Made it to Nigeria

Disclaimer: Since I’ve never written a blog post before, I will be experimenting a bit with format/style/etc.

I made it to Nigeria!!!!!!!!!! It is (for better or for worse) everything more than what I could have imagined.

Backing up a little, my total travel time from wheels up in Chicago to landing in Lagos was a 38.5 hour journey, though only 22.5 of that was actual flight time due to layover in Doha. When I landed in Doha, after about 8 wrong directions and 1.5 hours later (it’s quite a large airport), I obtained my hotel voucher and dropped my bag off before going on a city tour. The tour was 2.5 hours and not bad, (see instagram post for pictures), but the stops were a bit short likely due to the fact that it started at 9:30PM and most things were closed by then. 

The next morning we took off from Doha and made it to the Murtala Muhammed Airport (LOS) around 4PM. I had read travel blogs before about how crowded the airport could get, and was prepared for the worst. I imagined that there would be long lines, incessant bribery of immigration officials, no air conditioning in the baggage claim so I would be dripping in sweat. However, since I was on a flight that landed during the day, I was slightly overprepared. While I was asked for a bribe within the first 5 minutes of leaving the plane (“Happy New Year! Do you have a present for me?”), the immigration line was not too crowded and the baggage claim only took 20 minutes instead of an hour. Priscilla at Paystack did a great job with logistics and there was an entire caravan of people that took care of me: somebody took me through immigration to baggage claim, another guy walked me from baggage claim to the parking garage, and finally the driver took me to the Paystack apartment. The apartment is a 3-bed suite-style with a kitchen and dining room so it almost feels like being back in college. Funnily enough, both my bedroom and bathroom are larger than any of my previous living situations in Chicago.

Okata Ride

After unpacking most of my things, I was starving and it was starting to get dark so I google map’d directions to the nearest grocery store planning to walk ~15 minutes. As I was leaving, I said hello to the guards (Austin and Patrick) on my way out. When I asked them to confirm which way to the grocery store Austin offered to get me a ride and flagged down a Keke (3-wheeled transport). The Keke driver saw that I was foreign so he demanded $50 for a lift and drove off angrily when we refused. We walked a bit further and Austin flagged down an Okada (motorcycle) and asked the guy to give me a lift. I was a bit confused but then hopped on the back and  went off – no helmet or anything. The ride was pretty thrilling since we went probably somewhere between 40-50 mph max speed and my only thought was “I will die if I fall off right now.” At one point we went over a few bumps and I could feel my rear starting to slide a tiny bit off the seat. After about 5 minutes of white-knuckled shoulder gripping on my part, the guy dropped me off at my destination….Domino’s pizza. Since I had already made the trip, I ordered a Suya chicken pizza. As I was leaving, it was already dark so I called an Uber ride. As I was getting in, some folks from Paystack shouted my name and ran up to the car – apparently they had stopped by the apartment to bring me food but had been told by the guards that I had jumped on the back of a motorcycle and gone off to Domino’s. As Okada’s are known to be a bit dangerous, they had come over to make sure that I had made it safely. All in all, it was quite an adventure for the first night in Nigeria.
The next couple days were an exciting blur including some brief food poisoning, getting started at Paystack (future blogpost), mild insomnia from the jetlag, and a lot of sweating as I’ve tried to start acclimating to the heat. It’s currently about 90F but feels like 102F with humidity (*pant*). Overall, things are great and though it’s exciting to finally have arrived, I do miss people/Chicago a lot.

I don’t really know a great way to end, so I’ll just drop some pictures below. If you’ve read this far to the end, hopefully it was interesting – if not, stay tuned for a better update in a few days.

Thanks for reading,
Spencer

Follow My Blog

Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.