Jeremy and I are organising a gathering of Nigerian bloggers in Lagos (venue/date tba). All Naija bloggers (bloggers in Nigeria, Nigerian or otherwise) are invited to the first ever meeting of bloggers in Nigeria.
This event will allow you to meet other bloggers, talk about your blog (if you wish), read some of your pieces (if you wish), or learn what the blogging craze is all about (there will be free tuition provided on setting up your blog).
Special guests - announced shortly. Anonymity will be provided for those who wish to remain so.
Those who wish to particpate vitually (via IM or webcam), please let us know.Soft drinks and nibbles provided.
If you want to come, please email: jeremy@bakareweate.com (if you are an anonymous blogger, we will not reveal your identity)
Monday, 14 May 2007
Saturday, 12 May 2007
I've seen fire and I've seen rain................
Back in the UK and for the first time in a while it is a relief. For the first time I wonder what it will be like to be in Lagos with nowhere to escape to. I guess there is always Accra the new bolt hole of the neauveau rich. In the last ten days I have seen for the first time what lies at the root of the lack of infrastructure development in Nigeria. I have heard things that I shouldn't’t have, seen things that I shouldn't have but thankfully I did not do anything that I shouldn't have. If it all sounds like a bit of a riddle it is only because I cannot disclose details but the scales have fallen. For the past year I have been tiptoeing through the tulips but now I have fallen face first into the fertiliser.
Iyawo is forever going on about my naivety about Nigeria. How she knows the place and people better than me and how what I think I see is illusional. I won’t admit that she was right (I could not stand the crowing) but let’s just say that maybe she knows what she is talking about.
In A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson says “you can’t handle the truth”. I now know what he means because when you actually truly see something for what it is, it can be very disillusioning. If not for my innate positivity and my strong belief that ultimately good will triumph over evil then I would be very worried. But let’s leave it there for now.
Reflections:
Two thoughts I would like to share.
One day I was driving past the Eko Hotel and I saw a “mad man” fast asleep on the lawn outside the hotel. He was asleep in the manner of someone who really was dead to the world and lost in a peaceful slumber. All this while he was less than two feet from raging traffic, belching generators, and their fumes. His whole body was relaxed. He was at peace. Snoring. Meanwhile I was strapped into the car, sweating profusely in my wool suit, thick cotton shirt and tie. I was on my way to a room in a hotel where they had armed men at the gates, where I would lock myself into a room that alternated between freezing cold and tepid depending on NEPA’s mood and in which I would spend the night endlessly tossing and turning, my mind raging with a thousand thoughts, actions, must do lists, reminders, alarms, calls to make etc. For a minute I actually wondered what it would be like to swap places with him and to be at peace with one’s self.
Yesterday I woke up in my new hotel and looked outside the window. The view was spectacular. It was raining extremely hard. It was not like the British rain which caresses your skin and apologises for the inconvenience in typical British manner. This was Naija rain. It came down as if God had been gathering water in his hands and then opened his fingers and flung it to earth. It had ferocity about it. Next to my window is a vacant plot of land. The hotel is bordering on to the sea and on the end of the vacant piece of land someone has built a shack. As I look out of my window I see them going about their morning routine. I wonder how they cope with the rain as the shack on stilts does not seem to have what I would call a roof.
What strikes me though is that both of us share the view of nature as the rain comes down. It is hard to fully describe and I did not have my camera but it was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. The cove behind Bar Beach with its multitude of rickety shacks blends smoothly into the horizon, which blends into the many hues of the clouds in the distance. Dotted on the landscape are various ships coming to shore with their lights on creating a surreal backdrop to the whole scene. I stare out of my window for ten minutes watching the show and watching the shack. I wonder why the occupants do not stop and stare at the beauty of nature like I am and then realise that they wake up to this every single day. Yet me, Mr Jet setter. All I get to see is the inside of hotel rooms and airport lounges. The rest passes in a blur. I wonder who has got the better deal?
Iyawo is forever going on about my naivety about Nigeria. How she knows the place and people better than me and how what I think I see is illusional. I won’t admit that she was right (I could not stand the crowing) but let’s just say that maybe she knows what she is talking about.
In A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson says “you can’t handle the truth”. I now know what he means because when you actually truly see something for what it is, it can be very disillusioning. If not for my innate positivity and my strong belief that ultimately good will triumph over evil then I would be very worried. But let’s leave it there for now.
Reflections:
Two thoughts I would like to share.
