Welcome to paradise

Let me clarify. Calabar is paradise.

The Paradise City Hotel in Calabar is anything but.

We camped in their empty carpark (although a few of us retreated into the truck as it started bucketing with rain and drenching us through our mosquito net tents!).

We also had access to one of their rooms where there was: no electricity with cables sticking out of the cracked walls;

a dead rat in a wardrobe; and a single working tap in the bathroom. I didn’t mind the bucket shower but had a bit of a fright when doing my washing in buckets in the bathroom. A tranny appeared at the door shouting out someone’s name and when I emerged from the bathroom, didn’t look very pleased. I quickly held up my wet washing and explained I was only here to do washing – not to ‘meet’ anyone!!! Fortunately we moved hotels the next day and I upgraded just to avoid the rain and hang up my washing.

Calabar was all uphill from there. We had another incredible experience through Ivy’s contact, Reggie, and met Mimi, Nigerian TV and radio presenter on Good Morning Cross River & MC at the Governor’s events, who took us on a tour of Calabar. I missed the first part (of being interviewed again and visiting the Minister’s offices to see photos of last year’s Carnival), as I went to the Cameroon embassy with Kristy and Dom to lodge our Cameroon visas. But then Dom and I joined the group in the afternoon for the rest of the tour where a cameraman continued to film our group all afternoon. Our first stop was Tinapa, Africa’s Premier Business Resort and the only retail and tourism based Free Zone in Nigeria, made up of four areas, each the size of two football fields.

As far as I understand it, it’s still awaiting funding, but there are several large shops, and in one of them, I bought two new much-needed tops (I really didn’t bring enough clothes – instead, I brought too much medication!). They had a large Games Arcade there and paid for us to play several games of mini basketball – though we sadly failed to beat the high score. Nollywood studios are also just across the road though we didn’t visit them.

We then drove in our private minivan to the slave museum which was again very moving, particularly the model of the ship cut open down the side revealing slaves shackled lying down head to toe so they couldn’t conspire.

Again another incredible experience in Nigeria – thanks Mimi!

Hair update of the month

So the latest in truck hair trends is currently braiding.

Kristy, Amy and I got our hair braided for the long stretch of bush camping from Nigeria to Cameroon; Kristy and Amy opting for corn rows,

while I just had loose plaits.

And Shaun got his beard braided ‘coz I asked him to! The locals were again highly amused as men never even get their hair braided, let alone their beards!

Our 15 minutes of Nigerian fame

In Nigeria, we had our 15 minutes of fame and were treated like celebrities.

And this was all thanks to Ivy in our group. She went to uni in New York with Reggie, Chief of Staff of Congress, and through him, we met Kelvin, Chief Press Secretary, and the Minister of Culture and Tourism, Edem Duke. She told us she’d tee’d up a media appearance with them, and we were all excited but had no idea what to expect.

As our truck pulled up in front of the Minister’s offices,

Nigerian TV crew came rushing up alongside us, and began filming each of us getting out of the truck.

They interviewed Ivy, questioning her about her thoughts on Nigeria,

and then the Minister of Culture and Tourism himself welcomed us to the country.

I gave him a bag of clip-on koalas and kangaroos and some Aboriginal design pens from Oz.

A photo was taken, as was my name, and the Minister told me he would ensure the President got one personally! He invited us in to lunch in the Minister’s offices

and introduced us to Ben Murray Bruce, founder of Silverbird Group, one of the largest entertainment companies in Nigeria and Africa, one of Nigeria’s most influential entertainment CEOs and one of Nollywood’s (Nigerian Hollywood’s) 100 most influential people of 2011.

We were then invited by Ben Murray Bruce to spend that evening on him at his Silverbird mall in Abuja. We started off at a café where we could order anything on the menu – I opted for a mojito –

and then were given the choice of free movies, free games, or free salsa lessons and dancing and naturally I opted for the latter. It was tonnes of fun as I hadn’t danced in ages though I was finding it hard keeping up with the dance instructor’s detailed routine, much to the local’s amusement. After the lesson, the salsa music continued for a while and I tried to play the guy’s role as best I could with Ivy and Karen. The music eventually turned to Top 40 and dance hits and mostly us girls (and Harry!) danced all night long. A TV was playing in the background and we saw ourselves on the news that night. What an incredible day!

Another night in Abuja, Reggie and Kelvin took us out for dinner at Cubana.

We ate at the more relaxed section downstairs, up the back. The Nigerian food was great – I had peppered fish and discovered Chapman’s – apparently you should not leave Nigeria without having one.

A massive thank you to Reggie, Kelvin, and the Minister for making our stay in Abuja so full of magic!

