My First Trip: A Retrospective

I have now published all the diary entries from my first trip to Nigeria in 2000. Looking back through them for me has been an interesting experience, many events I had forgotten, and some of my thoughts surprised me. I only vaguely recognise the person that wrote those notes.

Obviously I had to edit a lot of the details, some things would only be understood by my friends and family in the UK, so I cut those bits out. I removed names of everyone except public people, such as the chap who ran Planet 44.

Things changed quite quickly after those early days, Money was restricted so that we no longer enjoyed late night partying catered for by the company, My pay was set at a level somewhat lower than I was expecting. The same with my per diem. Working with Canadians proved quite difficult with different time zones, having to wait until 9am in Calgary before we could contact anybody which would be 5pm in Lagos, just when we were thinking about going home.

In 2001 I contracted Malaria, just after visiting our Canadian offices at Easter, and suffered with it for over two weeks. This was despite taking the anti-malarial drugs as directed. At that time I hadn't heard of Artemisinin and did not question the doctor giving me quinine based drugs. The drugs certainly shifted the Malaria but gave me terrible itching of the utmost discomfort.

In the end, the project I came to Nigeria to work on failed in 2002. Not because we couldn't do the job, but because we lost a LOT of money in a Bank Fraud, only a small part of which was ever recovered. For 2003 I was working in the UK, until march 2004 when I was called back to Nigeria to work with another company, established by my British colleagues from the old Canadian company. I started work on the project that I am just finishing now. This project too has had it's financial problems but nothing on the scale of that first project.

Basically, to summarise, I think now I do understand life in Nigeria a bit more, I feel more like a resident than a visitor, despite my UK tax status which still says I'm a UK Resident. I enjoy the challenges of living here, Every day is different. The Nigerian people impress me with their ability to believe a dire situation will improve. Now, I believe it will improve, given enough time and people whose interests lie away from the goal of fantastic wealth.

There is wonderful beauty in Nigeria, if you can tolerate a whole heap of Ugliness that's in the way, you can find it.