We Ain't in Texas Anymore: Living & Working in Nigeria: TIA: This is Africa

If you’ve seen the movie Blood Diamond then you might remember this quote from there. It’s quickly become my most common saying as I shrug off everything that happens over here. As everyone warned me, you just have to get used to a whole different style of living.

I took my first trip this past weekend since first arriving in Africa 5 weeks ago. I didn’t leave Nigeria, but traveled to the city of Calabar, located still along the coast, but far to the east. It was only about an hour plane ride, so imagine roughly the equivalent of Dallas to Houston. It was an amazing trip, besides the actual traveling part of the trip. Not surprisingly, we were delayed going both ways. The first leg we didn’t learn of until we arrived at the airport, but it was only about an hour – not too bad. On the return flight we ended up getting delayed about five hours, but luckily we learned this in the morning before leaving at the airport, so just got to spend more time at the hotel and not the airport. Thank goodness because the airport in Calabar was just about the jankiest thing I’ve ever seen. See some of my pictures below. Delays are completely common for traveling within Nigeria from what I’m told, if not even expected. However, international flights have a much better track record of being on time.

I will say the trip was a blast though. As soon as we began our descent into Calabar I could immediately tell how different our surroundings were. Calabar is much more of the jungle-type of Africa you expect and maybe see on TV. Coming in, everything around was so green and there were trees and forests everywhere. This is the complete opposite of Lagos, where I live, which is vastly, vastly overpopulated. It was nice to be out of the city, the insane traffic, and constant hubbub of people everywhere you go. Calabar was so much more laid back and peaceful. The name Calabar, we were told, is actually an acronym for “Come And Live And Be At Rest.” The name was quite fitting. Because of the anticipated delays in travel, the tour group purposely didn’t plan much for Friday or Sunday and pretty much packed everything into Saturday. Friday afternoon we just arrived at the hotel, got some food and drinks from the hotel bar, mingled, swam, and got to know each other. There were about 30-35 people on the trip altogether. I’d say it was about half couples and half younger bachelors/bachelorettes like myself looking for a neat experience. There was also one family with three kids that I actually hung out with a lot, as the kids kind of latched on to myself and a couple others. So there was a pretty good mix in the group and I got to know a lot of them quite well, having good conversations with all but a few. Several of us exchanged numbers by the end of the trip, so now I have a number of friends outside of Chevron in the area that should be fun to hang out with. Myself and my friend Kate were actually the only two Chevron people on the trip. I was a little surprised by that.

Anyways, Friday was a relaxing day. We had dinner served to us at the hotel and afterwards went out by the pool for some organized entertainment. There was a group brought in to perform for us a number of dances common to the Yoruba tribe, one of the four main African tribes common throughout Nigeria. I got some good photos and videos which I’ll share below. Saturday began very ominous as we woke up to a torrential downpour for several hours. This pushed back our departure from the hotel and threw off a lot of our plans that day. The guides spent a lot of time in the morning trying to rearrange the things throughout the day, as some sites had become inaccessible due to the heavy water and we’d have to wait for it to dry up. We ended up leaving the hotel an hour later than scheduled. The different sites we hit throughout the day consisted of:

Old Residency Museum – this sat high on a hill overlooking the delta and the inside told the history of the city, from the patterns of ancient trade to the slave trade up until present
Watt Market – currently a typical African market with hundreds of stalls and street vendors, but was once the very first slave trade market. We didn’t actually get to stop and shop here, which we were all very disappointed about. They just drove us through it.
Mary Slessor’s grave – a very important woman to the city of Calabar who founded a Presbyterian mission and was super influential in saving the lives of twins… yes, twins. People in Calabar used to actually believe that having twins was a curse and they would often take the babies into the forest and abandon them, likely to die. Mary Slessor, a white woman, came in and put an end to this and is now a key historical figure.
Drill Monkey rehabilitation center – we got to see rehabilitated drill monkeys and chimpanzees native to the forests here, which were awesome. One of the chimps actually threw his food over the fence and nailed me right in the shoulder when I wasn’t paying attention. Made for a good laugh. At least it wasn’t his poop. I got some good pictures below.
Cercopan – Center for Education, Research, and Conservation of Primates and Nature. Another place which housed many different kinds of monkeys and was really neat.
Slave History Museum – chronicled the entire history of the slave trade, which actually existed in some form in Africa before the Europeans and Americans came over and exacerbated it to what it’s known as today. I bought a book from this museum that the tour guide recommended and actually can’t wait to read it.

