More about art and reality……..

I had forgotten that Chris had taken a picture of Darlington (the artist who painted “Dreams of an African Child”) and me when we purchased the painting. What a beautiful painting for our dining room in Africa.

Now about Lagos……….a response from my last posting from my friend Robbin about how modern Lagos looks made me realize that I have been showing/telling about all things good without letting you know about the bad and the ugly. So, this week is about reality, and I may even post some extra pictures. After all, everyone knows that 1picture is worth 100 words.

Lagos is a major business megacity, more densely population than NYC in probably about the same size space. We realized living at the Eko Hotel that there are people coming in and out daily from all over the world. There is a crazy excitement here that you can feel. It is constant motion and sound, and never more so than when you are driving in the car. There is also extreme poverty that is heartbreaking and filth that is unbelievable.

Lagos is a major, growing city and expected by the UN to be the third largest mega city in the world by the year 2015. The biggest problem is that the city has no infrastructure. I have not seen more than 2 or 3 traffic lights here and everyone drives like maniacs. Because most of the population here cannot afford to own a car, there are thousands of motorcycles. The bikers here are also making their living with their bikes. They are called Okadas and they own the road. You will see them parked in small to large groups all over town just waiting to be summoned. They have all but replaced taxis in this town. They cut in and around car traffic and get you where you are going in a fraction of the time it take in a car. You see men and women in business suits riding on the back of the Okadas bikes, and Chris has seen a family of five on one bike. The Okadas can get mad at each other, but you cannot get mad at an Okada, and God help you if you hit one with your car. You will almost instantly be surrounded by 200 or so of them yelling and screaming and beating on your car. We have safety rules about what to do if you hit an Okada. Number 1, you do not get out of your car nor do you lower a window. We have a number programmed into our cell phones that Chris says calls the Cavalry. You tell them where you are and they are there in less than 15 minutes. They take care of everything with the Okadas and everyone goes there merry way.

There is a tension here that you feel but I don’t think it’s more than you feel in any big cities. We take a lot of precautions here but not more than we took living in Dallas or Houston, well with the exception that we are not allowed to drive here and we are advised not to go out after dark. For some people, that would be a big problem. For us, it fits perfectly with our schedule since we go to bed by about 8 p.m.

Fact: 821 Nigerians die every day from malaria; that’s 34 per hour. Worldwide, one person dies every 30 seconds from malaria. We expats take one malarone per day and have no problems. Malarone in the US is expensive about $250 for a 30 day supply, but we are also well aware that we pay more in the US for prescription drugs than anywhere else in the world. Out of curiousity, I want to find out how much malarone costs in Nigeria.

So, no infrastructure, extreme poverty, and filth in a country that is so rich in culture and natural resources is hard to understand sometimes. For us, it is only a matter of mostly minor inconveniences like power outages, taking malarone, sharing a car and driver, (not that I want to get out that much), and having very slow internet except for early in the morning. The only thing that I can see that the government does for the people is discount the cost of gas at the pump, approximately half the cost of gas in the US. Mostly the ones who benefit from the gas savings are the wealthy Nigerians, the expats and the Okadas.

The other thing that is an inconvenience is that all of Nigeria is a cash only society and the largest currency you can get here is 1,000 Naira which is less than $10 US dollars. I had to go to South African Airways last week to pick up some tickets. Chris had to pick up money from the bank in the Shell building the day before which happened to be payday. He went a little later to cash a check and all they had left was 100 and 200 Naira notes, so I went to the SAA office with a travel bag we use as an airline travel carry on.

We feel good about spending appx 80% of our grocery money with the street vendors who have wonderful fresh fruit, veggies and eggs.
With all that said, every day we find a lot to be grateful for and realize that for us, the benefits far outweigh the inconveniences. And the experiences we are having are very rich.

The African Collection

While this is not the first of the African collection, it is two new additions. The beginning of the collection goes back several years to Chris’s first and only trip to Johannesburg where he purchased three pieces that are considered antiquities and which are in our container, so that when we return to the US, we will have to pay tax on. Oh well.
When we were here in January, we purchased our first African folk art painting. Then, the first month we were here, we purchased the carved ebony standing man and woman. We heard recently the traders at the Eko were going to be moved out of the Eko compound. The entire time we were at the Eko, we kept admiring the giraffes, but didn’t have room for them in our hotel room and we also wanted to look at Lekki Market before we bought. They have some at Lekki but not nearly as nice as the ones from Eko traders, so last weekend we went back there and bought the two we wanted. While they look rather small in the pictures, they are about four feet tall and very charming. Please meet Ralph and Raphaella.

We saw this painting at Lekki Market about a month ago and loved it. We didn’t have the money to buy it then but Chris said we would return in a month and if they still had it we would buy. We went back on Saturday and purchased it. This is titled “Dreams of an African Child” by Darlington A. Chukulumezie, 2008. The photo doesn’t do it justice but we love it. We bought hooks at the Game before going to Lekki, but we forgot that we also needed wire. Oh well. The painting is very well done and also has an emotional pull that probably hooked us as much as his very fine painting style.

They have everything at Lekki Market. It is the Oyibo market. So, we also purchased our fruit and vegetables while we were there. It’s not that far away, out on Lekki Peninsula, but a rapidly developing area. It didn’t take too long to get there, less than a half hour, but well over an hour to get home. It started raining on the return trip which always makes bad traffic worse.
Last week, I had my first lesson in Mah Jong, so for the rest of my time here, every Tuesday afternoon, I will be playing Mah Jong. I came home and ordered four books on Amazon, waited a few days and ordered a set.

