Blogs from Lagos, Nigeria, Africa

A tale of necking bottles, bottle necking and de-bottle necking Driving up onto the 12 kilometer long Third Mainland Bridge from Victoria Island back to the mainland, undulating skeins of almost neon-blue coloured smoke and can be seen lying over the shanties near the water. A more general blanket of smog was also visible in the grey afternoon light masking the dun coloured buildings behind and blurring perspective. It had been ten years since my last visit to Nigeria’s dysfunctional, vibrant and frustrating megacity. In that ten year period the population has grown from an estimated nine million people to fourteen million. In reality nobody is sure of the true population of Lagos with some saying there may be 22 or 24 million people crammed into the city area. They pour into the area from the ... read more

Beware Nigeria has Friendly People! When one tells people that you will be visiting Nigeria, the first thoughts that are released from their mind are that of Ebola, kidnap, evil oil barons and bombs. And in a way they can be forgiven as CNN and BBC tend to overcook these topics. As it turns out all of these things are (or in the case of Ebola, were) things found in Nigeria (also true for the USA and Spain), but not by me. My first week in Nigeria I was not kidnapped, but I did walk through a rather normal market known by many as quite perilous. And I have to say there was one woman who was menacingly wielding a banana. Unperturbed by this potential bandit dressed smartly as banana seller I walked on and as ... read more

When I stay in Lagos I stay in the expensive area of Lagos its called “Victoria Island” you get to it via a bridge, there is a high expat community here but the hustle and bustle of traffic is still there on the streets with all the cars and people selling Chinese junk. There are no motorbikes in Lagos anymore as they have been ruled out due to them being dangerous – so anyone riding a motorbike gets arrested now. On leaving Victoria Island and driving across the bridge I looked around at the sights on the left handside you have a huge traffic Jam which is everyone who works on Victoria Island heading to work and in the water is a slum city on stilts, a bit like what you see in china, my side ... read more

Today was my first day of first aid training - I looked forward to it as always. I have 13 delegates a 14th turned up halfway through the morning but I had to advise him that he had missed too much and must leave. I have a know it all in the class who came in sporting a " I am a first aider badge" and flashed his Id card every time he spoke - however when he screwed up resus he soon shut up and listened - if I hear but the Red Cross says one more time I'm gonna scream - apparently the Red Cross said its ok for him to keep medication in the workplace first aid kit - please know that it is not ok to do that and it is not ... read more

"Another day in paradise" comes from the movie Oblivion - you should watch it if you havent already... so its Thursday and I realised I had not blogged for a while, each day I have been going to the office in Lagos where a "Health and Safety Week" is taking place, this involves speakers coming from different organisations to speak to all 350 employees about Health and Safety for 1 hour. todays subject was hepatitis B. After the event I went on the run my Risk assessment course, I am running the same course for 5 days tommorow being the last. on tuesday one of my monday students gave me a bible and a book called open heavens, today a student gave me a book about Jewish advice, most of you probably know that I am ... read more