One day I was driving past the Eko Hotel and I saw a “mad man” fast asleep on the lawn outside the hotel. He was asleep in the manner of someone who really was dead to the world and lost in a peaceful slumber. All this while he was less than two feet from raging traffic, belching generators, and their fumes. His whole body was relaxed. He was at peace. Snoring. Meanwhile I was strapped into the car, sweating profusely in my wool suit, thick cotton shirt and tie. I was on my way to a room in a hotel where they had armed men at the gates, where I would lock myself into a room that alternated between freezing cold and tepid depending on NEPA’s mood and in which I would spend the night endlessly tossing and turning, my mind raging with a thousand thoughts, actions, must do lists, reminders, alarms, calls to make etc. For a minute I actually wondered what it would be like to swap places with him and to be at peace with one’s self.
Yesterday I woke up in my new hotel and looked outside the window. The view was spectacular. It was raining extremely hard. It was not like the British rain which caresses your skin and apologises for the inconvenience in typical British manner. This was Naija rain. It came down as if God had been gathering water in his hands and then opened his fingers and flung it to earth. It had ferocity about it. Next to my window is a vacant plot of land. The hotel is bordering on to the sea and on the end of the vacant piece of land someone has built a shack. As I look out of my window I see them going about their morning routine. I wonder how they cope with the rain as the shack on stilts does not seem to have what I would call a roof.
What strikes me though is that both of us share the view of nature as the rain comes down. It is hard to fully describe and I did not have my camera but it was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. The cove behind Bar Beach with its multitude of rickety shacks blends smoothly into the horizon, which blends into the many hues of the clouds in the distance. Dotted on the landscape are various ships coming to shore with their lights on creating a surreal backdrop to the whole scene. I stare out of my window for ten minutes watching the show and watching the shack. I wonder why the occupants do not stop and stare at the beauty of nature like I am and then realise that they wake up to this every single day. Yet me, Mr Jet setter. All I get to see is the inside of hotel rooms and airport lounges. The rest passes in a blur. I wonder who has got the better deal?
Saturday, 5 May 2007
All quiet on the Western front.
Shhhhhh. Keep the noise down. The citizens of Lagos are in a slumber. This is what it seems like IMHO. After reading about all the displeasure with the rigging of the elections and the planned May Day protests I arrive on Wednesday morning to find the place as quiet as a morgue (actually to put in perspective it was simply the same old Lagos with traffic wahala but no more). So I asked my escort, "why so quiet?" he tells me that the common man is fed up with being used by the big men to fulfill their wicked ambitions!! I cannot believe what I am hearing. He admits that yes there are touts that will still do anyone's bidding but that generally people just want to get on with their lives. It would appear that the age of enlightenment is creeping up on us.
On arrival at the hotel I have to do a mini tour of rooms to decide which best suits me. See the hotel has two buildings. An old one and a relatively new one. So the choices are , take a room in the old one and sweat like a pig as the ACs have lost the power to Air or Condition, or freeze my ass off in the new ones but give up the right to hot water for the showers. I chose the latter. If I no baff for one week I go take perfume cover am but at least I can sleep for night kampe without waking up stuck to the bed from sweat. And u people think say this travel thing is all glamorous.
On Thursday I read an article in ThisDay magazine where the author (I left the paper in my room, came back and it had been room serviced) mirrored a lot of the comments I made in my previous blog about the elections. Highlights. He attended several polling stations where people were voting with joy and without intimidation, maybe there was rigging but there were also genuine votes, what exactly do the Opposition parties that are making noise bringing to the table?, if they had anything credible to offer then there would be cause for serious mourning. And as for the International observers well I've already flogged that horse past its lifetime.
I happened to catch an interview with the Head of NAFDAC and I really felt for the interviewer as the lady was so ferocious in her manner that at some points I thought she would climb over the desk seperating them and whack him over the head with her handbag. I mean she did a great job with her responses but my goodness the exuberance was overwhelming.
After a long day yesterday, I found myself at the Boat Club relaxing and qeunching suya (minus my white shoes which I left in my mother's care and which seem to have "disappeared" from her room. There is a full investigation underway). Bizarrely, the contact I was meeting turned out to be in the same set and possibly the same class as me in Igbobi College (UP IC). We reminisced for a while and he helped me with the definitions of big boy. Apparently there are different levels of big boy. Silly me. Anyway we just chilled for a while and I could hear the waves whispering "Oga, when are you coming home? As we were leaving I looked at the notice board and saw that a Governor from one of the SE states had applied to join. Now that is a really big boy apparently. Can't wait for him to buy me suya.
