Bank of Patience

It has come to the time of the year when I can pack up and shut up shop for a month or two. 

School is out for summer and I fly to Scotland on Monday night (via Italy for a week – yippee). 

I have grown to love Lagos but I need regular breaks.  I reckon I get to about three months before the hassle of Naija life starts to irritate me and I have to get out.  In the countdown to flying out, my lack of patience really begins to show.  Regular day to day chores, like going to the bank, become perilous missions of tightrope tensions and frazzled nerves.

The banking system in Nigeria is like most government regulated systems here – fragmented, slow, unnecessarily bureaucratic and incredibly frustrating.  On Friday, I went to the bank to withdraw all of my naira in order to take it to an exchange office and, eventually, to the UK.  (You may be thinking this is odd but the bank not only charge me an outrageous amount of money to make an international payment, but also do not offer any kind of currency exchange.) 

While waiting I remember I cannot use my bank card to withdraw cash inside the bank (you can only do that at a cash machine) so I set about writing myself a cheque to cash.  I do this inside Zenith bank – which is a bit like Gringotts bank from Harry Potter.  You wait in a queue but often a security officer will come and ask you what you are doing and if you are taking out enough money he will usher you through to the back of the bank where you enter a room full of money and cash counting machines!!!    

Anyway on Friday this is, indeed, what happened.  I handed over my cheque and awaited my bag of money.  You end up with bags of money because the largest note in Nigeria is 1000 Naira – the equivalent of £4.  You can imagine what a few thousand pounds looks like!  Half way through this process the teller says ‘ Madam, you know you will be charged for withdrawing all this at the same time.’  I’m not surprised because they charge for EVERYTHING at Zenith so I casually ask how much.  The amount angers me so much that I jump off my seat and rush back through to the ‘normal’ banking area.   They are trying to charge me almost £50 to withdraw my own cash!!  Not transfer, not break an ISA agreement, and not take all my savings but to simply withdraw my own cash from my own current account.  

After a good twenty minutes of heated discussions with various members of staff and exasperations from me I decide to withdraw less money to avoid the charge.  The funniest thing is the reason given for the charge is that they are trying to discourage people lifting large sums of money and encouraging a cashless system where we all use our cards at POS.  This sounds great BUUUUUUUUUUUUT none of the POS systems work in Lagos, they block the card when I try to use it abroad AND there is a very low cap on the amount you can withdraw at a cash point.

Eventually I get my cash and go to meet the dodgy money exchange man.  Now, please bear in mind, my friend called this dude earlier in the day, negotiated a price and told him how much I was bringing.  She also arranged a time to meet at his ‘office’.  I turned up in my school clothes and high heels with my bag full of money.  Not my best security decision!  He wasn’t ready, he didn’t have enough sterling, his office was a filing cabinet, a calculator, a safe and two upside down beer crates as seating. 

 After half an hour of waiting for more sterling to show up I lost it at this dude too!  

‘Why lie?’ I screech!  ‘Don’t tell me you have something you don’t.’  He looks at me bemused and says . . . . . . . that old chestnut . . . . . . . . . . you guessed it . . . . . . . . . . . ‘Sorry Ma’.  And then he goes back to playing on his phone.

In the end the bags of money were changed for a small envelope of notes.  It is safe to say I cannot wait to get on the plane and recharge the old batteries at home.  Scotland isn’t perfect but I need to be in a place where banks, shops, airports simply work and function and provide a decent service. 

 I’ll be able to cope better in September when I return. 

Lagos Hair

I’ve had a bad week.  I was ill on Tuesday and for the rest of the week I felt rather run down.  I have been tired, generally grumpy and look pretty bad.  I have pimples, red skin and my hair is dry as a bone.  I recall the same thing happened to me at this time last year.  It may be something to do with the change in weather; it’s raining all the time but still humid and pretty dusty which is not a nice combination.  Or perhaps it is because I need a break from Lagos.  Summer term ends in four weeks and I get to go home for a while.  I need this rest and recovery and so does my body.

While I’m still here I have to try to keep myself healthy and looking decent enough not to scare the kids I teach so, I try to eat well and do some exercise.  I also try to spend some time outdoors and take some vitamins.  Yesterday, I decided to visit the beauty salon in a bid to rejuvenate and relax.