Those are the main things we saw throughout the day, but also had several other random stops and little things along the way. We were all crammed into a bus as we drive around town with a tour guide on board pointing stuff out. It was very strange to be driving through their villages and markets on a bus full of mostly white people taking pictures and stuff. Calabar is known for being a tourist attraction and the people are also very friendly, but it definitely still felt a little odd. The bus we were riding on was super shady and was making strange noises all day. At one point, it did actually break down and refuse to start up for a while. This was hysterical because we were right in the heart of one of the villages we passed through. We all had to pile out and push the bus out of the road a bit until it would start up again. TIA. It was funny because once all the villagers saw us start piling out of the bus they began flocking out to us to see what was happening and why all these white people were there. It was entertaining. I got a few good pictures of us pushing the bus though.

I got very accustomed to being hot and nasty on this trip. It’s getting into the dead heat of dry season here in Africa and our bus had minimal air conditioning. I was constantly sweating the whole trip and just learned to live with it. I’ve definitely learned not to assume or expect anything over here and that the simple things I take for granted back home are, in fact, luxuries here. The airport lounge in Calabar was not air conditioned among many other places, my hotel bathroom had no light, and the mattresses were rock hard. But hey, it’s all part of the experience, right? I will say though, the most frustrating thing about the whole trip was the food situation on Saturday. This was mostly annoying because many of us felt it could have easily been prevented with a little communication. Essentially, we were never told when lunch was going to occur, so none of us planned ahead and brought much food. It got to about 1:00 and we started getting hungry, but it seemed there was much more on the agenda before lunch. It took a bit before somebody finally asked and we were told lunch would be at 3:00. Mind you, this is after a 7:30 AM breakfast, so that’s a long time to wait. So once we arrived at our restaurant at 3:00 all starving and ready to eat, it still took another hour and fifteen minutes at least until the food started coming out. And when it did come out, it came one plate a time, about five minutes apart. The ladies all ate first, and I didn’t even get my plate of dinner till right about 5:00. That’s a long time to wait to eat. Now, to be fair, as soon as we got there at 3:00 I started to fill my belly with beer to hold me over, but I was still plenty hungry when that plate came in front of me. Hungry enough to have my first experience eating a fish served whole. They told us we were getting fish and chips, so I just assumed we were getting an Engish style meal… nope. See my pictures below. I don’t think I ever thought I’d do this, but I was so hungry at this point and it was all they were serving. To my surprise, it was actually really good. You just peel back the skin and dig in, picking the meat off all the small fish bones. And the fries, yeah they’re actually yams, but who’s keeping track.

While I say the trip was overall a success, I still felt it was somewhat poorly planned, despite being hosted by a tourism service. We weren’t kept very informed, they expected us to just know things somehow, and didn’t really seem to have everything thought out in advance. An example would be the bus from the airport when we first arrived. Not everyone fit on the bus and some of us had to wait for a “second” bus, which was actually just the first bus taking everyone to the hotel and coming back for us. It was about a forty minute round trip, while we stood outside in the heat. My thought is just like, they knew exactly how many people were coming on the trip, so they should have known this bus with a certain amount of seats wasn’t going to be big enough. It was the one and only bus they had reserved for us the entire weekend, so they also had to call an audible the next day when we, of course, didn’t fit again and had to rent another bus last minute. It’s little things this that kept happening all weekend that remind you you’re traveling in Nigeria. People kept telling me throughout the weekend that the difference is very obvious when you go on a trip planned by locals versus expats, and I totally believe it.

All in all, great trip though and I really can’t complain. It was awesome to get out of Lagos and see another part of Africa. But honestly, I think my favorite part might have been getting to know the other people on the trip. We had all sorts of unique professions represented from all different countries of the world. I was truly inspired just by the amount of intelligence and diversity I encountered; I had very educational, fascinating conversations and learned a lot from everyone. There were two people in particular – one a “Conflict Advisor” for the UN and the other a “Commercial Attache” for the Austrian Embassy – who I found very interesting and insightful. They were both only about five years older than me and had some really neat stuff to share. I’m inspired to read more and beef up my own knowledge on different subjects so I can hopefully sound intelligent to people as well. Don’t get me wrong, I can carry my own in a conversation, but I just still feel too young and naïve. One of my favorite professors/mentors in college told us one time that the 3 best ways to gain wisdom are by reading, traveling, and suffering. I’m really starting to believe that.

A few pictures of the airport in Calabar: