it in turns to look after the children, who were supposed to be settling down to sleep after their exciting day. However, we soon realised that we hadn't taken enough notice of the fluorescent yellow sign outside the hotel, advertising the new nightclub which had opened on Valentine's Day and which promised an intriguing mix of 'fun, music, security and specials for lovers', and boasting opening hours 'from 10pm till insomnia'. Unfortunately for us, Alex and Freya's insomnia began at approximately 9pm, when the pounding music started just as we'd finally calmed them down enough to stop giggling and wriggling. Hence the fact that I'm blogging at midnight...

                                                                                                                              (Photo: Nick Horne)

Off to Lokoja...

We are off tomorrow to the city of Lokoja for the weekend. Lokoja is the capital of Kogi state, which borders FCT, and is about a 2.5 hour drive from Abuja.

Lokoja is famous for two things: 1) being the point at which Nigeria's two largest rivers, the Niger and the Benue, converge; 2) being the former capital of the Northern Nigerian Protectorate and the city from which the first Governor-General of Nigeria, Lord Lugard, governed the new nation (the name Nigeria was suggested in 1897 by a British journalist and novelist named Flora Shaw, who later became Lugard's wife), after the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern Nigerian Protectorates in 1914.

Our opportunities for travel within Nigeria will be limited, so we were keen to join in this trip organised by the newly reinvigorated Nigerian Field Society. We were given a taster of the town in this article about Lokoja, which began with the intriguing line: 'Welcome to Lokoja, home of Mount Patti. Residents say that less than 30 years ago, hyenas used to descend from this hill to devour people's domestic animals'. (It is unclear to me why residents say this; is this meant to be a selling point?).

The article continues:

'Truly, there aren't many towns like Lokoja in Nigeria's North-Central geopolitical zone. Be they historical relics and geographical monuments, Lokoja has them all...Given Lokoja's place in Nigeria's political history, it comes as no surprise that the town has so much to offer the tourist. Lokoja offers at least half-a-dozen tour sites. From many parts of Lokoja, the tourist can savour alluring sight of terraces of houses cascading down Mount Patti. But, from everywhere the observer can see three or four telecommunications masts: This is the apogee of Mount Patti and it is here the local Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) station stands'.

I have consulted my trusty Brandt guide to Nigeria and can hardly contain my anticipation at the prospect of not only observing the telecommunication masts from numerous angles, but possibly visiting the site of the confluence of the Benue and Niger rivers, where I may be able to glimpse 'a nice view of the brown sludgy rivers drifting slowly alongside one another between separate sandbanks until there are no more sandbanks and the river is one'.

[I have just looked on Google images for a photo of Lokoja to accompany this post. All I could find were images of flooding, car crashes, illegal weapons, dead bodies and naked women. So I went instead for the image of the Lokoja Master Plan, which I presume bears no resemblance to reality but is rather more palatable than the alternatives. Although this giant hippo came a close second].

Valentine's Day in Abuja

Valentine’s Day is BIG in Nigeria – and every bit as commercial as in the UK. I’ve received offers on my mobile phone for special Valentines romantic dinners (sadly, only from the phone company rather than from secret admirers) and there are signs and flyers for ‘Valentine promos’ all over the city. A taxi company is Lagos is offering Free Valentine’s Day taxi rides and there is a Valentine’s Day designer fashion sale at our local mall. There are also a number of less romantic articles in the press today - from health warnings (St. Valentine’s Day: Beware of HIV/AIDS), to the bemoaning of Valentine's Day as a 'moral holiday' that leads to an increase in teenage pregnancies, shotgun weddings and drug-taking - which will result in girls and boys dropping out of school and becoming 'streetwalkers, pocket pickers or unskilled labourers in sweatshops' (an example of Nigeria journalism at it finest).

