Caboose

After one last day of relaxing in Limbe Pete, Mary, Charles, Kay, Indar and I headed back to Nigeria. This time we took a speedboat instead of the ferry (the ferry didn’t sail on the right day), spending several hours hanging around the harbour waiting for the speedboat guys to bring their price down to something we could afford. We set off at about 1pm and had a mostly smooth ride, it was surprising how busy it was out at sea, even out of view of the coast. There were lots of tiny fishing boats and the occasional oil platform dotted around.

Three and a half hours later we arrived at Ibaka, a port on the opposite side of the river from Calabar. Pete dealt with immigration while the rest of us chartered a car for Ikot Abasi and stood around being stared at by the locals. By the time we got to Utaiwo, where the boats for Opobo leave from, it was dark but we managed to meet up with the group coming from Lagos anyway (Kim, Tammie, Tanya, Kate, Aine and Simon).

Due to our late arrival we had missed the boat regatta, so we sorted out who was staying where (girls at Pete & Mary’s, boys at Charles’s) and dropped off our stuff before going to Lady B’s restaurant for dinner. We moved to another bar for midnight, we had a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne”. The locals didn’t seem to notice midnight, they had been setting off firecrackers and guns all night anyway.

We had heard that nothing much would happen on the first, because it was a Sunday. Instead we went to greet Mr Bell-Gam and then Henry the boatman took us across the river to Ekereborokiri (I’d been before). This time the tide was out so we had to wade through the river mud to get to the village, where we were greeted once more by Steven Jaja.

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