August 4, 2012
After miraculously converting the pile of clutter in my bedroom in
Mount Pleasant (Washington, DC) into 3 fully packed pieces of luggage over the
course of about 12 hours, stuffing some of the overflow into the bike box I
would also be checking in at the airport, the travel to Nigeria started out
relatively smooth. Well, that is if I gloss over a couple inconsequential
hang-ups:
The first of those came when, after weaving my oversized luggage cart half way through the mile-long economy check-in line, I was directed to go back around to the premier check-in area. This was meant to be a helpful move as there was no longer any line over there, so they opened it up to the peons in economy class. However, manoeuvring my oversized luggage cart through the crowded airport required considerable effort and attention, so I might have been happy continuing to wind my way through the economy line. More importantly, while I did get to a service desk in record time, there was first a slight delay because my ticket required special handling; then a much longer delay because the United Airlines agent couldn't get their system to check-in my excess luggage. The silver lining there, however, was that they waived a considerable amount a fees that could have been levied. And I still had plenty of time to get to my flight in spite of spending almost an hour at the check-in line.
The second less than desirable circumstance that we can ignore was sitting just a few rows in front of a baby who literally cried during the entire eight hour or so flight from DC to Frankfurt on what was already to be a very uncomforable trans-Atlantic flight on a cramped United Airlines 7X7. Lucky me, I had one of the seats with a broken audio system, so no chance of drowning out the owith music or a movie. The Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Abuja was much nicer--plenty of leg room, a row of seats to myself, and working audio. Oh, again, I'm ignoring a minor disturbance to this otherwise peaceful leg of transit. Twenty minutes to touchdown, one of the flight attendant practically drags a passenger out of the bathroom and instructs him to sit down immediately. Rather than find his way to his own seat, it takes the closest available one ... next to me. He was drunk and tried to engage me in some incomprehenible conversation while I'm trying to take in the landscape as we descend into Abuja--that is, whenever he wasn't trying to get up again with continued instructions by flight attendants to please stay seated until we land.
By the next day, these little hang-ups were all but forgotten in what, as I have said, was relatively smooth sailing to Abuja. But maybe I should have recognized them as omens of less forgettable difficulties to come. Even getting out of the airport at Abuja wasn't too difficult. The line to immigration was relatively short, and I spotted and made eye contact with someone holding up a sign with my name and one other person. My bags were among the last to come out on the conveyor belt and before we had to inquire as to whether or not there was a special location to collect oversized luggage, a man appears on the conveyor belt guiding my bike box through. The customs officials spot the bike box right away (it was clearly a new bike, as yet unassembled) and tell me I'll need to pay some small duty. Understood. Then they proceed to ask me and Melanie (the other passenger associated with AUN) what is such and such bag. Luckily, Mike (the young man who had greeted us outside the immigration line) was pulling my Samonsonite luggage separately and no one ever asked what was inside that. It was full of miscellaneous electronics for the household, some of which surely would have caught the attention of the customs officials, not that anything really merited any duty though. Instead they opened the suitcase that had most of clothes. The three tennis balls I had stuffed in there went bouncing across floor. "Who do you think you are? Pete Sampras?" one of the customs officials joked.
So, after a small ordeal of waiting for the duty officer to calculate the fee, finding the money exhange desk, and paying the duty, we made it out to the parking lot, found the AUN van waiting for us, and hung on for deal life as Mario Andretti sped us along the expressway to a hotel where one of the AUN human resources staff, Wally, had booked us a room for the night. It was around 6pm and we were to be picked up at noon the next day. That was the only information I was given, but I gathered from the internet that we would be on a 1-hour flight leaving at a little after 2pm.
The overnight stay in Abuja was a nice opportunity to rest and catch up on a few emails. I was a bit restless waiting for the van to return to pick us up the next day. There wasn't really any opportunity to explore Abuja as our hotel was far from the city center or neighborhood amenable to pedestrian exploration. Around 11am, I get a call that the flight will be delayed, so the van won't come until 1pm. We get to the airport around 2pm. Wally and Mike take care of checking us in. (We have been joined by Melanie's father, the AUN VP of Student Affairs.), and we proceed to the waiting area for our flight which is now scheduled for after 4pm. Not a very enjoyable waiting period, but at least we are mentally prepared for the 1.5-2 hr wait. We hear boarding calls for about every major city in Nigeria and all the usual connecting international flights (Frankfurt, Paris, Accra, Masaba), and the crowd in the waiting area is progressively thinning, when we finally hear our flight number. But it's a message to say it has been delayed for another hour!
