http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/ Travel adventures in journals and photos from Africa , Nigeria en-us Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:01:33 BST Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:01:33 BST How Far Now Nigerian Broken English for How are you doingArrived into Lagos Nigeria on Monday from Cairo after going to bed at 1 am to witness the European Soccer Championships and getting up at 2 am to catch a 6 am flight. We took a puddle jumper to Abuja and met up with our man Abbas Abubakar at the airport. That night we ate a traditional Nigerian meal with Abbas' boss at his home. http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/Abuja/blog-295271.html Just starting outActually the location is Bonny Island just oustide of Port Harcourt and yes it is an Island.I've been working here for 2 and bit years in the Oil and Gas Construction Industry. http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/Niger-Delta/blog-283354.html Nothing can prepare you for Lagos. It is an overwhelming claustrophobic city and a dramatic introduction to Africa. The best word to describe Lagos is hellipchaos. The roads are something else. There are no traffic lights stop signs or roundabouts so every intersection is a mess and traffic slows to a crawl at each one as cars ldquomergerdquo inches apart. Drivers pay little attenti http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-260497.html Referring to the title well you could first of all get yourself and your mode of transportation to somewhere in Nigeria where you can fix it.....lets try the capital city of Abuja.After spending the night in Ekom I got up on my Birthday before 5am and walked to the bustaxi stop they call them Parks here i.e. Taxi Park to organise transport to Abuja the capital of Nigeria. Still with no in http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/Yankari/blog-240407.html Nigeria Nigeria. This has been the hardest blog entry to write. I don't want to sound like the peaceandlove Africa geek raving on about how friendly a country that most people hate is but I think the enforced extension of our stay in Nigeria allowed us to see a different side of it. Most people travelling through West Africa try to spend as little time as possible in Nigeria due to the countr http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/Abuja/blog-240298.html Overshot the border as there were no signposts we got to Nigeria without getting stamped so we had to go back. This is in Ilara a border town while our passports are being processed we had truck lunch once through we tried to change money in town but wont change dollars for us so we moved on Not one minute later we got stopped by Immigration checkpoint and there will be 8 more that afternoon http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/Calabar/blog-238013.html One of the real bright spots that we encountered in Nigeria was the Drill Ranch conservation project in the Afi Mountains. Drill Monkeys are one of the most endangered monkey species due to hunting and habitat destruction. The conservation project has a breeding and rehab centre in Calabar and then the Monkeys are taken to the Drill Ranch in the rain forest of the Afi Mountains where they are p http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-231020.html This is taken directly from my journal to help give you an idea......Yestaurday I saw a dead body in the road. What shocked me so much about it was that it was in the middle of the street in Ibadan and obviously the man had been run over and nobody seems to care. NobodyTo me I think what will I will remember most about Nigeria is....the pictures we didn'tcouldn't take such asthe numerous p http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-231018.html OK I'm posting this really late so some of these aren't terribly new but here in Calabar 'tigs dey happeno' While most outgoing governors here are busy planning to leave the country there is some nontrivial stuff being unveiled as Mr Duke prepares to leave office. Well done http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/Calabar/blog-230941.html Welcome to my page.I want to do something different with this page.My yarns would be in pidgin English.For those who will want to learn pidgin English this would be a good avenue.About myselDem born me some 35years ago.I be hussler.I sabi my job well well.I go skool for Unifasiti of NAIJA for Nsukka.I learn Matimatiks n Komputer 4 skool.I dey travel like river.I sabi speak Queens Englishsmall Fr http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-223722.html This along with all my other Africa blogs were actually emails sent to friends and family. I didn't know much about blogs at the time but now I do. OK so I know that some of you are deleting these emails by now but for those of you that are still interested I'll give you one more piece on what I'm doing here before I get home. Things are so different here in Nigeria that in east Africa. Whe http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/Kano/blog-214934.html Linus Ita is an incredibly determined person. I certainly did not meet him by chance. This strongly built man with steadfast demeanor was attending every meeting related to renewable energy he could committed to figuring out how to bring it to his unelectrified village. He had been doing so long before I came to this country. In 1998 Linus founded a communitybased conservation society to prom http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/Calabar/blog-203936.html From Benin we crossed into Nigeria and we have spent the past few days driving almost non stop to Abuja stopping only for eating sleeping and buying food. It was a long few days Nigeria has been great so far not that we've seen much. The people are awesomely friendly especially the kids but the adults too shouting and waving whenever we drive past kids jumping up and down its great http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/Calabar/blog-185263.html