Lagos is undoubtedly the beating heart of West Africa. Whatever you get elsewhere in West Africa – the smells, good and bad, the beats, the hisses, the traffic…. you get so much more of it here. This is Africa with the volume turned up to full – not surprising given Lagos’ status as the largest city in Africa, although no-one knows how many people actually live here.
I went for a long wander, ‘walking the mean streets of Lagos’. I had a loose goal of visiting some art galleries and changing some money. Its ironic that this is the first time in weeks I have needed to change dollars and I had to walk for an hour to do so. In any other city, I would have fallen over a money changer meters from my front door and could never walk around town without hearing the perpetual hiss of ‘dollars, dollars, euros, euros’. Nigeria’s corrupt government is not managing the currency well. The official bank rate, that which I would pay if I withdrew money from the ATM is $1 for 315 naira. The publicly acknowledged parallel rate, which you can read in the paper every day is 490. It was worth the hour stroll to make everything 40% cheaper during my stay. The average person that I met on the streets were extraordinarily friendly, and after asking a few people, I was directed to a big hotel, where I was told to ask the security guard to point me in the right direction. Indeed he did, and a nice lebanese man sorted me out with some cash (the lebanese really are everywhere).
I made a few friends at the spar supermarket which was a bonkers riot of people stocking up for christmas. I spent $2 there to buy enough water and diet spite to last for my stay, rather than pay $2 per bottle in the hotel (yes I am cheap). And I made a few friends with random security guards, street side cooking ladies and a couple of policeman who stopped for a chat on my wander. Honestly, am not sure I have ever met friendlier people.
I have always had a theory that NZers are nicer than the rest of the world as we have more space per person…., and in big cities people are grumpier because they have less space. Lagos has utterly disproven that hypothesis!. I love Lagos. The people are friendly and full of life. Without exception the people I met are chatty, smiley, friendly and welcoming. I am looking forward to coming back to hang out with Las Gidis
December 24, 2016
So, when I arrived in Cotonou, I headed up to the ABC bus company to buy a ticket. It was expensive, but that wasn’t the problem. The only bus they had going was going to leave Cotonou at 5pm (which means 7pm) and arrive in Lagos sometime around 10pm (which means probably 1am). The schedule makes sense to them because these buses actually come from Accra at 6am and pass through Cotonou on the way to Lagos. But, like hell was I willing to be dropped at a dodgy bus park 10k from downtown lagos in the middle of the night. Not to mention, the drivers here aren’t safe during the day time (they trust god to keep them safe rather than vehicular maintenance and defensive driving), but they are totally nuts at night-time. I rang a few other recommended bus companies, and same problem – all late afternoon departures. When I did some research later, apparently many of the passengers sleep in the terminal when they arrive to avoid having to navigate Lagos at night. I don’t want to sleep in the bus terminal.
OK, so next option is take shared taxis all the way to Lagos. This would entail getting up at 4am and heading to Dankopta and waiting for a full taxi. This is not the fast way and the driving normally isn’t particularly safe. A bit of googling later and I had read quite a few reports of Yovos (white people) not being able to get in the shared taxis, as the drivers find us a pain. Fair enough, we take longer at the border and expose them to more risk of bribes – and the driver has to pay the bribe. So that is out.
Alright then – I am going to get a private taxi to the border and then see if I can find a not too dodgy fixer to get me across the border with a minimum of stress. I have figured out how to properly hide all my cash around my body with some safety pins and various bags, and will make sure I look as grubby and poor as possible. On the bright side, while lots of people have described the stress and harassment, it doesn’t appear to be actually dangerous, just difficult. I will keep telling myself that. Once on the other side, I am sure I can pay someone to take me to Lagos. Fingers crossed!
My new friend Emmanuel – the driver of a very beat up car with a cracked windscreen and windows that didn’t close (all the better to make us look like a poor target for thieves) was a pro and managed to negotiate all 27 checkpoints between the border and Badagry (about 15k), without paying a single naira – impressive, particularly given he has a yovo in the car. My favourite of his responses to the question ‘what do you have for me?’ was ‘I have gods blessings for you!’ Some of the checkpoint guys were pretty serious, they all had guns or sticks or hammers. I saw one guy smash a pretty big dent in the side of a minibus who he wasn’t happy with.