Eventually we get to board the plane at about 5pm. Once everyone has boarded and settled and the flight attendants welcome us aboard, there is a message from the pilot. His voice is a bit muffled, so I struggle to hear what he is saying. "Sorry for the delay. We just arrive from blah blah" (sounded like Canada, but he presumably said some Nigerian city name that sounds like Canada). "I just spoke with the airport in Yola, and we are told that they will be closed before we have time arrive, so ..." I am obviously very eager to hear what comes after "... so, ..." and I strain my ears to do so, but at this point I can't make out the rest at all. Other passengers are buzzing. At first I thought they were just carrying on conversations and not paying attention, but clearly a few got the message. At least a half dozen mutumin babba (Hausa term for "big (important) men") are approaching the head flight attendant in protest. "No one will come down from this plane!"; "This plane will land in Yola today!" "You tell the captain ...!"; etc. etc. Since I never really heard the rest of the captains message and didn't fully follow all of the protest communication, I'll never know if we owe it to our would-be (out)spoke(n)persons for getting us to Yola that night or if the captain was already making an effort to keep the airport open, but we did indeed get off the ground and landed in Yola before sunset at 6:30pm.
A full welcome committee was there to greet me at the airport. They drove me to my fully furnished home (complete with a refrigerator full of eggs, milk, juice, and butter, along with bread and coffee to get me started the next morning) to drop off my luggage, then off to the University Club for pizza and a bottle of Guinness "Foreign Extra". My bags are all unpacked, and if you didn't know any better, you'd hardly know I only arrived yesterday.
The welcome basket was a bit of a fail though, although the gesture is very much appreciated. I arrived during Ramadan. I was wide awake at 4am, and, having already considered fasting or at least not blantantly eating during the day out of consideration for the large portion of the local population that is muslim, I figured I'd fix myself a Suhuur-timed "breakfast" (or pre-fast, more appropriately). I rinsed out a frying pan. No oil. Okay, I'll boil some eggs. No matches. Okay, supposedly the stove is dual gas/electric. The electrical burners don't work and there is no sign of electrical cord. Flipping the switch on the wall that says "cooker" doesn't seem to help. So, I settle for bread and jam and Nescappucino. (Some Peace Corps Congo friends may recognize what I mean by that: stir up a mousse of instant Nescafe grounds and sugar and a dab of water; then pour in hot water to create a frothy imitation of a cappucino.) I did eventually enjoy a couple boiled eggs though. I stuck two eggs inside a glass and submerged that in the electric kettle that had been provided among the household appliances. McGyver would be proud, no?
 |
| Before and ... |
 |
| ... after |
The first of those came when, after weaving my oversized luggage cart half way through the mile-long economy check-in line, I was directed to go back around to the premier check-in area. This was meant to be a helpful move as there was no longer any line over there, so they opened it up to the peons in economy class. However, manoeuvring my oversized luggage cart through the crowded airport required considerable effort and attention, so I might have been happy continuing to wind my way through the economy line. More importantly, while I did get to a service desk in record time, there was first a slight delay because my ticket required special handling; then a much longer delay because the United Airlines agent couldn't get their system to check-in my excess luggage. The silver lining there, however, was that they waived a considerable amount a fees that could have been levied. And I still had plenty of time to get to my flight in spite of spending almost an hour at the check-in line.
The second less than desirable circumstance that we can ignore was sitting just a few rows in front of a baby who literally cried during the entire eight hour or so flight from DC to Frankfurt on what was already to be a very uncomforable trans-Atlantic flight on a cramped United Airlines 7X7. Lucky me, I had one of the seats with a broken audio system, so no chance of drowning out the owith music or a movie. The Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Abuja was much nicer--plenty of leg room, a row of seats to myself, and working audio. Oh, again, I'm ignoring a minor disturbance to this otherwise peaceful leg of transit. Twenty minutes to touchdown, one of the flight attendant practically drags a passenger out of the bathroom and instructs him to sit down immediately. Rather than find his way to his own seat, it takes the closest available one ... next to me. He was drunk and tried to engage me in some incomprehenible conversation while I'm trying to take in the landscape as we descend into Abuja--that is, whenever he wasn't trying to get up again with continued instructions by flight attendants to please stay seated until we land.
By the next day, these little hang-ups were all but forgotten in what, as I have said, was relatively smooth sailing to Abuja. But maybe I should have recognized them as omens of less forgettable difficulties to come. Even getting out of the airport at Abuja wasn't too difficult. The line to immigration was relatively short, and I spotted and made eye contact with someone holding up a sign with my name and one other person. My bags were among the last to come out on the conveyor belt and before we had to inquire as to whether or not there was a special location to collect oversized luggage, a man appears on the conveyor belt guiding my bike box through. The customs officials spot the bike box right away (it was clearly a new bike, as yet unassembled) and tell me I'll need to pay some small duty. Understood. Then they proceed to ask me and Melanie (the other passenger associated with AUN) what is such and such bag. Luckily, Mike (the young man who had greeted us outside the immigration line) was pulling my Samonsonite luggage separately and no one ever asked what was inside that. It was full of miscellaneous electronics for the household, some of which surely would have caught the attention of the customs officials, not that anything really merited any duty though. Instead they opened the suitcase that had most of clothes. The three tennis balls I had stuffed in there went bouncing across floor. "Who do you think you are? Pete Sampras?" one of the customs officials joked.