The staff at the High Commission got into the Valentine spirit this week – the wonderfully named ‘BHC People’s Committee’ organised a talk yesterday entitled ‘Love Your Neighbour! Relationships in different cultures.’ Four members of staff, each from a different state and ethnic group, gave a description of traditional courtship in their culture. What was striking was that all of them confessed that they had had to research the topic by consulting their parents and grandparents - love is as likely to be conducted via social media in modern, urban Nigeria as according to traditional rituals, although the involvement and approval of one's family remains a very important factor even today. In the majority of ethnic groups, it is senior male members of the groom's family that visit the bride's family to discuss the potential marriage, although we were told that in Yorubaland it can be the mother of the groom that undertakes this role. One of the most interesting talks was about the courtship tradition of the Tarok people of Plateau State. The potential groom has to build two huts in the village of his prospective bride and then has to farm for a number of years before he is eventually given the seal of approval by the girl's family. The other Nigerians attending the talk hooted with laughter at the amount of work the groom had to put in before being accepted - quite a contrast to the Tiv tradition of elopement, described by one of the other speakers, where the young man and woman disappear in the night to get married. Providing the families do not hunt them down and bring them back, the wedding is accepted and formal arrangements are worked out after the elopement. It struck me yet again how incredibly diverse Nigeria is - these were just some examples of the different traditions within the 36 states. I had assumed that most of the attendees at the talk would be British, keen to find out more about the country in which they were living. But actually the vast majority of attendees were Nigerian locally-engaged staff, who were clearly very curious to find out more about the different cultures within their own nation, and asked lots of very direct questions (at what point can the couple sleep together? is the bride accepted if she is not a virgin? is it true that a Yoruba woman needs to know if she can get pregnant before getting married?), which prompted much interesting and amusing discussion.

I asked one of the High Commission drivers yesterday about Valentine’s Day – would he be sending any cards? Yes, to his loved one and his sister, who live outside Abuja.  When I asked about the postal service – how long does a card take to arrive? how much does it cost? -  he explained that actually he wouldn’t be sending a card, but a text. Because the postal service in Nigeria is so unreliable, he said that the only way to ensure a card arrives is to send it by DHL or UPS. This is very expensive, so some people tell their loved ones to forget the card and just send the cash that they would have spent on the card & delivery instead (via an ATM transfer), and then send a text to let them know the money has arrived. A pragmatic if perhaps less-than-romantic approach.

Simon and I celebrated Valentine's Day this evening by heading out with some friends to a fantastic fish restaurant on the outskirts of Abuja, rather oddly located within the confines of an army barracks. Security was tight (I only realised later why this was the case; there had been a bomb blast here on New Year's Eve in 2010), but there was a great atmosphere and it did feel the nearest we've come to authentic 'Nigeria' since we arrived. Huge fish (we had croaker) are tended by an army of women on large open grills in the middle of a covered courtyard. Little bars with plastic tables and chairs have been set up all the way around the outside, so you choose your seating area and then order your fish which comes either 'grilled' or 'spicy'. Although we were half-blinded by the wood smoke, it was great fun and the fish was delicious. 

The only downside to the evening was that it took us almost 90 minutes to get home - a route that should have taken about 25 minutes. We had travelled to the restaurant in convoy with a group of friends, but the road seemed pretty easy and we told the others we would make our own way back (not least because it took us forever to leave the car park due to some extraordinarily stubborn Nigerian parking/driving). It was only as we came down the expressway that we realised that Abuja suffers from an acute lack of road signs. We completely missed our turning back in to the city and found ourselves heading out of town at a rapid pace. The problem was compounded by the fact that there was no way of locating our position on our map and no means of exiting the expressway until we were almost at Kubwa, a satellite town 25 km away - when we saw a lone sign with an arrow pointing to Abuja. We eventually made it safely home about an hour after everyone else - but took some consolation in the thought that this will at least this will be a Valentine's night to remember.

(Photos taken by our friend Paul Edwards).

The Abuja Cricket Club

One of the first questions that Alex asked us when we told him we were moving to Abuja was: 'Do they play cricket in Nigeria?'. We assured him that they did, although our answer was based entirely on the fact that we had seen cricket being played in the garden at a 10-year-old's birthday party on our orientation visit back in June last year. So Simon was delighted to discover that a cricket match was taking place this weekend between the British High Commission and the joint forces of the Australian and New Zealand High Commissions. Somehow, Simon ended up as captain of the Australian team - although I suspect this had more to do with the lack of Antipodean players than Simon's recent discovery that he is in fact a quarter Australian - and he even managed to borrow a white top and trousers in order to look vaguely presentable.

The 20-20 limited overs match took place at the National Stadium, home to the Abuja Cricket Club and training ground of the national side - who, brilliantly, had turned out to watch the encounter. It wasn't quite the green freshly-mown pitch that Simon has been used to playing on in rural Suffolk, but it is surprising what you can do with a coir matting pitch and a lot of goodwill. I feel duty-bound to report that the Aussies won, with a total of 200 for 9 (or so) off their 20 overs, thrashing the Poms who managed to accumulate only 165 (or so) for 8. 

