Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Nigeria: Day Five

Thirteen hours of sleep. Wow. When I went to bed last night, I told myself I was going to sleep as much as I possibly could. I was expecting to wake up at nine or ten at the latest. But one in the afternoon that was preposterous. Not even the many wake-ups of the Lekki Expressway could get me up this morning, I just kept going back to sleep. But I actually needed to be up at one today, a guy from work, James, said he would take me around a bit. I am friends with James’ beautiful daughter back in Houston. Unfortunately she has an awesome boyfriend and is uninterested in jumping ship, oh well. So I called James and he said he would swing by the Bayshore (my hotel) in half an hour. That gave me enough time to get dressed, brush my teeth, and get my phone. Oh yes, my boss told me he had a spare phone that he could loan me, so I finally have a method of local communication! So James scoops me up and he tells me he has to go and buy a phone for his wife who is coming soon to Lagos.

As I had said earlier, there are no Radio Shacks or Circuit City’s around here, so I had no idea where this was going to take us. Well luckily his driver knows exactly where to go for these things. He drives right to this roadside market that looks entirely dedicated to mobile phones and peripherals. As close to a Sprint store as you are going to find here. So out we go. A quick jump over a drainage ditch (these drainage ditches don’t drain, they mostly just collect putrid runoff water so that it can slowly radioactively decay) and we are in the market. All eyes are on us, especially the vendors’. Why, because we drove here unlike 99 percent of the people here who walked. On top of that, we were driven here, and my friend James is very light skinned, more so than any African would be. So they knew we were outsiders, and flocked accordingly. Our driver stewards us to this storefront in the corner and introduces us to the vendor. I have come to learn that names and introductions are very important here. So far, Nigerians have proven amazing in their abilities to remember names and to use them often in conversation. It’s a very personal place, where hand shakes and introductions proceed any shop talk. So after the introductions the vendor shows us his selection. Really he does not have to show us because the boxes are perfectly visible. The store is not really a store, more like one of those carts in the middle of American malls that sell little goods like hair clips and electronic belt buckles. Picture those but squish them into a much smaller space and put it outdoors in 90 degree heat with no shade. Naturally he starts off with the most expensive model, but after hearing the 45000 Naira (roughly $400) price tag, James quickly told him to downgrade. So he went with the well-featured, modestly priced entry that was going for 19000 Naira. You’ve got to give the vendor credit, he said the price tag so nonchalantly that I almost expected to see a price tag on the box with that amount. James thinks about it, and before he can respond, our driver (a Ghanaian whom everyone assumes is Nigerian) asks again how much the price is. Once again the vendor states 19K. Our driver motions for us to move on to the next stall, but of course the vendor backs down. After much heckling the vendor gets down to 17200 Naira, and all parties seem satisfied. Later James confesses that he gets reimbursed up to 40000 Naira for the phone so he really did not care what the price was. But by the time we get the memory card and the phone card, we are right back at 19000. We jump back across the drainage ditch and we get in the car. As we prepare to drive off, we notice the phone card guy running after us. Evidently, we did not pay him for the phone card. When asked how much, he said 1000 Naira. To which James brings out a 1000 Naira. But Robert (our driver) is appalled by this rip off. [I was told by a Nigerian that you can get a phone card for 300 to 700 Naira off the street] So Robert gets back out of the car and basically gets in this guys face until he backs down to 500 Naira. I have learned that Robert has a temper. In a particularly bad traffic jam, Robert put the car in park, got out of the car, walked over to a car that was blocking the road and started hitting their glass and yelling at them to get out of the way. By the time he got back in the car the road was clear.

After the phone market we drive to our next destination, the Shop Right shopping mall. We did not go in, but it was amazing to see a small but seemingly normal shopping mall in Lagos. And it was packed, it was clearly the place to be on a Saturday. The next stop on the Lagos tour was the Lekki Market, but it must be noted that just as much stuff was being sold in the street outside of the mall as in the mall itself. People were selling paintings in the street, yes paintings. On the way to Lekki Market we drive by the Chevron complex and that place is NICE. It makes the Exxon compound look like poo. I have heard that the Chevron complex is a self sustaining place, now I understand why. High fences and barbed wire block off what is clearly a huge complex of impressive homes and facilities. It was like a little chunk of American suburbia transplanted in Nigeria. In addition to Chevron’s place, we passed some other very impressive building complexes that were clearly for the financially well off, and each one, as explained by Robert, housed some Company’s expats or rich Nigerians.

Eventually we arrived at Lekki Market, and it is as busy and as chaotic as you might expect a large Nigerian market to be. There are so many things that are shocking to me as a westerner. The amount of meat and fish sitting out in the sun exposed to the elements is amazing. Right next to that raw meat might be some fresh fruit, or some kids playing next to water that looks like it should be roped off. Then there are the roads, I cannot express how terrible these roads are. When I say some of them conjure images of cleared minefields, I do not exaggerate. If you are not in an SUV, I just don’t see how it is done, yet car’s manage to succeed. Continuing through the market, we see roadside hair salon’s, goat slaughterhouses, fruit shacks, and clothing stores. Anything you can think of. James even remarked that he might go pick up some coasters for his tabletops. I just want to say, that as messed up as the infrastructure and conditions are, this place is wonderful. It is so ALIVE, everything about it pulses with activity. When Robert stepped out of the car at the market to buy a lottery ticket, James turned back to me and gave me his two cents on the place. He explained that everyone lives hand to mouth here, whatever this guy makes from me today, is what he can eat with. So there is no complacency, no sitting idly, everybody hustles, because to stand still is to walk closer to death. Preach on James. When Robert returns with his lotto ticket, James asks why he plays when it is a waste. Robert explains that it’s a waste to some, but he has won twice, hustle on.

