Nigeria in All Good Things

I'm in Lagos. We arrived about 24 hours ago after a difficult flight across the Sahara, and the three hours at the airport were some of the more traumatic hours of my life, from having a panic attack deep in a crowd in the immigration hall that I couldn't escape to being expected to pay a bribe at the immigration counter to being utterly abandoned by my colleague (and, I thought, friend) after disembarking, along with the official who we'd been told would meet us to help us through the immigration process. It was seriously awful, mostly because I'd already been stifling a panic attack for the entire seven-hour flight (I was sat next to a huge Nigerian woman with a vicious energy who seemed to hate me and continuously, nonstop for seven hours, jabbed me in the side with her elbow and arm).

The only good news was that my suitcase arrived relatively quickly once I finally joined Cathy and our vastly pregnant official in the baggage hall (although the zip had been ripped open), but we had to wait a further half hour for Cathy's (a backpack, which had also been ripped).

Eventually our official herded us through the yellow-fever-certificate checkers and the baggage-tag checkers to where our South African bodyguard loomed, tall and white, ready to whisk us away in a convoy for four armoured vehicles for the hour's drive across Lagos to our hotel, which we've been warned not to leave without his (or one of his team's) accompaniment...

Cathy lived in Nigeria for six months after college (nearly 20 years ago now) so thinks she knows all about it and that it's perfectly safe and she plans to go out and about at night and do her own thing. She's welcome to, but there's no way I'm doing that. The lawyers told us that the terms of their insurance forbid them to leave the premises at all, other than the convoyed trek between the hotel and the airport! No flight crew who comes to Lagos is allowed to leave their hotel either. My stepbrother (who used to fly for Emirates and now is a private pilot for some millionaire) says that when they stop here overnight, he has to ensure the plane has an armed guard on the tarmac for the whole time they're here!

I don't think Cathy and I are going to get on at all. We've worked together frequently over the past few years and I thought we were reasonable friends, but I realised while we were having dinner last night in the hotel restaurant that we most definitely are not. I'd already felt uneasy when she'd so happily gone off with our official and abandoned me back in the airport, and then when I was trying my best to make conversation while we ate, I had to accept that it is not going to work. She's one of those who loves the third world and getting down and dirty with the locals and local customs - and I'm not. I grew up with that for 20 years and now I'm a very happy first-worlder. There's a reason I left all that behind. I don't feel any excitement in risking my life and doing dodgy things. I have too many years of dread and terror behind me during wars and 'cold wars' in a variety of countries...

I suspect she's very disappointed it was me who came on this job. At dinner she made a point to say, "I thought Lisa was supposed to be doing this job. What happened to her?" - but not in a curious kind of way but more as though wanting to know why I'd barged in on it instead of Lisa, who's another Brit who loves third-world culture. As I say, they are welcome to it, but they have no idea what it's like to be trapped in it with little hope of escape.

I guess my bitterness is showing. I don't mean it to; it just seems I have a lot of unfinished baggage with Africa. And with first-worlders who swoop in thinking it's romantic and exciting and wonderful.

That said, what I really enjoyed about the plane ride (other than a family of five, Cathy and I were the only Europeans on board) was the African sense of community. When Westerners fly, usually it's a planeful of people in their individual bubbles. When these Nigerians flew, the plane felt like the village hall where everybody was unexpectedly meeting up and making new friends and becoming a family. I miss that community spirit, that openness and friendship.

Cathy and I spent most of today setting up in the arbitration room downstairs in the hotel. Fortunately everything went smoothly, despite the office sending us 15 laptops, only 11 laptop power cables, and only a single powerboard with 4 plug spaces in it! And Nigeria's not hot on electricity (the streets of Lagos don't even have lights). The hotel staff were marvellous, though, and organised (hopefully) uninterruptable power sources for us and sawed the plugs off a bunch of powerboards they managed to scare up from somewhere so that they'd fit into the uninterruptable sources, and with a bit of negotiation we managed to sort everything out. Everything worked perfectly when we tested it - and thank God I have the experience I do with the software, because Cathy turned out not to have a single clue about how it even works, let alone how to set it up, and the office had sent no instructions...

I've spent the late afternoon and evening going through all the documents to prepare glossaries and Eclipse dictionaries for tomorrow, and I feel relatively prepared. As prepared as I can be, I suppose. At least Lagos is in the same time zone as British Summer Time so there's no jetlag - what a relief! I worked out on the flight that it was my 33rd flight in the last nine months, 29 of which have been international. No wonder I feel so consistently exhausted.

I've decided to take the rest of the year off, after we finish this job. I can't remember if I mentioned that. I need to get my fitness back, and also my mental flexibility. The tireder I get, the more rigid I become, I've noticed, and that's not helpful in this job. I need to be very laidback and go-with-the-flow - as well as being a perfectionist. That said, I've abandoned my perfectionistic tendencies for this job. I'm not going to destroy myself to steno to my usual perfection. From the feedback I've had around the world this year I already produce a raw feed that's better than, apparently, anyone else, so I think I can reduce my usual standards and relax a little. We're going to be sitting very long hours to make up for losing two days this week to Eid celebrations, so it's going to be that much harder for me physically...

Okay, enough moaning. I'm in a lovely hotel room with working aircon (clunky and noisy, but that doesn't bother me at all), plenty of space, fantastic food, a heavenly shower...and that beats the majority of hotels I've stayed in this year, so I'm going to revel in the living conditions and hopefully get some time to enjoy the pool and the African sun during our two days off later this week.