Logic Never Prevails

"Logic never prevails." I can't tell you how many times I've heard this phrase to describe the situation here. I heard it many times from my predecessor as advice before coming over here and have heard it countless times since being here from all the other expats. Things are just always more complicated, both at work and in daily life. Here's an example:

This week myself and a friend decided we are going on a trip in two weeks. It's a sponsored weekend trip to a town on the other side of Nigeria (for the sake of this story, I'll describe the trip in more detail further down). Because the trip requires a flight, overnight stay in a hotel, tour guide, etc. it costs some money. Unfortunately, since neither my friend nor I arrived here until recently we hadn't heard about the trip until Tuesday of this week, with the trip now just over two weeks away. The deadline for sign-up and payment was Thursday, which left us only two days to make a decision and get paid up. Long story short, after thinking about it for a day and getting approval from our managers to miss that Friday of work, we decided on Wednesday that we wanted to go for sure. Now for the process of signing up. If this were in the states, or hundreds of other countries, you would just log on to a website, put in your credit card information, and pay the required fee. But not here; payments of this type do not exist here. In order to get the money to the responsible party, we were going to have to take cash directly to the bank and have them deposit it into their account. And not only that, but we have to go to the specific bank where they have an account at and deposit it there and only there. I began thinking about how to get this done and essentially told myself it was going to be a four step process: 1. Withdraw cash in USD from my bank account, 2. Transfer that cash into Naira, 3. Organize a driver to take us to the bank, and 4. Actually take the Naira to the bank for deposit.

Fortunately, Chevron has a cashier here on site where you can get cash in either USD or Naira. Unfortunately, you can only withdraw in the currency of your bank account and you can't exchange between the two. So I wrote a check to the cashier for the amount of cash I needed and withdrew it Thursday morning. Wednesday afternoon when we made the decision to go, I gave a call to "the money man" and arranged for him to meet at my house during lunch the following day to exchange money. The "money man" is a guy that all the people on camp use to exchange dollars into Naira. His was one of the first numbers given to me when I arrived on camp. He will come whenever you need him and gives better exchange rates than the banks or airport counters. Also on Wednesday afternoon I was able to find an available driver willing to drive us the next day, who also was to meet us at my house at noon. Essentially it all worked out. We were both able to withdraw our money, exchange it at lunch, drive to the bank with all this cash in my bag (which felt super sketchy), and deposit it before the deadline of 5 PM that day. What could have easily taken me five minutes back home, took me half a day and a lot of coordination here. If I had my own bank account here, it likely would have been an easier and I'm honestly not sure how it would have worked. But, I can guarantee it still would have been more difficult than simply paying online. Again, nothing comes easy here. This is just my most recent and obvious example.

Anyways, the trip sounds so sick and I can't wait for it. Here's the actual description of the trip: 

Situated in a beautiful setting high on a hill overlooking the Calabar River, during the slave trade era, Calabar was an active port for the passage of slaves through the estuary to the Gulf of Guinea.  Now known for its natural beauty and historic buildings, Calabar also is the home of two very interesting conservation NGO’s, Pandrillus and Cercopan, which focus on the preservation of primates. The tour will include the Old Residency Museum, Mary Slessor’s Tomb and residence, the Slave History Museum, Pandrillus Centre for the Rehabilitation of Drill Monkeys and Chimps, the Cercopan Centre for Primates, and the Watt market.  The Group will also have the opportunity to dine with the State Governor, Sen. Liyel Imoke, at Government House. The group will meet on Friday morning the 25^th, fly to Calabar, and return on Sunday the 27^th. The cost of the Trip includes flight, accommodation, meals, guides and land transport in Calabar.

So you can see why I'm so excited, right? Should be an amazing experience and great learning opportunity. It will mark my first African excursion out of the city of Lagos. The trip is sponsored by a group called the Nigerian Field Society which coordinates all kinds of trips like these, both local and around the country. There are several other trips coming up this year that I'm trying to get in on as well. This one will have around 15-20 people. The person going with me is a coworker/friend named Kate. She is on a similar six month program as mine, only hers is for HR, not finance. We were actually friends back in San Ramon on both of our first assignments and it worked out great that we ended up over here at the same time. At least now I have a partner in crime over here that's my age to do everything with. Should be a blast and I'll most definitely post about the trip in two weeks when I get back. I cannot wait!