The places I call home

“What,” you ask, “are the African hotels like?”  Answer: it depends.

I currently only have a few data points: Sheraton Lagos, Southern Sun Lagos, Sheraton Abuja, Sage Hotel in Benin City, Sheraton Tunis, and Le Meridien in Dakar.  You realize if you haven’t already that hotel stay quality is a combination of two factors: the physical hotel and the service.  The hotels aren’t amazing, but the service is where things break down.

None of you will probably read through this whole thing.  This goes back in part to my initial entries: most of the reason I write this is for my own archive, and you all get to look over my shoulder.  Sorry for the tome.

As for the physical hotels:

The Sheraton Lagos I've only seen at night because I stay there when connecting from Joburg.  The rooms snug but not London-tiny.  The hotel is dated in style, and the low ceiling in the entrance makes it feel a bit cramped, but it’s not too bad.  The rooms probably got a makeover about 2000 I would guess.  The one thing I can say is that their accounting system is a blast from the past.  They have to have a piece of paper from you, which they staple to a bill.  Also -- this is true everywhere -- you have to actually go to the front desk and check out, which I haven't done in the States in years.  Smoking is allowed in the lobby, with the expected results.

Sheraton Abuja was my home away from home for the first few weekends.  They are renovating the rooms in waves and I've seen people shudder when talking about the old ones.  So far my rooms have been nice and big and with good natural light, but they didn't renovate three key things: the bed, the bathrooms, and the A/C.  The bed seems like the first thing you fix, but they decided to put in fake hardwood floors instead.  As a result, the bed is almost as hard as the floor.  The bathrooms are basic white tile with poor workmanship, and the showers pulse hot and cold water – taking a shower is like playing hokey pokey.  As for the A/C, your room usually stays an OK temperature (~70 F), but the A/C does a poor job of dehumidifying.  Nice furniture otherwise, small (20"?) CRT TV.

The hotel is a big complex, which is nice because you have space and it is a bit peaceful despite being in the city.  There are three restaurant options (buffet with changing international theme, decent Italian, and a steakhouse that advertises its “unique American Cowboy” ambience), a small casino, squash and tennis courts, a club that locals come to, a lobby bar, and another bar.  Everything is old except the renovated rooms, though.  When you walk into the gym you would be forgiven for thinking the equipment has been thrown in there waiting for a garage sale, because it is closely packed and old.

Sage Benin City is my home base and is a shining testament to style over substance.  It only has 40 rooms or so.  The rooms are spacious enough and have essentially IKEA furniture – nice-looking birch, but cheap.  The bathrooms are not nice (basic dirty white tile, no attempt made to spruce it up) but that is different from not being decent.  The rooms all vary, and I specifically ask for two rooms I’ve found that have good sink lighting.  The A/C is the most effective of any of the hotels.  I have yet to have a room without ants, but they are the small kind and are content to scurry around the coffee supplies – for the sugar, I’m sure.  I had a bed one time where I found fleas, and from some red dots I suspect I have bedded with them several more times without actually seeing them.

Sage has a bar downstairs and most of the (African) guests like to hang out in there or next to the pool and drink and talk late, so the music is moderately loud till late.  The place is a very popular night spot on Thursdays, when locals also join.  As for food, I’m not sure which is worse: that there is a very limited selection or that it pretty bad.  They recently changed the limited menu to cut a few things and basically double the price on a lot of other things.

Neither of the treadmills in the gym have worked for a month or so.  It does have one of those multi-use machines, but the fly and leg machines are very sticky.

Despite all of this, Sage still feels like my proxy home.

Southern Sun Lagos is refreshing.  I found myself accidentally drinking tap water one night because I forgot I was in Nigeria.  The hotel architecture/materials legitimately deserve praise.  The gym is spacious and with nice equipment.  They have a buffet that is great, and truly stellar compared to the competition.  Part of its relative niceness can be attributed to the fact that it is the newest hotel of the bunch.  Like the Sheraton Lagos, I’ve only stayed over night while transferring.  It’s certainly the nicer hotel, but the Sheraton is significantly closer to the airport (10 min vs. about 30).

The Le Meridien President in Dakar is not as nice as the Sun, but very close and a great place for a weekend retreat.  It has a grand lobby with four marble pillars anchoring the six-floor atrium entrance.  It is situated right on the Atlantic coast at a bend, so it looks out on the ocean on two of the four sides.  Like the Sheraton Abuja, it has a bit of a footprint and room to roam.  It was a 20 min drive into Dakar city center, but the distance also meant it was tranquil.  My room was great by any measure.  Great, well-lit bathroom, good bed, nice furnishings, and a design that was somewhat modern without being minimalist.  The best part of my room, however, was the balcony, where I could watch the sun set from the fourth floor and listen to the waves exhaust themselves on the coast.  I spent plenty of time there.

My living/dining room in Dakar.  Now I just need some visitors.

