Caboose

A quick update as I’m in an internet cafe.

We travelled from Calabar to Limbe in Cameroon by overnight ferry, tedious but relatively safe and comfortable. Arrived yesterday, checked into the Park Hotel Miramar, fantastic view of the bay and good food.

Today we took a bus to Buea and booked the Mount Cameroon trip, we’ll be going up the Guinness trail and back down via Mann Spring.

More (with pictures) on my return to Abuja.

Happy Christmas to everyone.

Once it got light outside I kept peering out of the windows of the ferry to see if we were near land. Just before 7am we could see small Mount Cameroon (locally known as Etinde) appearing through the mist. Shortly afterwards the crew served us each a cup of tea and a cake. I stood out on deck for a while with Charles and Amy, watching the coast go by.

Around 9.30am we berthed in Limbe’s harbour. It took a while before we could get off, as everyone struggled to unload their luggage and negotiate customs. We just sat in the cabin and waited for things to calm down. We had to show our bags to both customs officers and soldiers and then settled down in one of the warehouses while Pete retrieved our passports from immigration. Pete is an exceptionally calm person and he managed to wear down the officials so that we got our passports stamped without having to pay anything.
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On Sunday Indar and I had a very early start to get to the Cross-Country bus terminal over in Utako district. Most of the bus companies don’t run services direct to Calabar. The terminal was pretty chaotic, with no indication of which bus was going where. After a while we were pointed at the Calabar bus and it soon became obvious that luggage was going to be a problem.

Cross-Country have a fleet of Volkswagen minibuses with two seats beside the driver, a row of three seats, a row of two and the back row of three. Between the back row and the tailgate there is a tiny space for luggage. Nigerian bus companies don’t seem to have caught on to the idea of roofracks, so all our bags (and some of the passengers had a lot of bags) had to be squeezed in. This took a long time and quite a bit of arguing, with the guy loading the bags demanding extra money from some of the other passengers.

We eventually set off, at which point the driver admitted that he had never driven to Calabar before and was unsure of the route. We then stopped for fuel, the petrol station had the marvellous safety sign in the picture below.

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I’m leaving for Cameroon on Sunday, the rough itinerary is:

Sunday 18th – Abuja to Calabar
Monday 19th – get Cameroon visa from the consulate in Calabar
Tuesday 20th – travel to Limbe, Cameroon, probably by boat
Sunday 25th – spend Christmas on the beach at Limbe
Monday 26th – head for Buea and Mount Cameroon
Friday 30th – return to Nigeria
Sunday 1st – in Opobo for New Year

I probably won’t be checking email or updating this site much while I’m there, you’ll have to wait until I get back to Abuja, around the 4th of January.

Some of the staff at Radio House run a co-operative society that operates as a kind of savings scheme and allows them to bulk-buy things and get better prices. For Christmas they’ve bought a load of sacks of rice (stored in the office next to mine), two cows and a goat.

The cows and goat are currently being kept in the compound outside their house, I suppose it’s the easiest way to keep them fresh until it’s time to divide them up.

I went to UTC (aka Area 7 Shopping Centre), our nearest market, yesterday. Unfortunately the demolition people had already been.

I don’t have any photos of UTC before the demolition, so I’ll try to describe it. It is a large building open at the sides with small concrete shops inside. In the alleys between the shops lots of small stalls had been built, mostly printers, tailors and electronics repairers. More small shops and stalls had been built around the outside of the building.

Now only the concrete shops inside are left, the rest is all gone. This is very inconvenient for me (I don’t know where my tailor has gone to) and a disaster for the people who worked (and often lived) at the stalls.

It’s all part of the continuing efforts to “clean up” the Federal Capital Territory. The problem is that many businesses, such as selling fruit and vegetables and tailoring, don’t bring in enough money to cover the huge rent on a shop. The result will be that prices in Abuja, already high, will increase further and life will become more difficult for the majority of the residents.

The people behind these schemes are civil servants and politicians on vast salaries who shop in supermarkets and don’t realise that they’re destroying the city rather than improving it. They’re removing the few things that brought any life to Abuja, leaving only a wasteland of rubble and dust between the exclusive shopping plazas.

We went back to Gurara Falls on Sunday, very different from the rainy season trip as you can see in the pictures:

As there was much less water this time we could have a picnic on the beach and then go for a swim.

The Abuja Carnival finally happened last week, but I don’t have any pictures. This is mostly because the whole thing was so badly publicised that we never found out when the various events were happening.

For example, I think there were carnival parades Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday but nobody could tell me when the parade was due to start or when it would finish at Eagle Square. On Saturday there was a regatta on Jabi Lake, but I only found out about it afterwards. It seems the best way to find out what was going on was to sit indoors and watch NTA.

It looks like a lot of effort went in to organising the carnival but this was ruined by the lack of a published programme. In fact, posters advertising the carnival only went up about a week before it started. Maybe it’ll be better run next year…

I’ve had a few emails from people complaining that I’m too negative about Nigeria. Here’s the most recent one, with my reply below:

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by arcalad@yahoo.com (Peter) on Thursday, November 24, 2005 at 02:35:04.
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Name: Peter

email: arcalad@yahoo.com

Page title: Parents’ visit

Comments: Hi,

I have been going through your blog for a while now,and i guess you are not in any way enjoying your stay in Nigeria.Your comments and observations actually show this.You seems to complain too much about the situation at hand,and i guess you dont like virtually everything you see in the country from the people,culture down to the foods.You forget this is a developing country and i think you didnt do your research very well before coming over on what to expect.
Please try and post some good things about the country you discover to give a more balance look to your blog..i wish you will open up and have a relax mind while you enjoy your stay in Nigeria.
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On Sunday Alex took Marebec, Dave and I for a walk up Aso Rock. This is the inselberg that dominates the Abuja skyline (when it’s not too dusty to see it). The plan was to walk up in the afternoon, watch the sunset from the top and then return to Alex’s for dinner.

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