In my usual manner I have been taking the temperature of the place since arrival and all I am getting back is positive vibes. Everybody is hustling and trying to make it and all I keep hearing is that things are good and just about to get better now that the elections are over. So for all the doomsayers...............
On arrival at the hotel I have to do a mini tour of rooms to decide which best suits me. See the hotel has two buildings. An old one and a relatively new one. So the choices are , take a room in the old one and sweat like a pig as the ACs have lost the power to Air or Condition, or freeze my ass off in the new ones but give up the right to hot water for the showers. I chose the latter. If I no baff for one week I go take perfume cover am but at least I can sleep for night kampe without waking up stuck to the bed from sweat. And u people think say this travel thing is all glamorous.
On Thursday I read an article in ThisDay magazine where the author (I left the paper in my room, came back and it had been room serviced) mirrored a lot of the comments I made in my previous blog about the elections. Highlights. He attended several polling stations where people were voting with joy and without intimidation, maybe there was rigging but there were also genuine votes, what exactly do the Opposition parties that are making noise bringing to the table?, if they had anything credible to offer then there would be cause for serious mourning. And as for the International observers well I've already flogged that horse past its lifetime.
I happened to catch an interview with the Head of NAFDAC and I really felt for the interviewer as the lady was so ferocious in her manner that at some points I thought she would climb over the desk seperating them and whack him over the head with her handbag. I mean she did a great job with her responses but my goodness the exuberance was overwhelming.
After a long day yesterday, I found myself at the Boat Club relaxing and qeunching suya (minus my white shoes which I left in my mother's care and which seem to have "disappeared" from her room. There is a full investigation underway). Bizarrely, the contact I was meeting turned out to be in the same set and possibly the same class as me in Igbobi College (UP IC). We reminisced for a while and he helped me with the definitions of big boy. Apparently there are different levels of big boy. Silly me. Anyway we just chilled for a while and I could hear the waves whispering "Oga, when are you coming home? As we were leaving I looked at the notice board and saw that a Governor from one of the SE states had applied to join. Now that is a really big boy apparently. Can't wait for him to buy me suya.
In my usual manner I have been taking the temperature of the place since arrival and all I am getting back is positive vibes. Everybody is hustling and trying to make it and all I keep hearing is that things are good and just about to get better now that the elections are over. So for all the doomsayers...............
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
Blogger off line
So I am off to Lagos this evening to take care of some biz. Meanwhile, I have been thinking about how to go about organising an evening of drinks with Naija bloggers in Lagos where we could network, exchange ideas, etc. Actually I am trying to get Jeremy - the guru- to do it. There are so many bloggers now it is hard to keep up but it would be good to meet some face to face. Obviously those that wish to remain anonymous can continue to do so.
In the meantime I will be scouting venues for the event so over the next week I will be at Bachus, 6deg North, News Cafe, Boat Club, Ikoyi Club, La Casa and every other hangout in the name of research. I will leave no stone unturned in my quest.
If you see me please feel free to say hello. I will be the one in the white shoes.
In the meantime I will be scouting venues for the event so over the next week I will be at Bachus, 6deg North, News Cafe, Boat Club, Ikoyi Club, La Casa and every other hangout in the name of research. I will leave no stone unturned in my quest.
If you see me please feel free to say hello. I will be the one in the white shoes.
Monday, 30 April 2007
Ooops. There goes another N200.
As I am on my way back to Lagos I am just preparing this ready reckoner to help me with my constant battle to keep money in my pocket. This is never successful as I always fall for the following:
Ways people ask for money in Lagos.
- Good morning sah
- Oga how now?
- Welcome sah
- How was the flight?
- How are you today sah?
- How is the family?
- How is madam?
- How are (my) your children?
- How are my friends (referring to the kids)?
- How was your night?
- How was your day?
- How is your health sah?
- Anything for your people sah?
- It is your world sah.
-I hate to bother you sah.
- Park here sah
- Oya reverse
-Standing very close and smiling
-Hugging you like a long lost relative
And of course the very direct - "everyone lie down on the floor and give us your money and GSM handsets" which I have been lucky not to experience so far.
Other suggestions welcome. I will compile a list and maybe we can get it printed and hand it out to people as they come off the plane!
Tuesday, 24 April 2007
My first rant in blogsville. I am so pxxxed off.
I posted this on Funmi Iyanda's blog in response to her posting about the elections. My objection is to the foreign observers and media. I now need to lie down for a while.
