My First Trip: Day Twenty Five

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.

Thursday 14th December 2000

Today was my last day at the office and there wasn't a lot to do. D... had his press conference with 100 expected attendees with the Commissioner for Information. I had been invited to give some moral support but I had enough of meeting government officials in the first week I had here, and I didn't particularly want to be in the newspapers or on the TV.

This was also M1...'s last day here, he was leaving tonight, and we both went to the British Airways office on VI together so I could confirm my ticket for tomorrow morning and M1... could check in. D... had been unable to find his ticket after his recent move and wanted me to enquire about replacing a lost ticket.

In the afternoon D2... came around again with his laptop, and wanted me to go with him to his house to see If I could get him connected to the internet, he'd been unsuccessful so far, and had no trouble when he connected at the office. So J3... took us over at about 3pm and I was expecting somewhere pretty decent for a solicitor, but no. It was a huge, ugly block of flats. We couldn't get the car into the car park on the first try because there is a speed bump outside that would require a JEEP to get over. since the Lumina we were in is very low to the ground we didn't really want to risk getting hooked up. The other road around to the car park was almost as bad with potholes that should be called craters. Eventually we make it and I go with D2... to his flat. The heat in here was very bad, no NEPA and no AC anyway. I was taken to his office and sat down. I picked up the handset of the phone and immediately realised what the most likely cause of D2...'s problem was. The line was very noisy, like radio static and sometimes it took two or three tries just to get a dial-tone.

I tried hooking the laptop up and while it dialled it made some of the strangest noises I've ever heard. It got nowhere of course. Eventually I gave up, by this time I was sweating all over. D2... offered me a drink but since he's fasting for Ramadan I thought it polite not to take it.

So at around 5 I got back to the office, D... had come back and had now gone to the house, M1... had arranged to have dinner at 5 so that he could eat with us one last time before leaving that night. After dinner we saw him off and went inside to shower and change. D... had decided to move into M1...'s vacated room tonight so that he could be here to take me to the airport tomorrow morning.

So it was decided to have one last trip to Planet 44 - we did the Original Sins, B52s and the E... ice-cream thing.

So we went back to the house for sleep in preparation for an early 5:30am start and a goodbye to Nigeria and my good friends.