General Living Situation

After my last couple posts I've received a few questions about my basic living situation here, which made me realize that I never really described this in any detail. So, in this post I will try and outline my setup here and give a general overview of what the compound is like. Here goes nothing.

I'll start with a very basic geography lesson for those of you like my elder sister who don't even know where Nigeria is located in Africa. See the picture below.

Then to go even further, here is a view of the city of Lagos, where I'm living, in relation to all of Nigeria:

And finally, here is the Chevron facility in relation to the city of Lagos:

If you look close enough at this last picture above, you can see that the part of Lagos where I'm living is actually not connected to the mainland. This area is referred to as "the island," "Lekki Island," or "Lekki Peninsula." I've heard all of these used regularly. This is opposed to the "mainland" which is west of us and connected to our island by bridge. But that's enough geography for today. Now on to the Chevron facility.

Below is an image I took from the Chevron website and decided to color up a bit to make my descriptions easier to follow. Hope this helps.

So if you look at the image above, I marked in red the road that is the main entrance into camp. When you first come in there is a security checkpoint which isn't pictured on this map, but is off to the far left. Coming through this first gate gives you access to the office buildings, so all the local Nigerians that work here enter through this gate every day. The building I work in is outlined in purple. If you continue farther down this road where the red arrow ends there is another security checkpoint that takes you into the compound; this is where all the expats live. For anyone that doesn't know, expat is short for ex-patriot, which basically means any employee that is from another country other than the one you're working in. Most of the expats for Chevron in Nigeria are American, but there are also many from the UK, India, Australia, and several other countries sprinkled in. Only the residents of the compound and select other personnel have access to the compound itself. The security is very tight and they're strict about who gets let in, which I'm very thankful for.

The compound is made up of 127 houses with a variety of single houses, duplexes, and triplexes. Which house is assigned to you is determined by whether you're single, married, or have kids. My house is number 18, which I've circled in blue on the picture. Right across from me is the clubhouse, gym, basketball courts, tennis courts, workout room, and pool, which is the big area circled in green. As you can see, the location of my house is super convenient for access to these amenities. Most of the fun night/weekend activities (like last week's wine club and this week's trivia night) take place in the clubhouse, so it's nice being conveniently located to that. Also right across the street from me is the management guest house, which I've circled in maroon. The only people that have access to the management guest house are short-term visitors who are here for special projects and business trips. All visitors stay in what are called rotator houses, which are four bedroom houses designated specifically for guests all located around the management guest house. You may recall my saying in a previous post that I'm actually staying in one of these houses as well. For some reason, people on assignment like myself are also designated to these houses. Since I'm only here six months, they didn't want to give me a whole house to myself and have to deal with furnishing it for six months and everything. So instead, I just get the master bedroom in one of the rotator houses for the duration of my stay. This definitely has it's pros and cons. One of the biggest cons being that I have different roommates cycling in and out almost every week, so I don't really ever necessarily get the place to myself. However, one of the he biggest pros is that I do get access to the management for my entire six months here, which is pretty awesome. The guest house serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day for no cost to the employees. This essentially means that I don't ever have to cook for myself if I don't want to. So far I've been eating at the guest house for most of my meals and the food is honestly pretty good, but I've already found it getting a bit redundant in just two weeks. I think I'll continue to eat here pretty often, but I'll definitely start cooking for myself intermittently as well just to mix it up a bit. Every visitor is also entitled to bottled waters, bottled sodas, and up to four beers every day. Yes, you read that right... because I'm technically a "visitor" for these six months, I can get four free beers every day I'm here if I want! Pretty cool. Now, I do have to be aware that everything I take gets charged back to my finance cost center, so my boss has the ability to see how much money they're spending on me while I'm here. However, she already made it clear that she won't really be keeping track, so that's pretty neat. Though I still don't think I'll actually be drinking four beers a day.