On the way out of Lekki market, James asks Robert where we can get some cold beers. Naturally the answer is ‘on the side of the road somewhere’, and before you know it, Robert has pulled up next to some shop and sent a little girl into the back to get us some beers. They aren’t that cold she says apologetically, but that’s understandable when most of the people are without electricity. Later on in the day I was remarking to Robert that there were no speed limits, or traffic lights, or lanes in the road, and how different that was from the states. He simply said that when they put up lights, they get taken down for parts and wires, if they put up speed signs everyone would ignore them. He said he stays in Nigeria over Ghana because there are no rules here, whatever you can do to make money is what you do, no one will tell you no. Back to the girl with the beers. Seeing that we had no bottle openers, she runs in the back and returns with a piece of aluminum window frame with a hole cut in it. She knocks the tops right off and runs back inside with the homemade masterpiece as if all bottle openers were just like it.

Before heading back to Victoria Island (we were in Lekki), Robert recommends we drive by Victoria Garden City. This gated community is the Beverly Hills of Lagos. Huge homes, parks, clean well paved streets, speed limits! Green grass and personal delivery diesel trucks screamed ‘we have money’. Robert explained that this is where very rich Nigerians lived and some expats as well. What amazed me was that this place was able to exist without being constantly robbed or solicited. But evidently crime was not a big issue. Robert explained that because you have to drive into the complex, most people that are up to no good (poor, desperate people) can’t get in.

After the brief VGC tour, James takes me back to his place because he wants to ‘try out his George Foreman grille’. I thought that would imply steaks or something, but evidently James like to George Foreman his hot dogs. So we have a meal of chili dogs, beans, and fritos. Surprisingly, that all American meal was exactly what the doctor ordered.

James had Robert take me back to the Bayshore, and not long after getting there, I gave another guy from work a call. Dwayne picked up and within twenty seconds he had convinced me to come with him wherever it was he was going. Ten minutes later I was in his car heading off to another meal. Dwayne is a special guy, it took ten minutes of riding in the car with him to even say hello, because he probably made 12 phone calls. When I say that this guy is Mr. Lagos, I mean it, he knows everyone and everyplace that is worth knowing. Unfortunately he is a ball of energy that is a little too much to be around. He had been up since 4AM and was as active as a twelve year old post pixie stick 14 hours later. He ends up taking us out to the Golf and Tennis Country Club of Lagos where he pointed out all the big shots of Lagos. There is the presidents assistant, there is a VP of Chevron, there is so and so who is the cousin of blah blah blah. He knew everybody and everybody knows him. He is the type of person I like to use. But we had gizzard and beef Suya, and boy did that stuff have some kick. I don’t know what gizzards are but the texture made me reluctant to ask. They were good though. We also had some special fruit drink that I forgot the name of, I think it was made of pomegranate or something. I forgot to mention that there was another guy there named James (a different James) who is the most Nigerian looking Louisianan I have ever met. He was full of stories of how he was often confused with the staff at his own housing complex. But anyways, James was cool, but me and him were mostly the entourage of Dwayne (turns out this was the first time that James had met Dwayne as well). After the Suya, Dwayne rounded us up and we were off to the next place… another meal at restaurant called Saipem. There we met up with a big shot ExxonMobil Nigerian named something that sounded like G-Day. He was very nice, but I only got to get one or two sentences in with him the whole night, this guest was for Dwayne’s engagement. When I say this restaurant was nice, it was nice by any countries standards. Excellent décor, and good food, naturally it was expensive. Luckily we were all so full from earlier that we did not eat too much. In the end G-Day explained that the cost of this meal was about two thirds the same price of his first car that he bought for 3300 Naira. As he counts out the bills for our meal from a huge wad of cash, he recounts how different things were back then. He explained that even the denominations of cash had changed. A 50 Naira note was the most they made in contrast to today’s 1000; and that the exchange rate to the US dollar was 1 Naira to 2 US dollars, contrasted with today’s 118 Naira to 1 US dollar. Inflation and oil changed everything he says. At 10PM we parted ways and Dwayne makes a few more phone calls. He plans on calling it a night, but he wants to see if any of his friends are willing to take me out tonight. He assumed correctly that I would be interested. Perhaps for the best, none of his friends are going out, but before we go home Dwayne decides to show us a little eye candy with a drive-by of one of the clubs close by. Once again I will say, there are some beautiful women here.

I eventually get dropped off at the Bayshore, where there is a message waiting for me that my sister called. Not a message on Voicemail, no none of that, this is a verbal message delivered by the reception desk guy. These guys no your name and room number just by seeing you, and they gave me my message without needing to reference any notes. Impressive. Once in the room, I fruitlessly try to call my sister, but by this time the radio room people have called it quits. Instead I pull out my laptop and start typing away. That, and tending to the far too often demands of my bowel movements. How’s that for a note to end on.

FYI, Dwayne did tell me that his wife has two tennis coaches, a personal trainer, a cook, a driver, a masseuse… all for a price that’s reasonable to his salary (p.s. he makes a lot of money). So if anyone wants to marry me and come live in Nigeria, let me know, you could be living the luxury life pretty soon. Plus, I will get a much better incentive package if I ever move over here with a wife :).

1 Comments:

Blogger Tatamwari said...

How about this for a compromise: We get married in title, but I am free to pursue other men as I also pursue my career splitting half of my time in the US and the other half in Nigeria. I think it's a pretty good deal - what do you think? (You can totally have other girls too - I won't say a word)

3:18 PM  

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