Dorti dorti
on Fantastic Voyage (Nigeria), 14/Jun/2010 21:25, 34 days ago
Who knew the worst things about Nigeria would be coffee and Chris de Burgh? Who also knew that, thus far, they’d be the only bad things and that – them aside – I feel in many ways more at home and alive here than most places I’ve ever been. Maybe not including a couple of fine library experiences.We’ve had an awesome introduction to the place – arriving first thing in the morning, as a wild dog slunk around the corner, insects competed for airspace, and birds hollered their presence into the skies – but with the comfort of laminated signs and trucks waiting just for us. I wouldn’t sayI’m converted to VSO, but I’m certainly a good deal fonder of them here than I was on home turf. The VSO drivers also took the opportunity to model some Nigerian discourse by having a raging row with another driver, who took exception to the (in fairness, incredibly poor) parking of one vehicle. Much hollering and finger jabbing ensued (‘Please, Mister Man, abeg you to listen to yourself’). Sadly, the arrival of the airport police meant the remaining negotiations took place quietly and some distance away; I’m desperate to understand how such a proud and confrontational culture, with an extraordinarily macho surface, can resolve such conflicts. I can wait to find out for myself, though.Our accommodation to date has been the Crystal Palace Hotel– the Buckingham Palace of Abuja, as its little key wallets proclaim, with reasonable accuracy. It’s jolly nice – a TV, fridge, air conditioning that’s brutally cold, wi-fi... Better than home, really. It was suggested that we shouldn’t leave laptops in the room, but they’re (particularly this beast) too heavy to lug around, so I left it under the bed, with everything tucked well out sight, instead. Returning from a wearisome day of ‘training’, it was slightly untucked with the ostentatious topping of the well thumbed tome Violent prayers to disgrace stubborn problems. It’s a heavy hint, but it’s also a useful book which I’ll use on Jenny if she becomes too irksome. It’s a lovely book, actually, and I’ll try to upload a photo of the front cover if that kind of jiggery pokery is ever possible. I’m not even sure I’ll get the bandwidth to upload this, to be honest.Other key points before tedium sets in– incredible yellow breasted birds, whose nests in my mind correlate with weaver birds; brilliant lizards, some about five times the size of Wilfrid, with potent yellow heads and sharp grey-green tails; air that’s so thick you taste rather than smell it; the incredible Abuja – in the process of creation since the mid-70s, capital since 1991, still with the sense of something from Sim City (who remembers that?) with a glorious mosque and extraordinary church bristling at one another across a road and some wasteland.I love it here.