One of the challenges of the Abuja Cricket Club is attracting players of a decent standard and increasing the profile of cricket in a country which is football-mad, so events like this do help to stimulate interest in the sport. Emeka Onyeama, President both of the Nigeria Cricket Federation and the Cricket Club of Abuja, stated that he also wanted to use such matches as a means of improving relations between Nigeria and other countries.

Simon enjoyed the match so much that he told one of the Abuja Cricket Club members that he thought he should try and bring out his village cricket team. One has to be careful about such promises in the serious world of sporting diplomacy. Simon's comment was reported in the media this morning as follows:

As a benefit to Nigeria, Emeka discussed the impact the match has on cricket in Nigeria. “In using platforms like this to promote and improve cricket in Nigeria, they (other countries) can bring us equipment, come on playing tours. As a matter of fact, one of the Australian guys has already promised to bring his team over here, which is a good thing for us.”

A real Abuja day

I experienced my first 'Abuja day' today - I had an incredibly frustrating morning and managed to accomplish precisely nothing. It went something like this:

09.00: Sit down at my desk in our spare bedroom.

09.15: Doorbell rings. Two workmen arrive to install a new air conditioning unit in the spare bedroom so I move out of my office. Move to another bedroom, start working.

09.30 Doorbell rings. Workman arrives to fix leaking shower.  I get up to let him in.

09.40 Sit down to work.

09.45 Doorbell rings. Workman arrives to fix seal on door.

10.00 Sit down to work. Doorbell rings. Lady arrives to drop off some drinks for this evening (we are hosting a reception).

10.10 Sat down to work. My inbox has disappeared. Spend 15 wasted minutes trying to retrieve it.

10.45 Doorbell rings. Men come to deliver new sofas to replace old ones (the covers for which had been washed and had turned grey and shrunk).

11.00 Sit down to work.

11.15 The internet server goes down.

11.45 Leave to pick Alex up from school.

12.15 Arrive home to discover we have a cockroach infestation under the kitchen sink.

But it wasn't all bad. We then had a lunch at the Residence, took the children swimming and hosted our first reception - a welcome for VSO volunteers to Nigeria. Alex told me at bedtime that his favourite things about Abuja are 'swimming' and 'school' (which is just as well as that is what he is going to spend that majority of his time doing) and that he is really happy here because he can see Daddy every evening before he goes to sleep.

It was only after I'd asked Simon this evening whether he thought it mattered if a cockroach ran over the mangoes during the night that I realised how quickly we're adapting to life in Abuja...

Settling down

Four days in and we’re settling down to life in Abuja. The children are acclimatising to the heat and having to clean their teeth with bottled water, I'm adapting (pretty quickly, it must be said) to having someone else to do the washing and ironing and Simon is adjusting to watching the Five Nations with South African commentary. We've unpacked our cases, become regulars at our nearest swimming pool and are starting to be able to find our way through the city. I'm still not used to the UHT milk or the sporadic nature of our internet access, but we're getting there. 

Abuja is a pretty easy place to navigate, being relatively small and fairly well-planned. The purpose-built city officially became the nation's capital in December 1991 and is situated within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) - an area of about 8000 square kilometres. Abuja is home to governmental and administrative offices, the Nigerian parliament, the presidential villa, embassies, aid agencies and numerous associated consultancies and businesses. Distinguishing landmarks include the Aso Rock, the National Mosque, the National Christian Centre and the as-yet-unfinished Millennium Tower. Designed to be Nigeria's tallest building and due for completion in 2011 (to mark Abuja's 20-year anniversary), it remains a construction site, joining the list of many hundreds of half-completed projects around the city. On almost every street one sees abandoned residential blocks or offices, which adds a rather strange half-finished feel to the city (the reasons for this merits a separate blog post, with many of these projects apparently being a front for money laundering). 

Abuja is located in the geographical centre of Nigeria, with the states of Kaduna to the north, Niger to the west, Kogi to the south-west and Plateau state (from whence most of the FCT's fruit and vegetables derive) to the east/south-east. The population of Abuja is approximately a million people, although another three million live in the greater metropolitan area (of which more anon - this is in itself a controversial states of affairs). Daily life in Abuja is very expensive - and astronomical in relation to the average Nigerian wage. There are several good restaurants in the city, but prices are not dissimilar to those in the UK. There are also a growing number of Western-style supermarkets selling imported consumer goods - which is handy if you fancy paying £10 for a small block of cheese.