Funmi thanks for your observations but I beg to disagree. I am very wary of all these foreign observers and their claims of irregularities etc. We all know, and expected , that there would be shenanigans along the way. If people chose not to exercise their right to vote surely that in itself is part of being in a democracy? The right to choose? Nigeria is on a journey. This is part of the journey.
The expectation was that there would be massive violence and widespread loss of lives. That did not happen. Is this not something to be commended?
The US & UK can cry foul all they like but I am sure their Ambassadors will be in Aso rock the day after the coronation to ensure that their interests are maintained. And who gives them the right to judge us anyway? What is the voter turnout in the UK? Are there no voting irregularities in the US?
I am sick of the meddling. The election is over. A winner declared. Let's move on to building the country. The opposition have four years to gather evidence against the newly elected government and prepare their battle plans. All part of the democratic process.
Despite all my cynicism about him I was very impressed with Yar Adua's calm demeanour at the press conference yesterday. I was especially impressed with the way he handled the questions from the foreign correspondents who were all fixated with allegations of this and that? Is it that Tony Blair and George Bush's administrations have exemplary records? Or is it not true that they would have set new lows in standards for "democratically" elected governments? Puh leeez.
We have a situation where one democratically elected government has handed over to another. That in my view is progress. Onward and upward. For those trying to give Nigeria a complex and want to continue tarring us with the same old brush. Good luck to you. I will not assist you with your objectives.
The expectation was that there would be massive violence and widespread loss of lives. That did not happen. Is this not something to be commended?
The US & UK can cry foul all they like but I am sure their Ambassadors will be in Aso rock the day after the coronation to ensure that their interests are maintained. And who gives them the right to judge us anyway? What is the voter turnout in the UK? Are there no voting irregularities in the US?
I am sick of the meddling. The election is over. A winner declared. Let's move on to building the country. The opposition have four years to gather evidence against the newly elected government and prepare their battle plans. All part of the democratic process.
Despite all my cynicism about him I was very impressed with Yar Adua's calm demeanour at the press conference yesterday. I was especially impressed with the way he handled the questions from the foreign correspondents who were all fixated with allegations of this and that? Is it that Tony Blair and George Bush's administrations have exemplary records? Or is it not true that they would have set new lows in standards for "democratically" elected governments? Puh leeez.
We have a situation where one democratically elected government has handed over to another. That in my view is progress. Onward and upward. For those trying to give Nigeria a complex and want to continue tarring us with the same old brush. Good luck to you. I will not assist you with your objectives.
If you really want to help Nigeria why don't you go back to your countries and get your governments to release all the funds that have illegally transferred there by all the previous military dictators whom you were very happy to support and even assist? How about all those loans you granted Nigeria that got us into a serious financial mess and from which nothing was gained?
Viva Nigeria.
Viva Nigeria.
Sunday, 22 April 2007
For my sins.
It is fair to say, dear reader that I spend quite a bit of time at the computer. Most of this is work related for sure but I am also not averse to the odd blog posting here and there. This "dedication" has not gone unnoticed by the powers that be who have finally decided that enough is enough. If you can't beat them, etc.
Let me just say that those who have been here from the start will back me up when I say that I have been nothing but full of praise for Iyawo (besides the little episode in the For better for worse posting). She is a wonderful wife and mother and we could not have asked for anyone better with which to share our lives etc, etc (I have lined up the kids behind me and we are all nodding vigourously).
So without further ado I introduce Iyawo's blog http://mandybrownojugbana.blogspot.com/ .
p.s - don't believe a word she says about me especially around my sensitivity, cleanliness, maturity, romantic ideas, or all the other shortcomings she might accidentally mention. She knows that she is very lucky to have me and is just going to say things to scare off the competition. And I really do not watch that much football. And I do pay attention when she talks.
Let me just say that those who have been here from the start will back me up when I say that I have been nothing but full of praise for Iyawo (besides the little episode in the For better for worse posting). She is a wonderful wife and mother and we could not have asked for anyone better with which to share our lives etc, etc (I have lined up the kids behind me and we are all nodding vigourously).
So without further ado I introduce Iyawo's blog http://mandybrownojugbana.blogspot.com/ .
p.s - don't believe a word she says about me especially around my sensitivity, cleanliness, maturity, romantic ideas, or all the other shortcomings she might accidentally mention. She knows that she is very lucky to have me and is just going to say things to scare off the competition. And I really do not watch that much football. And I do pay attention when she talks.
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