I went to a new salon called Apples and Oranges on Victoria Island.  It’s really quite a nice place; very modern, very cool and calm.  I had a manicure, pedicure, facial and various other things.  Everything went well and I felt good.  I have tried many salons in and around Ikoyi and VI and I have experienced various bodily disasters, for example, the time I asked someone to tint my eyebrows and ended up looking like I had a large African man’s eyebrows transplanted onto my face.  There is also the time I asked for a straightforward bikini wax and left feeling like a plucked (and violated) chicken. 

After completing all of my treatments and spending most of the afternoon in the salon I decided to ask about getting my hair done.  I had observed a variety of ladies coming and going with lovely hair all afternoon.  Not many places in Lagos are experienced or have the knowledge to cut and style European hair so I usually just wait until I go back to the UK to have my hair cut.  Just like many salons in the UK either have people who can do African hair or they wouldn’t attempt it through lack of experience.  I asked if it was possible to have my hair washed and blow dried.  The woman looked at me in shock and said of course.  She said it was no problem at all.  I trusted them because everything else had gone so well.

Often, in Lagos, people say they can do things when they actually have no idea if they can.  They aim to please and, for whatever reason, cannot say no.  This is characterised by the ‘yes, ma’ answer to everything.  I understand that there are a lot of nasty folks around with too much money and a power complex who get angry at those trying to provide a service for very unimportant reasons and enjoy watching people run around after them.  But, actually claiming to provide a service when the reality is you HAVE NO CLUE is very detrimental to both client and provider.

I sat in the chair.  The guy told me how lovely my hair was and began to wash.  Everything was fine until he started scrubbing my head.  I asked him to be a little gentler and he obliged.  After washing he asked me stand up.  I asked him to use conditioner so he left me for a few minutes and after a heated discussion with another employee came back and proceeded to condition my hair.  After a few minutes we were done.  I resumed my seat in the hairdresser’s chair.

I guess I knew something was amiss when he began to comb my hair.  He couldn’t get through the tugs and knots.  He gave up and started blow drying using his fingers.  No round brushes in sight, which are the type usually used on my hair.  I stopped him after a few minutes as my hair was growing in size and knots and I could hear and feel the strands snapping under his touch.  He was horrified and so was I.  The Nigerian ladies behind me started to giggle and told me it looked like afro hair.  I said politely that I was going to go home and would wash it myself.  The manager came and sat me down again, insisting that he had to brush it out.  After another ten minutes of pain and snapping and humiliation I got up and left.  I didn’t take my anger out on the guy who washed my hair but let loose a little on the receptionist who had assured me they could do it.  It turned out they had washed my hair with products for African hair. 

Today is Sunday and I have just washed my tresses for the ninth time.  It still feels like there is a tonne of oil in it and I can hardly get a brush through it.  My plan for R and R didn’t really work out.  I’m still stressed and run down but now have giant, greasy hair to add to my list of complaints.

Another Lagos lesson learnt I guess. 

You can take the girl out of Glasgow . . . . . .

I miss the blunt, unpretentious, no shit attitude of most Scots.  Paris who?

Being Reckless

When we are young we jump into the pool whether we can swim or not.  We have no fear.  Either we swim or we drown.

Before the age of thirty important things begin to shape the rest of our lives.

The first is:
We become aware of ourselves and our own thinking.  We reach the age of reason.

The second is:
In our new found maturity we begin to think in a more adult way.  We become grown up.

Recklessness and risk are not compatible with age.  Risk becomes something which must be carefully considered.

Paul Arden

The Trap Door Theory

I meet new people all the time.  Traveling and living away from home forces you to be open and take opportunities to make connections and new friends as they come along.  The introduction of new people into your life can be very rewarding but it also comes with its emotional risks.  I like to think of everyone as having a trap door.

Yes, you read correctly.  This is a little theory I have about letting people into your life. 

We meet new people every day; we interact, talk, deal and make minor adjustments to ourselves and our lives daily.  Not all the people we come across will bring forward their trap door and many interactions will have no significant effect on us at all.