The rainy season runs roughly from March to October, with the heaviest rains being in July/August. We are currently nearing the end of the Harmattan season, which is the coldest and driest time of year (it being a mere 29'C most days), with the Harmattan wind blowing red dust down from the Sahara and covering the city is a dusty haze. Thus far, the climate is very pleasant and we haven't suffered too much at all from the Harmattan dust. Abuja gets a pretty bad press from Nigerians and ex-pats alike for being bland, devoid of character and without much to offer socially (I should add that the page on the official FCT website headed 'Giving Abuja a Character' is rather amusingly completely devoid of content), but I would argue that bright sunshine every morning certainly beats the flooding taking place in the UK at the moment and, from the little we've seen, Abuja seems a pretty pleasant place to be. I'm not sure I'd give it quite the rave review that the FCT website does, but it is encouraging to find someone being enthusiastic about the place: 

" Abuja is in tune with nature with abundant hills, highlands and other distinguishing features that make it a delight to behold. A scene that cannot be missed about Abuja is the coming together of the Savannah grassland of the north and the middle belt with the richness of the tropical rain forests of the south. This marriage of nature has ensured that Nigeriaʼs capital is endowed with fertile land for agriculture and at the same time a yearly climate that is neither too hot nor too cold ".

 

Whether our favourable initial impressions are justified remains to be seen, but we've already met some really interesting people and there is certainly more to this city than meets the eye - as long as one makes the effort to get out and explore. We chose to come to Abuja because we wanted to experience life in Nigeria and try to understand the country and its people for ourselves, rather than through the (inevitably distorted) lens of the international media. The limited coverage of Nigeria in the West tends to focus either on the worst of Nigeria (Boko Haram, corruption, massive wealth inequality) or rave about the untapped economic growth and commercial potential of Africa's most populous nation. What I'm interested in is learning more about is the reality between these two extremes, understanding what daily life feels like here, discovering more about the vibrant literary and arts scene and understanding more about Nigeria's rich and varied cultural heritage. That should be enough to keep me busy for a while. I'll keep you posted... 

Welcome to Abuja

We arrived in Nigeria in the early hours of Wednesday morning after a pretty awful overnight flight. The BA flight to Abuja is the last departure out of Heathrow (although given the amount of luggage we were carrying with us, it was no bad thing that the airport was deserted), departing at 10.40pm and arriving in Abuja just before 6am – and is perfectly timed to allow passengers minimal sleep. By the time one has been served drinks and a meal, been asked three times about duty free, arisen twice to allow one’s neighbour to access the bathroom and the lights have been dimmed, it is 2am, allowing a maximum of two hours' sleep before it is time to wake up for breakfast.

We had the additional challenge of this being 2-year-old Freya's first time on a plane. 

By the time Alex was 2, he had visited 17 US states and had travelled to Mexico, Canada, Germany, France and Australia. Freya has been to France on the ferry. So Alex took the plane trip in his stride, proudly donning his headphones and tuning into the storytime audio channel, before falling asleep just as his meal arrived and sleeping for the rest of the journey. Meanwhile, Freya ran riot for the entire flight, taking her seatbelt on and off, climbing on to my lap and then Simon's, standing on her chair and spreading her meal all over her clothes. She finally settled down to sleep just as the plane was coming in to land. Consequently, as we sat in the Arrivals hall awaiting our baggage, I was met with a succession of Nigerian ladies enquiring ‘what’s wrong with your baby?’, ‘why she crying like that?’ and ‘is she hurting?’.

In an attempt to avoid meeting anyone's eye whilst I waited for Simon to collect our 85 pieces of luggage, I flicked through the Brandt guide to Nigeria a friend had given us before leaving. It begins:

“Nigeria is far from the most pleasant west African country to travel in – it’s impoverished and the majority of the population lives on under US$4 a day. It’s dirty and an environmental nightmare, with piles of rubbish literally everywhere, and its natural resources have been stripped bare. Nothing works and everything is seriously dilapidated, the infrastructure is totally inadequate, there are frequent shortages of fuel, electricity and water, and vehicle traffic and human congestion are tremendous.”

Not feeling hugely encouraged, I turned to the section on Abuja.

"There’s hardly anything to see or do and it’s not a city for walking, as everything is very spread out along wide freeways”.

Great. Welcome to Abuja.