Abuja,
Nigeria
Friday, March 28, 2008
Day two was pretty boring and I recommend you to stop reading if you got better things to do. I woke up early and got picked up by the driver at nine. Went to the bank and tried to take out money, but the ATM didn't work. Got to work and sorted out some admin stuff. The thing is that most of the people I'm going to work with are in Ghana and I have had no contact with anyone currently in the office. Nevertheless, today the other white intern was there, Alex, who an American girl is doing her PhD at Cambridge University. She was very nice to me and she helped me out with maps and places to go and stuff. I didn't do much work today as I spend most of the day getting cash to pay the hotel. I tried to call the Norwegian embassy, but the person there could not help me even if he was rather helpful. Running out of possibilities, I decided to go to the bank again to see if the ATM was working. And what do you know, it did. But it didn't allow me to take out all at once to I withdrew 20 000 naira 8 times, meaning that I had 160 1000 naira notes in my pockets. Luckily, it was a short walk back to CDD. After feeling that that was enough work for the day, I decided to get some food as it was three o'clock and I had not eaten since 8. I decided to walk home just to see how far it was and to get some groceries. I had a long sleeved shirt, jeans and shoes, and as it was more than 40 degrees it was really hot. I stopped at a place Alex recommended, and wanted a burger, but for some reason that was impossible. The waiter tried to explain, but I could not understand her. Two Nigerian shwarmas later I went on. The walk was around 2-3 km back, but with 4, 5 litre of water and some groceries that is more than enough when it is 40 degrees. When I came back I was dripping with sweat, and I tried to be friendly to the woman in the reception, which was a b***h yesterday. After changing I went down to pay. She counted the money. I fell short, there was 164 000 and not 175 000. I told here that I withdrew to little cash and said I had more money in the room. I went up and got the rest of the money I had. In total I had 173 500, 1500 short. And she refused me to pay. I could just feel my head boil over. 1500 naira is about 20 US dollars, and is not much, but I'm sure she only did it to be mean as she was hot and tired as well. So the conclusion is that she is still a b***h.
I was warm and tired and lay down on the bed and woke up four hours later, so my plans of going out went down the drain. But I guess I needed it, as I had not had a good night sleep in some days. Not a very interesting day at all, but at least I warned you in the beginning☺ Tomorrow I promise to do something more interesting as it is my third day in Nigeria. And by the way, the way I used the two buckets and the small bowl was to pour water over myself while filling up the other, soap in, and than use the bowl to clean my hair, while waiting for the other bucket to fill up to clean the rest of the body. I guess that the showed should have worked to I asked the woman in the reception about it, but she just shrugged her shoulders and nothing happened, so I'll ask again tomorrow when she is in a better mood☺
But after a while I understood that my sleepiness was something else than just from being tired. After I woke up I felt really sick with fever and my nose was running. At first I thought that it could be malaria as there were some mosquitoes in my room. However, after thinking a bit about it and looking back in time, I realised that I had minor sunstroke. My 3 km walk in the strong sun with groceries, on an empty stomach and dehydrated was not a good idea after all. But as I knew the only thing to do about that was to sleep, and sleep I did. 15 hours later I woke up to a new day, fit as a fiddle and ready to rock and roll. However, I realized that the sun here is a lot stronger than in South Africa, as I have never had a sunstroke there even after running in the mountains. A taxi costs about 2 US dollars I think I'll do that from now. There are thousands and they are easy to find. That sounds like a plan☺
