A New Kind of Normal

I'm sitting in a very cool little hotel in Lagos, feeling more relaxed than I have done for some time. Bogobiri House is remarkable not only for the fact that it has functioning wi-fi (rather a novelty in Nigerian hotels), but also for its unusual decor and chilled-out customer service. It feels more like a back-packers in that regard, with guests hanging out in the little bar/restaurant area with live jazz in the background. So here I am, enjoying a plate of fish, rice and piri-piri sauce, watching the US-Argentina match and enjoying the hotel in all its 'Afroliciousness'.

It feels a million miles from Abuja, where things are very tense at present. The Banex bombing has shaken people more than I had anticipated. The bombing itself was awful, but I thought that people seemed quite resilient in the immediate aftermath. What has been more worrying has been the dozens of rumours - on list-serves, at the schools gates, in the office - about where the next target will be; speculation is rife about which market, schools or shopping centres will be hit next by the terrorists. There is a much more visible police, and army, presence on the streets. The High Commission driver I was talking to yesterday said that he feels nervous when he is caught in stationary traffic; no-one wants to be sitting in one place for too long. I saw this for myself a couple of days ago - I was caught in a small traffic jam in the centre of town and after a minute or two people started reversing, backing away down the pavements, not wanting to be trapped for too long in one location.

Our local market, which houses about twenty stalls selling fresh fruit and vegetables, has been closed down since Thursday. This is a very unusual move; no-one I have spoken to can ever remember it having been closed before, even on public holidays, excepting the three days in May when the World Economic Forum came to town and the government declared a city-wide shutdown. But a market like this is a security nightmare - one pulls up and parks right outside the stalls and there are always dozens of people milling around: a great target for a car bomber. So, for now, the market has been shut up - tarpaulins cover all the stalls and a lone armed policeman sits guarding the site from his battered blue plastic chair.

However, as I drove to the airport this morning, I noticed that some of the more enterprising stallholders have set up little makeshift stands along the side of the road, a few hundred metres from the official market, selling their fruit and vegetables from wheelbarrows and wooden crates. These stallholders rely on their sales for their livelihoods and so have adapted to the changed circumstances. It made me think about how my own routines have changed since last Wednesday. I now consciously drop the children at home before going to the supermarket and choose driving routes where I know I don't pass by crowded areas. We had vegetables delivered to the house from Jos this week - and have started baking our own bread, which we usually buy from the local market. Rather than meeting a couple of friends for dinner at a restaurant last night, we chose to rendez-vous at home - in the current environment, going out to bars or restaurants feels like a risk. A very small risk, but one we don't need to take and so therefore, at least for the time being, won't. I guess this is the new kind of normal.

Fortunately, the children don't seem to have picked up on any of the security worries - and we've been very careful not to talk about any of the bombings in their presence. Apart from all school outings (including a much-anticipated trip to the zoo) being cancelled this term, there hasn't been any direct impact on their routines. Alex is very settled at school now and told me this morning he wants to stay in Nigeria for '8 years' (8 being his favourite number at present). We had one of his schoolfriends over for a playdate on Saturday and her mother said that she had decided not to send her daughter to school for the last week of term (which finishes this Friday). I seriously thought about keeping Alex home too, but decided that the impact of him missing school - not from an academic perspective, but because he has been looking forward to the end of term parties and films - far outweighed the tiny chance of anything happening. It feels like a big call, but we also reasoned that, if the school had decided it was safe to open, it was important for us to support them in that decision. Nevertheless, I must admit every time I think about the fact that he is away from us during the day it makes me feel incredibly nervous and I am literally counting the hours until the end of term.

Anyway, we just need to get to the end of this week and then the children and I will be away for most of the summer - I'm going back in the UK for a conference and a wedding, and then we're taking the children to Tanzania for three weeks. So by the time we return in late August, I'm sure the city will have settled down again, I'll be feeling much more relaxed and the new normal will have become the default setting. And I've got a trip up to the far more laid-back environs of Ibadan and Ife to look forward to over the next couple of days, which I'm sure will help me regain some perspective. And in the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy sitting here and chilling out to this mellow jazz.

