My First Trip: Day Thirteen
Disclaimer: This is an edited version of my diary from December 2000. Some information contained may be incorrect, and opinions I expressed then are not the opinions of Aaron Rowe in 2006. I have posted it purely for the Novelty value.
Saturday 2nd December 2000
Saturday Again!
Woo Hoo, Lazy Saturday, I got up about 8:30 and nobody else was around at all so I got a cup of coffee and read a book in the lounge for a while. There wasn't really a need to bring many books they have an area upstairs in what might be considered a landing, where there is a sofa and armchairs and loads and loads of books and magazines stacked on shelves.
Eventually J2... showed up and I grabbed a bowl of fruit and chatted to her about some work things. D... turned up at about 11am after he's been to a tenants meeting for his apartment block. nobody had turned up he said. D... and E... were to go to a Press Conference about the Lagos State project. They got lunch at a really good Chinese restaurant. Meanwhile I went shopping to get some supplies for the house. K1... & J2... came along and J3... came along to make sure we bought the right stuff. The ladies also needed to go to a pharmacy to get some pills for a case of Nigerian Tummy. (nothings affected me yet - I feel as good as ever)
Shopping again
Shopping was fun, we needed two trolleys one for food and one for the three boxes of water we need. We've got a corporate account here too so no fiddly cash has to be handed out. M... turned up from his meeting with Chevron the big oil company here and helped us out with a few of the obscure items we couldn't find, like a potato masher and bicarbonate of soda. V... had prepared the list so the handwriting was a bit hard to interpret.
A nasty beach
After shopping we hit the beach, this was definitely the worst one so far, although its not far from the house. K1... dragged me down to the sea, and the waves were huge. K1... said that the waves she saw in Hawaii were just the same. Looking around we could see something that looked like a crucifix sticking out of the water further down, we weren't sure if it was a mast from a ship or even a diving platform so we wandered down the sand to take a look. It took us about an hour to get close enough to make out that it was a sunken ship, and a big one, possibly a freight liner. It had probably run aground or sunk at sea and washed in. We saw some pretty awful things walking down that beach. (DO NOT READ THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH UNLESS YOU REALLY, REALLY, REALLY WANT TO KNOW.) First there was a woman defecating right next to us, then we saw a dead goat floating around just on the shoreline (LAST CHANCE NOW!!)and to top it off on our way back we noticed a rotting human corpse with a picked clean grinning skull just staring at us with its empty eye sockets. At first I thought it was a man asleep, something that is not an uncommon sight, but then I realised he looked pretty thin, and then I noticed his head had no flesh on it. He was definitely dead - for how long though? I understand that after 2 or 3 days a body puffs up bursting the seams of clothing with all the gases from the fermentation going on inside, eventually this comes out and the body dries out and things start wasting away. There wasn't much left on this guy, but that could be because of crabs and birds I suppose. As the locals say on such occasions, "Welcome to Nigeria", I can imagine a postcard with the picture of this body on it with text in large friendly letters saying that. On the back I'd write "Wish You Were Here - Instead Of Me". (NB. I knew you'd read it but I bet you wish you hadn't)
The Welsh Beach Embassy
This is the beach with the bar that D... calls The Welsh Beach Embassy on it. It's really just a bar with well priced beer, that D... likes and one day they gave him a baseball cap for being a good customer. In return he brought them a Welsh flag to draw in the Ex Pats. It works too, except now six months on the flag is looking a little the worse for wear. But its a strange sight I can tell you. I'll try and get a photo, but I don't really want to go back to that beach too soon.
We had dinner at the house with pork chops, something about picking the meat off the bone seemed wrong to me today, so I didn't eat much of it. There was plenty of chips and beans though.
Afterwards we went to Planet 44 for drinks - I really needed them - we got some food from the appetisers menu, just a sample of everything. I don't see much of a niche for a Lebanese restaurant in the UK, but it was pretty good, nice food and very different.
Back home now though, we were planning to get to the meeting in Lagos in the morning and it was now gone midnight.
Labels: Lagos, MyFirstTrip, Nigeria, travel
posted by Aaron Rowe @ 1:06 PM
5 Comments:
floating bodies...cant wait to hit the beach...though i've heard Nigeria is improving a lot for the last years...
do you have a picture of the beach,the ship and the body?
@surp2x: This was the ONLY body I've seen on a beach in Nigeria. But then again these days I don't venture far from the beaten track when I'm on the beach.
@dami: I have pictures of the beach, I took them with a film camera, but I'm not sure where the photos are now, in my house in UK somewhere. I don't remember if I took a picture of the ship, it may still be there. The beach was Kuramo beach, which became so over-run with area-boys I haven't been there in years.
The body was a long walk down the beach far from the bars, probably half way to lekki beach, but there were some people who had set up shanty type houses nearby. And no, I didn't take a photo of it, I certainly didn't want to see it again.
hi aaron. just arrived from Lagos and on our way home going to Ogun, i found the following - a poor man defecating near the bend of an expressway somewhere along the vicinity of Apapa Road/road going to TinCan Island(obviously my facts are not that straight) & then a burning body along Badagry expressway.
I felt sad especially with the former not to mention it was very dangerous since it was near a curve and he can get hit anytime.
As with the latter, when we were still on our way to Lagos this morning we already saw some commotion and one of the guys i was with saw a dead with a broken skull. Then returning home this afternoon, on the same spot was the burning body. Our driver said it musnt have been a thief.
I would have taken out my camera but i was so struck with what i saw...a hand reaching up...sorry for the gruesome details.
even if i have read about all these, still feels very different seeing those two scenes especially that i too come from a third world country.
and my eyes are starting to close on the very wide gap of the rich and poor here.
just sad...oh well...
Reminds me of a time at Bar Beach in the late 70s. I had this 4x4 Suzuki Jeep (Awful thing. Had a 2 stroke engine). Some guys and I drove for miles along the beach, way past the shanty towns, etc. Remember, this was way before Lekki was a glint in a planners eye.
As we hurtled along (I recall there may have been lager involved) I heard this cracking, thudding sound from beneath the vehicle. "Sh*t! Must have run over some driftwood!" I said, so we stopped and checked for damage. One of my mates spotted it first. "Ol'boy", he said "That ain't no wood." It was a dessicated body, now dismembered. Nice. One of our party said something about a souvenier, but I'm happy to say his suggestion was not taken up. As we drove on we came upon a number of other bodies in various stages of decay.
I still look back with fondness at my happy, carefree days as a waster in Lagos........
Anon.
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