Victoria's Secret Nigerian Style

It's the Umbralla

It was a good day for shopping at Balagun Market. The rainy season has cooled things off, the crowds were down, the prices were good and the bodyguard only had to pull his gun out once.

They sell everything here from fabric to fruit

Balagun's version of a shopping cart. For a little more than a dollar she carried our bags about a mile to the car

Everywhere we go we hear "Oyibo" (white person, means peeled one)
Also known as "those who eat food from cans"
Here we are following the bodyguard (in yellow) and our porter (pink bag on head)

Gold Medals and Garden Eggs

We were in Abuja for the Nigerian National Track Meet where David was to give a speech and hand out gold medals to the winners. They must have loved the speech because afterwards, he also received a gold medal. I must add, he was the only gold medalist in loafers and a blazer.





There were three oyibos (white person, means "peeled one") at the event and me and David made up 2/3 of that minority. There were "cheerleaders" who painted their bodies white, but they don't count as "peeled". I don't even count them as cheerleaders because all they did was chase me around saying "Oyibo...give us money".

Aside from the cheerleaders, we were treated like royalty. At one point, a silver tray was passed around and on that tray were vegetables that looked like eggs. Baby eggplants maybe??? They are called "garden eggs" and are eaten raw at sporting events like we eat peanuts at baseball games.


Garden Eggs...get your garden eggs


Maybe I shouldn't have eaten that weird vegetable after all

Abuja - Capitol of Nigeria

National Cathedral....and for balance....across the street.....National Mosque



Clean and modern with parks, and a new stadium




Lots of wealth ....and very little traffic





Is this Nigeria???? I'm so confused. Where is the chaos, the craziness, the wahala?





If this were Sesame Street, Big Bird would be singing "One of these cities is not like the others".


A few years ago, the government decided Lagos was a lost cause,abandoned it and moved the capitol to Abuja in the North. Clean, modern and with all the poverty well hidden away. I stayed about 12 hours and couldn't wait to leave. Give me Lagos any day!!!

Filthy Lucre

Proper ways to handle your money.

FYI...it is illegal to throw money at people

(click on picture to enlarge)

Clean money (So that is what it is supposed to look like)

Here is about 6 inches of money

As mentioned in the previous post, there is a second thing I struggle with here in Nigeria and that item is money. Yes, I struggle with spending too much, but here the struggle is actually a physical one. You see, the country is so full of corruption and fraud that credit card use is non-existent making it a cash society. So what is the big deal about that, you may wonder??? Well, the problem is that the money is so devalued, you need vast amounts to make a quick run to the grocery store. We don't operate on denominations as much as we do dimensions. When asked "How much money do you need?" ...my answer is usually 5 inches. Most people here live on about

.01 mm of money a day, so I am very aware that this is a problem I am lucky to have.

Money is so dirty that you have to keep it in a separate purse so it won't stink up your wallet. I've been tempted to have Josephine run it through the wash cycle (delicate, cold rise) and iron it (light starch) nice and neat....giving new meaning to money laundering. Speaking of which...the government is trying to keep the money clean (they do plenty of laundering), but it changes hands so frequently, that it turns brown in a short time. I find that if a vendor gives me a good deal, (rare, but it happens) I search out the cleanest bills to pay with. Let's just say I'm just glad that they have moved on from the cattle based currency of the past....now that would be a blog!!!

Interesting update - a few days after this blog was posted, we went to the travel agent to buy some airline tickets. We didn't want to bring wheelbarrows full of naira, so we decided to pay in US Dollars. After laying the money out, 18 of the bills were rejected by the company for being too old (made before 2000) and therefore unacceptable. So I have made a note of the fact that it is okay for naira to be old, dirty and falling apart, but US Dollars must always be crisp, clean and new.

Back to the blog - keeping my cool

What you look like in Africa w/0 air conditioning



Stephen King getting ideas for a new book with an A/C unit that is possessed

Our A/C maintenance man....Mr. Freeze

I was asked the other day what I found to be the most difficult part of living in Lagos. I think they expected me to say the power shortages, the unreliable Internet, or even the golden brown tap water. I have two things that are challenges to me and they will probably surprise my readers. This blog will be about the first item...air conditioning. Don't get me wrong, I am no Meryl Streep and if there were no A/C then I would be Out of Africa for sure, Robert Redford or not. However, in each room of the house are individual a/c units and they each have a thermostat. What is the problem you may ask? Well, this thermostat doesn't keep the room at a constant temperature, it alternates between Arctic and steamy blasts so that the daily average is pretty much what the thermostat is set on. For example, you want the room at 75 degrees Fahrenheit, that would mean alternating blasts of 95 degrees and 55 degrees. You can actually experience all four seasons just by walking from room to room. You may be saying, "why don't you just turn them off." Well, I do... but they manage to turn themselves back on in a creepy Stephen King kind of way. We have nicknames for these beasts...Breezy, Sneezy and Freezy are 3 that come to mind and the other names we call them cannot be printed!!!