Up To Speed

My time in Benin came to an end a couple of weeks ago, and I left the cute, not-even-anyway-near-as-rowdy-as-Lagos-but-busy-enough-to-be-called-a-city Cotonou. I spent a couple of days in Lagos and then went to the University of Nigeria Nsukka for some work. That was my second time in southeastern Nigeria and I decided to go by road so I could see more. Roads are really bad, and since it was raining, it was even worse than it would have been during the dry season. I got into the city quite late so I took a motorbike straight to the university guest house. It was a good option simply because I did not know the security situation of the city, and I thought that it would be a good idea to stay on a university campus. That was about it. Almost every other thing about the place screamed incompetence. Water was not running in the rooms, and the porters had to fill a small drum of water in the rooms each morning. There were no telephones in most of the rooms so if one wanted to have warm water one had to go down to the reception to place a request for it. The water would then be brought up to the room in a small bucket. And because there had not been power in the city for 4 days – by the time I left the count was up to 6 days – there was no power in the guest house. They put on the generator for some hours each day. And the only rooms that were available were the ones whose toilets/bathrooms had to be shared by two rooms. Plus the toilets were not exactly in the best shapes… they reminded me of my boarding house days in a government secondary school.

The university too was not in a much better shape. There was no power… and the red dust that is characteristic of southeastern Nigeria lay thinly over the buildings in the university, the offices, and the documents and furniture in them. I will try to avoid getting too many emails by simply saying that the place looked like it needed some help. Anybody who can manage to produce research papers under the condition I witnessed really deserves a lot of praise. Many of the teachers I met did deserve that kind of praise.

I decided to spend a couple of days at my parents’ place in Ondo state. It was not exactly an easy thing to decide to do: the last time I was there thieves came to visit their house the day I left. Apparently, they thought the son who lived abroad had brought some dollars and they thought they could come to get their share. My parents’ night watchman was really brave cos he engaged them in a shoot-out. They were unable to get in. This time around, I got in at about 9 in the night and left the compound only once throughout the two days I spent there, and even then I got my younger brother to drive me around, and sat at the back of the car, where the window was slightly tinted. Today, I returned to Lagos.

Ok, that has been bringing you guys up to speed.