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...
No comments:
Post a Comment