Nigeria Trip // Day 9-Lagos Easter

We spent a lovely day in Ikoyi with my cousin and his family starting with Easter brunch at the Wheatbaker hotel. The brunch spread was quite extensive with continental cuisine on one side of the dining room and a buffet of Nigeria food on the other side. I have never seen two kids so excited to see salad, olives, cured meats and such. I guess 8 days of Nigeria food was their limit! The hotel itself was beautifully decorated, nicely kept and the service was on par with the nicer places in New York. Certainly it had to be because it plays host to mostly Nigerian elite and foreign nationals. The funny thing is its owned partially by someone we referred to as uncle, growing up, he was a family friend or a friend of my father..funny how times have changed and how life has changed since moving to New York. I sometime still wonder if moving to New York was a good move for our family, I feel like things could have turned out differently if we had stayed in Nigeria but no use in dreaming about the past right.

I sat at the kids table while the others all sat at a table adjacent to us. I think I was getting to be a bit overwhelmed by the trip myself. I hadn't spent this much time in such close quarters with everyone in a while. Mom had left early that morning and was on her way back to New York so it was really just me, my three sisters and our husbands and kids...oh and my cousin, DT.

Sim invited us back to his house for some chit chatting and several bottles of champagne which consisted of catching up on life and my aunt telling us to keep having kids before it was too late. She the best, she tells it like it is and doesn't hold back her thoughts. The kids played, his kids had never met us in fact I hadn't seen him since he moved back to Lagos after grad school. It was nice to finally meet his wife and kids. Its never enough time but we take what we can get. We spent so much time together growing up that it never seems like we've been away for so long.

I was intrigued that its a normal occurrence to perpetually have several bottles of chilled champagne in your refrigerator in Nigeria. This is proof for why Nigerians are said to consume the most champagne in the world..well I can understand that. 

Nigeria Trip // Day 4-Jos

Jos, the capital of Plateau State is named after the Jos Plateau which is located near the center of the country and is home to the ancient Nok culture. It is known for its wonderfully temperate climate, amazing landscape, great diversity and was once one of the most important tourist destinations in the country. Over the last decade or so, there has been a great decline in tourism, a mass exodus of its inhabitants and dwindling numbers in investments etc. due religious clashes that have caused tension and instilled fears in the people who remain.The sights were hard to take in, the roads were dusty and you could see the strife , you could read the hardship in the eyes of the people, still smiling but weary, still hopeful but tired. The streets were littered with small table setups selling various things, mostly potatoes and yams, there were also mobile (on foot..that is) vendors selling more vegetable but nothing like the selections in the streets of Lagos.  Things were obviously tough but even so, it is my home and I had to be there to really see this for myself. 

On the first night, we spent time trying to take in the house, settle in and feel comfortable in a place who's appearance had dramatically changed since I was last there. I felt an eerie calm but also remained quite uneasy with the space, so reminiscent of my childhood, my mind flashed between great memories and the present, emptiness, almost impersonal air of the time. It was hard to swallow, especially being there with my husband and kids (my mum and younger sister as well). We stayed up quite late and talked about the past and looked through old photos, eventually retiring into at daybreak. 

The next morning, we woke up to a nice day, we spent the morning exploring the compound, walking around reminiscing about the places I used to play and sit and spend time as a child, it was nice to reconcile my thoughts and feeling towards this house, it amazing how much the "place" which seemed so ordinary as a child is actually uniquely intertwined in the person I have become. My cousin and his two daughters drove in from Abuja that afternoon, as did my aunt and other cousin as we awaited the rest of the family to arrive. The kids immediately became best friends and started playing like we had when we were their size many years ago, it was like we had come full circle yet not much had changed but much had been lost.