Another big positive of being in the guest house is that I get a house steward assigned to the house that does all the daily cleaning and laundry. I just have to leave my laundry outside my door in the morning if I ever need it done, and at the end of the day it's back outside my door cleaned and folded. I think this is my favorite thing about being here, considering how much I absolutely hate doing laundry. I'm spoiled, I know. I've already made two separate grocery store runs and been able to stock myself pretty good with various pastas, soups, cereal, chips, and snacks. I jumped at all the stuff I actually recognized and was a little hesitant to buy too many new things yet. I definitely aim to branch out and try more during my time here, but I'm making myself ease into a bit. Currently I'm stocked with Pringles, Lays chips, oatmeal, nutri-grain bars, frosted flakes, and lots of Ramen noodles. Taking me back to my dorm room days a bit. I've gotten a few questions about the TV situation here so I'll address that briefly. I do have tv through an African satellite provider and it's a pretty wide range of channels. Unfortunately, American sports are out the question. I've seen only one baseball game on and it was a day delayed. Same with college football: the only game I've seen so far was like Utah vs. San Diego State and it was on a Sunday morning. So lame. There are like 8 sports channels here, but they show mostly cricket, rugby, and soccer. I don't mind watching soccer too much, so that's going to have to get me by for now. They actually have had the President's Cup (golf) on live this week though, so I've been watching that whenever I can. There are some regular channels like Comedy Central, E!, FOX, BBC, and CNN, among others, but nothing is live it seems. It's lots of re-runs of old shows or Keeping up with the Kardashians for like 5 hours straight. Kill me now. I think I'll read instead...

...or be active! In the very back of the compound, which I've shaded in green, are the athletic fields. There is a sand volleyball court and baseball field in which the outfield doubles as a soccer field. People play soccer out there several days a week, but unfortunately I haven't seen it used for baseball at all yet. I did bring my glove just in case though; I'm still hoping I can at least find one person to toss with while I'm out here. I was also told that the outer perimeter of the compound measures almost exactly 2 km, so that makes tracking my running distance pretty easy.

Every person, or family, is given a car while they're here as well (I just picked mine up Friday). Families are given an SUV (Toyota Highlander) and individuals or couples are given a sedan (Honda Accord). It reminds me of the Truman Show walking around the camp seeing all these cookie-cutter houses with one of two cars backed perfectly into their driveway. It's pretty strange to see. Everyone also has the option of selecting their own personal driver. Most people select one specific driver and pay them a salary. This makes that person essentially on-call for them so that they have a driver whenever they need one. A driver is necessary if you ever wish to leave the compound, because driving here is just so crazy and different that all expats are discouraged from driving themselves. All the drivers are local Nigerians who have experience driving here and have been approved by the transportation group. There are also some people, like myself, who will choose not to hire a driver full time. Since I won't be here very long and really don't plan on going off the camp a whole lot by myself, it doesn't make sense to pay someone salary. Most times when I go off I assume I'll be with other people who have a driver and I can chip in for that. Or the few times when I will want one for myself it's not too hard to find a free driver who is more than happy to drive you for a small fee to make some extra money. For instance, this morning I arranged a driver for myself for the first time to take me off for church. I simply asked a friend if they planned on using their driver this morning and when they said no I gave him a call and he agreed to drive me. It was only about two hours of his time, so we agreed to the price of 2000 Naira, which is just over $12 US. Not too bad.

Gosh I write too much. I really do hate writing, but somehow once I start it just keeps coming. My apologies, but I hope this was at least insightful. I mentioned above that was able to get to Mass this morning, and what an incredibly different experience that was from what I'm used to in the states. I'm going to leave that for another post though. For now, I'll just leave you with an awesome verse from one of today's readings from 2 Timothy:

For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice
but rather of power and love and self-control.
So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord,
nor of me, a prisoner for his sake;
but bear your share of hardship for the gospel
with the strength that comes from God.

Thanks and Gig 'Em!