So, after a small ordeal of waiting for the duty officer to calculate the fee, finding the money exhange desk, and paying the duty, we made it out to the parking lot, found the AUN van waiting for us, and hung on for deal life as Mario Andretti sped us along the expressway to a hotel where one of the AUN human resources staff, Wally, had booked us a room for the night. It was around 6pm and we were to be picked up at noon the next day. That was the only information I was given, but I gathered from the internet that we would be on a 1-hour flight leaving at a little after 2pm.
 |
| "Sit-out" at the hotel in Abuja: a relatively informative, if not very appealing term from Nigerian English |
The overnight stay in Abuja was a nice opportunity to rest and catch up on a few emails. I was a bit restless waiting for the van to return to pick us up the next day. There wasn't really any opportunity to explore Abuja as our hotel was far from the city center or neighborhood amenable to pedestrian exploration. Around 11am, I get a call that the flight will be delayed, so the van won't come until 1pm. We get to the airport around 2pm. Wally and Mike take care of checking us in. (We have been joined by Melanie's father, the AUN VP of Student Affairs.), and we proceed to the waiting area for our flight which is now scheduled for after 4pm. Not a very enjoyable waiting period, but at least we are mentally prepared for the 1.5-2 hr wait. We hear boarding calls for about every major city in Nigeria and all the usual connecting international flights (Frankfurt, Paris, Accra, Masaba), and the crowd in the waiting area is progressively thinning, when we finally hear our flight number. But it's a message to say it has been delayed for another hour!
Eventually we get to board the plane at about 5pm. Once everyone has boarded and settled and the flight attendants welcome us aboard, there is a message from the pilot. His voice is a bit muffled, so I struggle to hear what he is saying. "Sorry for the delay. We just arrive from blah blah" (sounded like Canada, but he presumably said some Nigerian city name that sounds like Canada). "I just spoke with the airport in Yola, and we are told that they will be closed before we have time arrive, so ..." I am obviously very eager to hear what comes after "... so, ..." and I strain my ears to do so, but at this point I can't make out the rest at all. Other passengers are buzzing. At first I thought they were just carrying on conversations and not paying attention, but clearly a few got the message. At least a half dozen mutumin babba (Hausa term for "big (important) men") are approaching the head flight attendant in protest. "No one will come down from this plane!"; "This plane will land in Yola today!" "You tell the captain ...!"; etc. etc. Since I never really heard the rest of the captains message and didn't fully follow all of the protest communication, I'll never know if we owe it to our would-be (out)spoke(n)persons for getting us to Yola that night or if the captain was already making an effort to keep the airport open, but we did indeed get off the ground and landed in Yola before sunset at 6:30pm.
A full welcome committee was there to greet me at the airport. They drove me to my fully furnished home (complete with a refrigerator full of eggs, milk, juice, and butter, along with bread and coffee to get me started the next morning) to drop off my luggage, then off to the University Club for pizza and a bottle of Guinness "Foreign Extra". My bags are all unpacked, and if you didn't know any better, you'd hardly know I only arrived yesterday.
The welcome basket was a bit of a fail though, although the gesture is very much appreciated. I arrived during Ramadan. I was wide awake at 4am, and, having already considered fasting or at least not blantantly eating during the day out of consideration for the large portion of the local population that is muslim, I figured I'd fix myself a Suhuur-timed "breakfast" (or pre-fast, more appropriately). I rinsed out a frying pan. No oil. Okay, I'll boil some eggs. No matches. Okay, supposedly the stove is dual gas/electric. The electrical burners don't work and there is no sign of electrical cord. Flipping the switch on the wall that says "cooker" doesn't seem to help. So, I settle for bread and jam and Nescappucino. (Some Peace Corps Congo friends may recognize what I mean by that: stir up a mousse of instant Nescafe grounds and sugar and a dab of water; then pour in hot water to create a frothy imitation of a cappucino.) I did eventually enjoy a couple boiled eggs though. I stuck two eggs inside a glass and submerged that in the electric kettle that had been provided among the household appliances. McGyver would be proud, no?
 |
| Eggs McGyver |
by the way: bear with me, for my many friends who didn't get any fair warning about this, i'll explain what the heck i'm doing here etc. in due time.
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