Banex bombing

Just a quick post to say that we're all fine and thank you to everyone that has emailed. The bomb that went off this afternoon near the Banex shopping plaza was pretty worrying for us - it is fairly close to where we live, and not far from Alex's school. I actually heard the blast from the office, but was feeling so relaxed and pleased to be back in Abuja that I put it down to a larger-than-usual blast from the local quarry, which does sometimes overdo the dynamite.

Horrific as the incident was - and unspeakably awful for those caught up in it, and their families - people seem to be generally less shaken than the previous bombings. We had to stay put in the office until we got the all-clear, but there didn't seem to be the sense of fear that there had been with the Nyanya bombings. Perhaps this had something to do with preparedness - whilst it was shocking that this blast occurred in central Abuja, it doesn't feel like a massive surprise that the capital has been targeted again, knowing how the Boko Haram campaign has been intensifying over recent weeks (there was a bomb at the School of Hygiene in Kano on Monday, another 90-odd people abducted in Borno this week and a bomb in a market in Adamawa this afternoon). But the timing was also a factor - the bomb went off shortly after 4pm, and Nigeria were due to kick-off in their World Cup game against Argentina at 5pm. So actually whilst we were on lock-down in the office, staff were more concerned about ensuring they weren't missing the match than about the implications of the bombing. And the bomb scene apparently cleared very quickly - usually one might expect crowds to gather and hang around for some time, but this wasn't the case today as everyone disappeared to go and watch the football. 

I returned home by about 5.30pm to find Alex and Freya in rambunctious mood. Completely oblivious to the severity of the security situation, they took great delight in showing me their new trick of 'face-planting' (see Facebook for the video). I then took Alex out to the guard house to watch the second half of the football (we didn't renew our TV subscription so need to beg a favour if we want to follow the football), which was a great diversion. And then we welcomed a friend who has arrived to stay this evening - and suddenly life seems relatively normal again. We'll have to see what the fallout is tomorrow, but tonight I'm not feeling particularly shaken myself. Instead, I just keep thinking about all the poor people who were so indiscriminately and unfairly killed or injured, and all those in the emergency services who risk their lives to help them. 

Back to Abuja

I returned to Abuja on Thursday after almost a month in the UK. It has been three weeks since I saw Simon and the children, who travelled home to Abuja at the beginning of June, leaving me in London to concentrate on a couple of introductory PhD courses.

It’s great to be back – the security situation in Abuja seems quite a lot calmer than when I left (or perhaps I am calmer than when I left) and the weather is lovely – the rains have begun in earnest now so the temperature is hovering nicely in the high 20s. And although I’m still not used to the UHT milk, the total lack of recycling facilities or the unspeakable rudeness of the lady who rents out the baggage trolleys at Abuja airport, there is a lot about our life here that is very comfortable and I do feel very at home here now. And it’s good to be back in my own bed after a month away.

Simon seems to have coped admirably without me – although admittedly these things are made slightly easier when one has a full-time nanny and housekeeper to help out at home – and apparently the children have been on their best behaviour. They have been having a great time in my absence – although I culdn’t help but notice that a swing, slide, see-saw, little house and large paddling pool have appeared in the garden since I was last here, which may explain the good behaviour. Alex seems to have grown about a foot and Freya is talking even more assertively (read bossily) than ever. I’m trying to spend as much quality time with the children as I can this weekend – and consequently we’re already halfway through reading ‘The Enchanted Wood’ (Alex now goes by the appellation ‘Mr. Watzisname’ and Freya answers only to ‘Silky’) and have already opened the new painting kit and sticker books I was saving for the summer holidays. And – thank you to all of you that have been asking - Alex has completely settled down at school now and has been telling me the names of the friends he’s grown since I’ve been away. The only downside of my return home is that I discovered en route to the airport that enormous quantity of cheese I'd amassed after a raid on the dairy aisle at Tesco's is still in my mother's fridge in Surrey...