The little family (Jeff, Anja & Ugomma Olivia) started the trip to Nigeria 12. december 1998. We were lucky that our flight only had one hours stop in Frankfurt, and then streight on to Lagos, Nigeria. The flight took around 10 hours.
We came to Lagos airport at 6 pm. Compared to the very cool winter we came from, the heat was just overwhelming.
When we drove from the airport to Ikeja, Lagos. I was very surprised over the "streetlife", almost every car drove without light, they didnt care about other cars, they just drove like they own the road them self. There was no streetlight, so I have to admid that I was a little bit scared, Im sure that if I put the head out of the window, I woudt loose it !!!
We arrived to our hotel in Ikeja "The Lagos Airport Hotel", It looked very nice. We were very happy about finily being in Nigeria, we had saved up money for a very long time, and suddenly we were here !!!
We went to our room, and it looked very nice, it was first when we had to sleep that I found out the big minus about the room was the aircondition - it sounded like ten big trains in action.......
We stayed at the hotel for 6 days, that was not really our plan, but the car (a blue mercedes 240)that Jeff bought had to go to the car-mechanic. We wanted to put in aircondition and a musicset. But it took longer than we expected. Im sure that the mechanic wanted to keep the car longer than he had to, because then he wouldt get more money !!!!
The 6 days went okay. We didnt have our car but we came around anyway. We went to Lagos city, to Bar-beach and Leki-beach. These beaches was just too beautifull, white sand, blue sea and the waves was almost to big to believe. You could buy everything there, drinks, food,juwellery, art and much more. Olivia just loved the blue sea and was shouting "bath" "bath", and then we went out in the big ocean. Wonderfull. We also went to Victoria Island to visit a friend I have over the internet (ICQ). It was very funny to see her, because we had talked over the net for ½ year, and then suddently we saw eachother, that was really funny. Went to visit at her work, so unforgently we didnt have so much time. But next time we are going to Nigeria I hope to see her again.
Going to Aba
We started our drive to Aba, Abia State early in the morning, the trip was going to be around 8 hours. None of us have a driverlicens so a relative was driving for us, so we couldt just enjoy the drive and the view !!!!
It was strange trip for me, I come from a country were things are working - like the police are keeping control with crime not doing crime !!! And here on our drive from Lagos to Aba I found out that I didnt like the way the Nigerian Police was behaving. The stopped us many times (cant even remember the numbers) they wanted to have money, I never found out why ! They just stopped us, looked very angry with theire pistols, had a diskusion with the driver, he gave them money, they smiled and we drove on :-0 Strange !!!!!!!!!!!!
Finaly I understood why Nigeria is one of the most corrupted contry in the hole world...
After 8 hours drive we came to Aba. We booked a very nice hotel, with a viev that was just beautiful. The trees was so green and the eagles flyed slowly around in the sky. Beautiful. Here is the viev from our window.
More will come later.....