UPGRADE!: Living it up at the Sheraton, Abuja, Nigeria

Whilst I started my stay in Abuja in the back of the Sheraton by the rubbish tip,

for the next four nights, myself and a few others opted for the upgrade to the hotel rooms

– and it was A-MA-ZING!

I hadn’t upgraded since St Louis, Senegal so it was a real treat. And this was definitely THE place to upgrade. We had five days here and lots of spare time so I spent much of it in the air-conditioned room, having showers, painting my nails, getting my eyelashes tinted (thanks to Kristy!), using the free internet, and ordering room service – once at 2am on a whim. Enjoying being girly whilst I can! And when we came back at 2am one night, we were pleased to find an invitation for a cocktail party wedged into our door.

The cocktail party was in the lobby of the Sheraton and we felt very civilised – glasses of chilled white wine, buffet and canapés (including caviar!) Best of all it was all free.

Needless to say, we didn’t need much dinner so I just had a bruschetta at their Italian restaurant.

Aside from enjoying the air-conditioning, we also visited the mosque though we couldn’t get inside the day we went as it was a weekend. There were actually incredible views of the mosque from the back of the Sheraton and on the first night, I slept on the truck and watched the sunrise behind it.

The church was also impressive and we were able to visit the inside.

We saw Zuma rock on the outskirts of Abuja.

And visited Wuse market, where some of us got some new clothes made by a lady named Oby.

All in all, it was nice being civilised for a while before going through the toughest stretch of bush camping and on the toughest roads we would encounter the entire trip. Before too long, it would be time to ‘swallow some cement and harden up’ as many of the group would say.

Nigerian first impressions

I ask all of you to think for a minute about your pre-conceived ideas of Nigeria.

Unfortunately, one of the things which may come to mind is a scam email where you are told you could get a small fortune – you simply need to hand over your bank account details. Yes, this has been known to happen. And indeed there is also a local scam whereby people break into vacant houses and try to sell the property to unsuspecting buyers. Many houses now have ‘This house is not for sale: Beware of 419’ written on them as a result. 419 refers to the criminal code for this particular scam.

Also, if you are up-to-date with the world news, you would also know there have been strikes and protests about removing fuel subsidies as well as terrorist attacks in Kano and Bauchi. Smart Traveller’s current advice level for Nigeria is “Reconsider your need to travel” .

Yes, some of the roads could do with a little patching up

and truck drivers might need to slow down a little or just not overtake in such a hurry.

But, if you have any other negative pre-conceived ideas about Nigeria, I’d like you to now forget them. It certainly did not take us long at all to fall in love with this country and its people.

Nigeria has some of the most friendly people (if not the friendliest) in Africa. And, here’s a random fact: one in five Africans is Nigerian and by the middle of the 21^st century, it’s thought that one in three Africans will be Nigerian. EVERYONE we’ve met here waves at us and makes us feel extremely welcome.

Our driver, Nev, accidentally drove down a street in Ibadan that got narrower and narrower to the point where we had to turn around and drive back out. In any other country, this probably would’ve at least invoked some rude gesturing and profanities, but not here. In fact, all we received was help, friendly smiles, waves and clapping once we made it out.

Another time we had to get water from a village pump to fill up our jerry cans and the locals couldn’t have been more excited by our presence. Apparently it’s the first time ‘white people’ have stopped in their village and they brought out their cameras (digital and video) to record the occasion!

We’ve had a few bush camps too where the locals come over to check us out. It must be something like watching reality TV for them. We are an interesting bunch what with our strange hairstyles, clothing, tents, cooking over the fire and then flapping our dishes dry, etc. But at one bush camp, the locals happily started dancing and ran after our truck as we were leaving. Here’s a pic of Guber dancing with them whilst he’s brushing his teeth!

And at yet another, the Chief of the Village, Innocent, personally came to welcome us.

And all of these instances do not even come close to the hospitality the Minister of Tourism and his team have graciously shown us – blog post to come soon.

So all in all, we heart Nigeria.

Stings, bites and resulting diseases

You would expect a group as large as ours to have had many bites, stings and resulting diseases on our trip to date.

Annoyingly, I’ve had many of them! At one campsite, bees were swarming around us, and when I emerged from my tent, one stung me right under my bum! I don’t think I’ve ever been stung by a bee before and luckily I found out I’m not allergic. But I feel sorry for poor Katie who I asked to pull out the stinger from my bum.