The big thing we are doing now is planning our first home visit in October. Chris is taking the entire month of October for our visit but one week of the trip we will spend in Peru. Our trip is very complicated and we are now in our second revision and there may be more. We will be visiting Charlotte, NC; Roanoke, VA; Dallas, Lubbock, Alpine and Houston. We are using Atlanta as our home base, mostly because we like the direct flight between Atlanta and Lagos via Delta.

That’s all for now! We enjoy hearing from you and look forward to seeing some of you on our home visit in October.

Ciao!

Chris & Donnie

Niger Towers - Our new home

Our new home and neighborhood………








To see all the photos from this session, go to http://picasaweb.google.com/donniedayp

You are welcome!

For the longest time after our arrival, we couldn’t figure out why the Nigerians kept telling us “you are welcome” before we said thank you, but after we read about the Eyo of the Eko, we understood that they are telling we are welcome in their country. They are very gracious and friendly and very curious about Owejbos (light skinned people) especially those of us from the U.S. So, you are welcome to view our family album with all the photos if you have the time and desire. I can only add about 3 or 4 to each blog.

I feel very welcome here and interestingly enough, even more so by the Nigerians than the Owejbos. We are quite comfortable here and adjusting to our new life quite well. Chris gets more involved in his work every week and is quite satisfied with what he is doing, and they are learning that he has much more knowledge and skills than just the specific reasons they wanted him for this job. It’s a win-win.

Seems forever since I have blogged, but there was the preparing to move and then the actual event, then hiring a Steward and then the settling in. We are now settled in. Today Chris and I went for a walk in the hood and took a few shots. I will share a few within this blog but also I will give you the URL for the collection because it includes the outside of our building, the outside of the compound, our walk to get a bucket of dirt and then the insides. Hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed the walk.

We like Niger Towers a lot. We checked every single thing the day before moving and then we moved in and immediately made a list of about 6 things that were not working or had not been completed. Every day or two, we would get one thing done, and finally Chris sent an email to his Shell contacts and reported that we had asked repeatedly for a clothes dryer that worked and the new front door lock had amazing deadbolts but they needed to be adjusted. He told them if they could not get those two things done by Friday to please make us a reservation to go back to the Eko. It was a security issue among other things. We weren’t exactly without clothes. Our Steward, Emmanuel, was washing the clothes and drying them on the shower racks in the four bathrooms. Within two hours of Chris’s email, a man came to work on the deadbolt issues and two other men came with a brand new clothes dryer and another came with three telephones and installed our landlines which we didn’t even know we were getting.

Emmanuel is a joy to have in the house with me. I first met him when our airfreight shipment came in and was delivered at Alan’s flat since we had no home. Alan arranged for me to go over in the daytime when his Steward Emmanuel would be there. I asked him a few questions about how much he worked for Alan and for how long and did he work for anyone else. It sounded like he was full so I didn’t go any further, but I really like his presence. When I finished up with my airfreight research, we were walking to the door and he looked at me and said I want to be your Steward. I told him I would like very much to explore that with him at a later date. Bottom line, we have Emmanuel Monday through Friday from about 10:30 or 11 to about 4 or 4:30. He is a dream.

There is another interesting thing about Emmanuel. He reminds me so much of Kevin it’s not funny; yes, Kevin, my son. He is just a darker version. They are the same size, same build. Emmanuel can cop an attitude in an instant but mostly he is very calm and peaceful. He is 6’ tall so I will always feel safe with him when I go on my excursions. Chris likes him because he loves to iron. He even irons Chris’s tighty whities.

So, the pictures represent our new home, some inside and some out. Within the compound, there are three buildings, Block A, B & C. We are in Block B, 6th Floor, and Flat 12. There are two flats on each floor and each floor has an elevator lobby with the front doors to the two flats. The flats on our side have four bedrooms, four ½ baths. All the floors are hard surface floors with marble in the entry, living and dining room. I love plants so one day, I had the driver stop at a corner where they sell pots and plants and bought 3 pots with stands and two plants.

The thing today with taking a walk with the pink mop bucket was to get some more dirt. On our way home from the movies yesterday, I spotted at large pile of dirt not far from our home. I wanted to take both Emmanuel’s pink mop buckets (hey, he picked the color, not me), but for one of those Chris reasons that I don’t always understand, he said we should start with one. After we returned, he said next weekend, we can go back and get another bucket full. I loved the picture of him with the pink mop bucket.
Some of you know already that we have been learning to deal with power outages, flaky internet (at times) and internet outages, being stuck in elevators, etc. I set up that Skype phone with a Houston number before we left and it was great at first but then we started to have problems. We believe we have found a resolution. It has call forwarding and now that we have a landline, we forwarded the calls from the Houston Skype number to the Nigerian landline. So, Walla! You can call 1.832.632.7477; it will ring into to Skype, then after a pause it rings into the landline. We do have to have Skype open on the desktop for this to work but it works. This is also dependent upon having both the electricity and internet up and running, but electric outages are far less here that at the Eko, and we also have backup generators.

Oh, and one other bit of good news! Our container has arrived and Chris has given them his passport which they will keep until our container clears customs. They tell us about 4 to 5 weeks. We can hardly wait to have our stuff! Even if borrowed stuff is better, it’s not our stuff.

That’s about it for today. It’s near time for our new version of 60 minutes which we always watched back in the US on Sunday evening. Let us here from you anytime. We are always glad to hear from family and friends. And remember, you are welcome!

Adios!