One short day in Ibadan

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  Ibadan, Nigeria
Tuesday, April 15, 2008

We woke up by knocking on the door at half past seven. Who the hell could that be? Olly got up and looked. "Breakfast for you". They had brought us breakfast at half past seven. We told him that we had not ordered it and asked him to leave. At ten, we ordered breakfast and five minutes later we got it. Cold as ice, and off course it was the same as at half past seven. We changed hotel to get better service and we now paid 4000 naira per night instead of 1800 previous night. I ate mine, as I am not very picky, whereas Olly refused to eat it, as he is a posh brit who attends Oxford ;) As Olly is on a mission to write about Nigeria, he was persistent on giving them hell. We were planning on paying for the beers and the rice, but not for the breakfast. The manager said it was ok, when he understood that Olly was reviewing the Hotel. However, the woman in the kitchen went bananas. Off course her English was as good mine Yoruba, so we had some good fun. Olly told them what he thought about the service and refused to pay. After about 20 minutes we ended up not paying. The thing however was not that they were trying to cheat us, they did not understand us. They thought that we ordered breakfast the previous evening, when we were asking what was for breakfast. Olly explained that it was not about the money, but rather that they will never learn if they always get away with things, after all he has been living in Lagos for one year. We headed for Ibadan and got a car for 4000 naira, which is ok as we had the car to our selves. Olly was heading for a friend so I was going to stay at a hostel in town. As we did not know we asked this guy along the road, and the funniest thing happened. This random guy, who we picked up, was doing his PhD about ethnic militias the same as I am writing about. What are the odds for that happening? He showed us the place and we arranged to meet up later that evening. After sleeping two hours I went on internet for two hours and 'watched' the united game, and taking one step closer towards the trophy. Then I called this Canadian girl who writes her masters at Oxford with Olly. I jumped on a bike and went to Ibadan University, which was pretty close. We had rice and fish, and it tasted like shit, but I had to eat as they bought it to me. Two of the guys studied politics as well and one sociology, whereas two girls studied philosophy. After the food we went to a bar and had a beer. I immediately felt that the fish wanted to get out rather fast and went to the toilet. Crisis, no paper! So what do you do? Luckily I had just booked my flight back to Abuja, and the receipt was three pages. You can imagine the rest. The evening was nice as the Canadian girl, the PhD student we picked up earlier, the two other political science students and my self were all eager to discuss Nigerian politics. I really love when people are fighting to get a word. We talked for three hours before we went home to our respective places after exchanging phone numbers and mail addresses.

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