Here I am writing from my office at 630 pm on the rainiest day yet unable to get a taxi back home after a very long frustrating day at work. At 400 I walked out to try to find a taxi waiting in the pouring rain ankle deep in dirty rain water. Its 630 I'm still waiting. Apparently I haven't yet learned well enough how to sit and wait in Nigeria. So I'm catching up on Canadian news clenc http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-174734.html I thought I should post an entry although not much has happened lately for a few reasons. Mostly because for the last week I've been on strike along with the rest of Nigeria more about that later and also because a very important lesson slapped me in the face this past week. In Africa you learn to sit... and wait. Of course I've often before experienced 'African time' but in Nigeria its http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-173312.html It is not a fair reflection on Nigeria that the subject I choose to write about for this particular blog is how I left the country. Yet leaving was the most entertaining part of an entertaining couple of weeks crossing this big bewildering nation. Nigeria was never a country high on my list of places to visit. It has even less tourist sights than its neighbouring West African countries and even http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/Calabar/blog-171570.html Went to a wedding this weekend See photo captions for explanations Was invited along with all the other AIESEC people by Ladi an AIESEC Nigeria alumnus. It was his brother's wedding. I would estimate that there were about 700 people there... HUGE wedding And for weddings in Nigeria you will never a go hungry because they pile food in front of you b stay seated for very long because t http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-167752.html Last Thursday outgone president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria Chief Olesegun Obasanjo in his last days in office did a few things. For one he increased the price of petrol from 65 Naira 120 Naira 1 per litre to 75 Naira per litre. Considering that Nigeria is an OPEC member this is expensive for fuel. Another thing he did was declare Monday a public holiday apparently to avoid a http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-163779.html In one of my earlier entries I mentioned how in Lagos when it rains it pours... well last night confirmed that again. I went to sleep around 1030 leaving the guys behind in the sitting room talking of how they thought it was going to rain that night. Around 300 am I heard the rain start pounding down on the tin roof... I drifted back off to sleep then was woken up about 30 minutes later http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-161025.html This past weekend I travelled to Ibadan a city about 100 kms from Lagos for AIESEC Nigeria's National Planning Conference. I didn't really know what to expect of another city in Nigeria and all I knew is that Ibadan is the biggest city in terms of surface area for all of west Africa. It definitely sprawls for ever and ever. I left Lagos around midday on Friday and met one of the AIESEC member http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-158643.html When it rains it pours...Quand il pleut ca tombe pas rienque a peu pres http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-156971.html Sunday mornings in Lagos are a special occasion. Families dressed in bright traditional clothing looking so fresh and clean and proud heading to church. And religion in Nigeria is extremely extremely important. So Sunday mornings are kind of a big deal. From the AIESEC house one doesn't even have to leave the bedroom in order to listen to a sermon there are two makeshift churches whose past http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-155998.html some sites on the way to the village of nkwere oon kwear eh the christianity in eastern nigeria is total... the churches are huge and tons of busineses have christianity related names. notice things like the god is good painted on the motorcycle. the fact im athiest came out in a conversation and they were nice about it tho totally unable to believe it. theyd go so wow.... you dont go to c http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-151199.html 21 days in Nigeriakelsey wmy trip to nigeria with my bf of the time Kachi who was born and raised there.Dec 27th Jan 14thafter just arriving in lagos the largest city in nigeria tho abuja is the capital http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-151189.html Well this isnrsquot exactly how Irsquod planned to write my blog but unfortunately itrsquos the way itrsquos panned out Lack of internet access lack of bandwidth when you do have the internet one dialup connection shared between four people anybody and lack of electricity through constant power cuts over the last 6 weeks or so mean that its been impossible to keep up to date wit http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/Calabar/blog-149541.html It's been hard to give an update for a while as things are quickly changing The project I was supposed to be involved with got caught up in World Bank bureaucracy. So I've been settling in nicely meeting a lot of interesting people and doing an eclectic collection of things while waiting for a new project to hopefully come about. One of those things being installing a solar system in my office http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-139602.html Hello all just a quick entry to let you know I'm alive and well. Having enjoyed the luxuries of air conditioning and pizza at Frankie's in Accra and then the party atmosphere of Big Milly's on the coast in Ghana things have been a bit less fun. For a start I was really ill as we left Ghana I have never felt so sick in all my life. Thank god for all the lovely people on the trip with me who http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/Nigeria/blog-126626.html