Now, mosquito bites I can somewhat handle. In moderation. Most of us have had a fair few here and there but they tend to go away after a couple of days. Then there are those that just seem to get bigger and bigger. Poor Jo got bitten on her thigh and the bite swelled up to about 7cm in diameter! I do have a photo but it has been censored for the purposes of this blog! There are also certain instances where the mosquitos have gone into overdrive. Jo and I slept on the truck one night without a mosquito net tent, thinking we’d be safe, covered in repellent and our sleeping sheets. But one mosquito managed to somehow persist and absolutely decimated our faces – won’t be doing that again! We had so many bites across our foreheads and down our cheeks it was quite awful to look at! It made me feel like a spotty teenager. Luckily it went down significantly the next day and was barely visible the following.

The damn mosquitos often get through all the Deet we spray on ourselves and even through our clothing – no matter how thick or thin. Lee seems to have way more than her fair share of mosquito bites – they love her blood. She even wears long sleeve tops and jeans in this sweltering heat and still gets bitten. She was also the source of (our first, potentially not last) malaria scare – she became very ill in Togo and had some malaria tests done in one clinic. They came back negative but when I took her to the doctor a few days later, they took her temperature and it was 39 which the nurse said was ‘way too high’. The doctor didn’t have enough time to do more tests as we were leaving the next day but he was convinced she had malaria and treated her for it. To date, we are not sure what she has/had but she seems to be much better now – the antibiotics would’ve certainly helped.

Then there are sand fly bites. They itch like absolute hell and look terrible. One night I feel asleep in a shared room we had instead of opting for the mozzie net tent. And my legs were absolutely ravaged by the bloody things. I too have a photo of this but it’s really not pleasant to look at. It took about a week for those bite marks to subside.

And then there are monkey bites. At one of our campsites in Lomé, there were 2 resident monkeys on chains and a baboon in a cage. The one that seemed the least disturbed about its captivity appeared to be quite friendly but we now believe, only towards men. 'Schweezy' was happily sitting on Shaun’s arm (Shaun seems to get along very well with monkeys!) when I thought I’d go up near them. The monkey motioned that it wanted to jump across to my arm so I extended it and he jumped on all right, but then sunk his teeth into my wrist and drew blood! Ouch! I managed to clean the wound thoroughly but then started to wonder if I had rabies, so I asked the owner who said that all of their animals have had their injections. I then thought I’d better go the clinic just to check I wasn’t going to start frothing at the mouth, and was assured I’d be fine as the animals had had their injections, although I should be concerned about tetanus. Luckily I’d had my tetanus shot so I was given a clean bill of health. It definitely wasn’t the brightest idea getting close to monkeys and I shall not be getting close to any more anytime soon…little buggers.

(This is a photo from Day 2 - should've thought to take a photo on Day 1 as it looked much more scary and you could see the outline of both his top and bottom teeth.)

And then there are tick bites. Our newest group member who joined in Ghana, Dan, came up to me the other day and told me he just found a tick under his stomach. I took him to the clinic as we wanted to ensure they removed the head, but I don’t think the nurse was that well-trained in tick removal as she tugged and tugged and parts of the tick remained stuck in his stomach. He managed to use tweezers to pull one bit out afterwards and then other bit apparently came out by itself. So far he seems ok which is fortunate as I was telling him that a few people on our volunteer assignment ended up with the debilitating tick bite fever and spent at least 3 days solid in bed recovering from it, my partner included. Then there’s the fun part where the skin around the bite suffers from necrosis – essentially the skin dies and leaves a bit of a hole. Lovely stuff. You don’t want to get tick bite fever.

Aside from insect bites and stings, there are also things that sting in the bush. Guber and Nev went off at one bush camp to cut down a dead tree for firewood and ended up running back to camp in serious pain from some stinging bush. They took antihistamines and cleaned themselves thoroughly and then covered their legs with sting cream. I’m not sure whether they were ‘buffalo beans’ but I know from some of our group in Madagascar, they itch like hell (again, my partner suffered from this too – poor thing!)

And then when you think you’re safe in your mosquito net tent, think again. In Cotonou, Benin, you also need to be wary about where you erect your tent. Palm trees lined the beach and were dotted around our campsite. The owner made us move two of our tents as we could’ve been knocked out by falling coconuts! Not something you really worry about on a daily basis, coming from a big city. But here, the risk is serious. Deaths resulting from falling coconuts have even been said to be more likely than being killed by a shark (although coconuts only kill 150 people each year so the numbers are very small).

At least if things go the wrong way for you, you can go out in style with any manner of personalised coffin in Ghana – some I saw were a: pink fish; bowling pin; pineapple; old skool camera; crab; petrol truck; and a beer bottle. It does make you think, if you could have a personalised coffin, what would you have?