 We ventured out into town to get lunch which turned out to be quite a challenge, we initially thought we'd go to Plateau hotel but when we got there and walked in it was deserted and dark! very disappointing as it used to be a pretty happening spot back then. We also tried to go to Hill Station hotel but there wasn't really anything going on there, we eventually got to a place called Avis which was supposed to be fairly decent serving traditional Nigerian food but as we all got out of the cars to walk in we were stopped by a guard who wanted us to leave all our personal belongings in a lock box before entering, certainly that did not sit well with any of us. We bypassed him eventually him and got in to eat. We also went shopping in town for some drinks and snacks for later.

That evening was a wonderful mix of celebration, meetings of family members new and old, conversation, laughter and it was like old times..almost. The anxiety faded and I was able to truly appreciate my home once again. We broke bread with a large group of extended family members who stopped in excitedly to visit us and had lots of suya and homemade massa. It was a really good night.

The next morning, we awoke bright and early, had breakfast and prepared to leave for Langtang.

Nigeria Trip // Day 3-Jos

On Monday morning, additional members of my family arrived. My mother, two sisters, their husbands and the kids arrived from New York. We were at the hotel when they arrived and went straight to my Aunts house so we checked out of the hotel and squeezed all our luggage and the four of us into a car to get over there. It was hot, really hot..the air conditioners can't even combat the heat in Lagos. We had fun looking at all the things you could purchase on the road in Lagos and my husband was quite fascinated by the variety of items people carry unsupported on their heads. Its a pretty quick drive from Ikoyi to Yaba when there isn't any traffic so we got in fairly quickly. We spent sometime at my aunts home, had lunch and got ready to head to the airport to catch a flight to Jos. 

Even though my mother had just gotten in from New York that morning, she had planned to come with us to Jos because she didn't want us going alone. The rest of the family would join us the next day, there is only a single flight daily between Lagos and Jos. The ride to the airport was a real drag because it was so hot and the traffic was dense.  It took much longer than it should have and I had two little girls melting sleeping on me. 

During the drive, I noticed my mom looked rather cool in the other car  ( my brother in laws) so we timed it close enough so that I could jump out and run across to the other lane and jump in the cooler vehicle! I risked my life for air conditioning! As we pulled up to airport, we scurried out, grabbed our bags  got a guy with a trolley to help us move our luggage into the airport, we were immediately approached by an "expediter"..he's not really one but these are people that for a small fee can get you through any line..get anything done quicker than if you were to go the normal route. He collected our  passports and cut the line and basically checked us into the flight in minutes. We went through a security checkpoint, got some snacks and drinks and within minutes it was time to board the flight. We took a shuttle to the turmac, got off, identified our luggage and boarded the flight.

When we landed in the Jos airport after a short hour flight, we were relieved! It was slightly cooler but I was also kind of surprised that the airport was really a makeshift shack. We walked right off the plane onto the runway and into this small cmu building and we were met by my uncle and some others.

Jos has been in the news ( abroad at least) as the site of numerous religious clashes so it wasn't surprising that as we approached the cars there was an armed guard holding the door open! 

The landscape in Jos is very different from Lagos, its more rural and arid. It looked very familiar to me even after so many years but it also seemed deserted. In the last decade its really transformed from a vibrant town to a ghost town. There seemed to be at least half of the population who have migrated elsewhere, the businesses are few and not many a thriving.  The town has gone from what seemed like an up and coming town to a struggling one in a short time. As we drove through, I saw the school compound where I spent six years of my life in a boarding school, it is no longer called Air Force Girls Military School but the memories of the time I spent there were still very vivid as we drove by it. any one who knows me well would understand what went on here..it was unreal. 

By the time we got to our house, the anxiety was so high, I didn't know what to expect, I hadn't been back in so long and I had held onto my childhood memories for so long that I wasn't sure how I would feel to finally be there. The gate opened up and there it was, my home, where I grew up. I was overwhelmed, shocked and really glad that I had finally been able to bring my husband and children back here. I had talked about my life growing up for so long that now it felt surreal that he was finally standing on the soil. Certainly, everything felt a lot smaller to me now and also strangely familiar yet very foreign. This was Jos. the beginning.