However, every so often, a person with a trap door comes along.  A person whom, should you fall into or step onto their trap door, will have an effect on your life in some significant way.  Once a door is open you can jump in, fall in or run in the other direction.  Whether you jump through with enthusiasm, fall clumsily, edge sideways with caution or slide uncontrollably, once in – the door closes and cannot be opened again for you.  No matter what happens, good or bad, you can’t go back.  If you walk away from the trap door then you will remain the same but never know what was in there.

Furthermore, each and every trap door changes you.  Whether a trap door represents friendship, love, lust, a means to an end or hate even; it’s going to change you in some way. 

Some trap doors are huge and easy to fall into; others are small and relatively easy to negotiate a choice with.

I see these trap doors in the image of my favourite childhood television programme – ‘The Trap Door’.  This probably goes a long way in explaining why I’m eternally single.  Ha ha. 

On a serious note – it is important to see these trap doors as opportunities.  Be wary and take some weapons with you but jump in feet first and enjoy the ride.  That is my philosophy from now on.

Moral Corruption

Nigeria is morally corrupt.  To try to explain the true depth of the corruption in this place to someone who has never visited Lagos, would be like describing Mozart’s 1785 Piano Concerto to someone who has never seen a piano.  This analogy is really too pretty to be used to describe the scheming, stinking hypocrisy I’m about to share with you but you get the picture.

I was naïve when I arrived at the security gate in Murtala Mohammed Airport the first time, I caught glimpses of the ‘I’m out for myself’ attitude as I meandered through my first month or two here.  I was able to forgive people for accepting bribes and paying bribes and forever changing prices because they were a means to an end in the context of Lagos living.  I forgave many sins because I thought poverty excused them.  People are poor and have no choice but to make the most of a situation in a country whose government gives back nothing was my tag line.

I have changed.  It is this acceptance and excuse conjuring towards corruption, permeating all levels of Nigerian society, which is EXACTLY the problem.  Everyone accepts day to day corruption and, although they may not like it they accept it; even when it is startlingly obvious and unfair.  It is the norm.

The parking attendant making an extra twenty pence by extorting a bribe from impatient drivers has the same attitude as the President who condones the ultimate sin of bribery in the oil, electricity and import/export industries – effectively keeping the fat cats fat and everyone else in poverty, darkness and desperation.  No one takes any responsibility; people bribe, accept bribes and pay bribes in every which way you can imagine.  A side effect of this is that everybody is suspicious, unforgiving and pessimistic towards others.

Individuals in Nigeria literally own billions of pounds; they make thousands every day that they are alive but do absolutely nothing to help the plight of starving villages, people living in days of darkness or the deaths of babies born into impoverished, devastated families.  The rich don’t care, and so the cycle continues all the way down the class ladder to the poorest people:  The Oga of an extremely poor fishing village uses a charitable donation to secure a water tank and DSTV aerial for his house only (the only house in the village might I add), the raffle prize ticket picker who only adds the names of his friends and family to the box, the facilities manager who on receiving a substantial dash from a happy contractor to share with his pitifully paid team – keeps it to himself.

There is no ‘for the greater good’, there is no charity and there is no way Nigeria can grow economically or socially to become the successful and powerful African nation it should be until Joe Blogs on the street makes a stand and takes responsibility for others as well as himself.

The politics of corruption are so truly fucked up here it is actually too depressing for words.  The underlying agendas and deceit are truly too sprawling and impenetrable to comprehend, especially as a foreigner.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rules in Nigeria.  You have to take every situation as it comes.  For example, I always give money to children if they tap on my car window but only small notes as I don’t want them to get beaten by their brothers and sisters for a big note.  Also I recently read about Aliko Dangote, the Nigerian cement magnate and billionaire.  He established a humanitarian foundation in 1993 and has helped many.

I am aware of the situation in Nigeria, as you can see from my rant BUT I’m regularly told I’m too naïve.  This is because instead of being pessimistic and hating, I refuse to change my attitude towards people here.  Everyone, in my eyes, has a chance to be good and straight and morally above the water line. 

I try to meet everyone with an open mind and I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.  I take people seriously, I listen to peoples’ stories and I don’t immediately suspect ulterior motives.  I also don’t pay bribes (anymore), I don’t try to jump the queue at the airport and I don’t cut corners by flashing cash at people.  
 
Optimism, positive interactions and a stand against the ‘all about me’ indoctrination will make a difference eventually.

Phew . . . . . . . . . rant over.