Things We'll Remember About Nigeria

Originally published July 20, 2022

Remember: All views and opinions expressed here are my own personal views and do not express the official views or opinions of the U.S. government. This is not an official resource. This is just a personal perspective and not everyone may agree.

• The driving. One time we asked a local about another driver we saw speeding -- in reverse -- in the wrong direction -- on a highway. Our friend replied, "Ohhhh yes. You are right. He definitely shouldn't have been driving so FAST in reverse." After our first car accident (we were hit), Whitney didn't feel safe driving for the entire two years and mostly relied on shuttles or motorpool, but other EFMs were fine with it.

• Taking daily malaria pills and getting ecoli from (we think?) mangos. Eek :P Our healthcare team for general issues here has been pretty wonderful though. Also....the power going out 10 times a day (about three if you were working at the Embassy). The transformer would go KERPLUCK every time hahah

• The Nigerian song "Kilometer" that repeats "kilo kilo kilo kilometer" over and over and over again. :) On several drives to work, though, we did hear Adele and Ed Sheeran and one time even Taylor Swift was playing on the drive home. I wonder if these artists know that their music is being appreciated allll the way over here in Abuja.

• All of the plants! Beautiful plants and trees to take home with you are everywhere here and because they are used to surviving in Abuja, they are nearly impossible to kill!! I forgot to water my teenage palm trees (3 feet or so?) for six months and they hardly showed signs of suffering. Oops! If we did this tour again we would (1) paint our walls first thing and (2) make it a rainforest in this apartment. We hesitated because of our cat and our paranoia that one of the plants would be poisonous. We settled for lots of porch palms and a small indoor plant for the center of our dining table. The small ones mostly come in clay pots and run ~$15 each. It looks like a little cactus to me - she's been great!

• The plantain man who sells big bunches of them on the drive home near our compound. He always has the biggest most genuine smile on his face.

• Will cutting open a green pepper for shrimp tacos to find a very green and very alive caterpillar. Nevermind that I was about to eat him, he was pretty cute and a survivor! The little buddy survived a 15 minute bleach soak, a week in the fridge, and the green pepper getting cut in half. We let him go forth into the palms outside our apartment. See above bullet re:my palms - I hope he found another source of water!

• Getting stuck in a traffic jam at 7AM one morning before hiking. An overturned log truck caused an accident and traffic jam a few minutes before we arrived. The log's width alone was half the size of a man!! Thankfully we arrived when we did. When we first got stuck the traffic was relatively light (pic below) and we were able to pull off the highway (which was blocked on both sides by concrete barriers) onto a side road to park our car. We walked through the hundreds of cars and people and hiked up a mountain all morning. When we returned, the highway was filled like a tetris game with hundreds of cars trying to move in all directions so that nobody could actually get anywhere. Hundreds of people were surrounding all of the cars, most were yelling and angry after being stuck in the hot sun for so many hours. We didn't make it home that day until late in the afternoon, but so many things could have gone much worse that day!

• Route 66 and Friday or Saturday nights eating at the Filling Station. Our compound at Route 66 is known for having some construction issues, but it's the place to be if you are social and want lots of activities around. Trivia once a month. Kickboxing on the weekends. Two pools for floating or reading or podcast listening or doing my nails. We've gone out to the pool on weekend nights many times just to play Rummikub. We try to eat from the Filling Station once a week and usually end up getting a buffalo chicken pizza. :)

• Kids on the compound. Most, but not all, people on our compound have kids. Some have six! They run around and play games all day and night on the weekends and after school. At one point there was a little girl gang that liked to play "ninja" which meant they dressed in all black and didn't talk to the adults because they thought it was cool. It was nice to see them be so carefree, almost like they were at summer camp. We once heard the culture described as "free range children" and that about sums it up. (Note: I don't have kids so this is my personal perspective of what I saw happening around us. There are obviously some very real challenges for the kiddos as well that I'm not qualified to talk about).

• I certainly won't remember Abuja for the nights out. Although every family deals with Covid and the security situation here differently, we were very conservative about being out after dark and saved those nights for birthdays and big events with close friends. What I will remember is being newly married and getting to spend so much time together and finding ways to make it fun. Lots of movies (or Grey's Anatomy), cooking, margaritas, calls to friends/family, house projects, weekend cafes, hiking, walks, etc.