While I think all of the above would be true of about any room there, mine did have a twist: I got a big suite, so my room had a second bathroom for guests, a living room, a dining room with an 8-person dinner table, huge display of fresh flowers, and a little area of mostly wasted space off the side with the mini bar.  All told it was probably 1200 sq ft.  I hardly used the extra space because my bedroom was big enough.

The Sheraton Tunis was slightly below the Le Meridien.  It had a great vantage point over the city.  The rooms were nice but nothing amazing.  The nice touch was that each had a balcony, just like the Le Meridien.  The pools (indoor and outdoor) and water features were outstanding, and the gym was also great except for the absence of free weights.  The restaurants and food were nice, except that smoking was permitted almost everywhere (which is the same as the rest of the country – you can smoke in the airport, for example).

One item that cuts across all of them except the Southern Sun and Sheraton Tunis is poor fit and finish.  It looks like they don’t bother to tape before they paint, caulk in bathrooms is poorly applied, etc.  Even if someone designs a great building, African construction seems to dictate that it will be like a nice façade on barn.

Service:

Service in Nigeria is definitely the most frustrating part of hotel life here.  When I first got here I had a conversation with my Nigerian colleague and in the process he mentioned that there is some stigma to serving someone because the cultural implication is that the other person is better.  I can’t speak to the cause, but the effect is certainly visible.

Part of it probably comes from never having experienced a hotel with good service themselves.  The Nigerians who work at a hotel are never going to stay in a good hotel for comparison purposes.  However, this doesn’t excuse the fact that service is mind-numbingly slow.  You expect to follow up on anything at least once before it is done.  This usually has to be done in person because both I and they usually have trouble understanding each other on the phone.

Workers also can't process anything out of the ordinary.  If you try to customize anything you see the guy's brain circuits frying.  This is most applicable to restaurants, such as asking for a side dish other than the default.

I will say that at the Sage, where service is the worst, the manager is a South African and he's there most of the time and zealously wants good customer service.  He’s great to lean on, and he is slowly building up the clueless staff and instituting good practices.  I will also say that I think smiling and saying hi to everyone day in and day out has meant that people like me, making them more willing to help out.

Service is best at the Southern Sun, where they have done a good job all the way around.

Service was much better in Dakar and Tunis than the Nigerian average.  Not sure how much of this is cultural and how much is tied to the fact that Dakar/Tunis have more experience with tourists and the hotels are just nicer.  There could be another factor: hotels in Lagos/Abuja are always full, so there isn’t a real need to provide great service because your hotel will be full provided it meets minimum Western standards of cleanliness.

Addendum:
A Four Points by Sheraton just opened in Lagos, and it was immediately completely full.

"So, how 'bout that weather?"

They say that two people who have nothing to talk about always have the weather. I am going to devote an entire entry to this much maligned subject.

The weather here is better than I anticipated, mostly because it feels cooler than I expected. It is certainly hot and humid, but does not seem as bad as Houston.

Victim of the a flood-filled pothole.

Solid cloud cover almost every day helps the coolness. Recently the cloud cover has been so low that flights were canceled because the planes cannot land in Benin City. The confluence of winds from the Sahara in the north and the Atlantic to the southwest means lots of atmospheric turmoil. It also means afternoon showers about every other day.

It has rained harder some days and some days have been dry, but I would be willing to bet on rain about every other day. The tin roof on the building I’m working in accentuates the sound of the rain, so a small shower sounds like a deadly hailstorm and a real hailstorm would likely sound like the apocalypse.

The cloudy sky also means that when the rains have finished for the day and the sun is starting to sink, a break in the clouds can mean a beautiful sunset. Bits of sunset coloring ricochet through the holes in the cloud cover. This, combined with the end of the daily rain showers, give a feeling that there is again peace in the world after the dark and dreary rain.

We were ready to say "I told you so" as soon as the engine stopped, but we made it through -- despite the water sloshing against the doors.

The routine rain and the nearly complete lack of drainage in the city mean that puddles in the road should be given names. This is because they approximate the size of lakes and never fully disappear. I have never seen the bottom of a certain pothole that we must cross every day leaving my hotel; it covers the entire road, is about a foot deep in spots, and has shrunk at times but has always been replenished by rains before drying up.

Dakar: the sights

In no particular order:
One of my first experiences was getting on to the elevator Friday evening with two guys in traditional African dress. One whipped out a cell phone camera while the other threw his arm around me, then they swapped. Um, sure, I guess so. They must have really wanted the picture, too, because I was coming from a run and was nice and nasty.

The TV selection was informative. French TV, as you might imagine, plus the staples like CNN and S1-3 (the sports channels over here). There was also Al-Jazeera and some Saudi station. (While flipping through I saw an ad for “Live Free or Die Hard” advertised just “Die Hard 4.” Intentional?) I did not see the Christian televangelist channel that’s always on in Nigeria. One of the French channels was anime dubbed over in French, which I found very funny. 

Beautiful sunset over the rocky coast.

While running on a treadmill I saw an Old El Paso taco seasoning ad. It was a good motivator for my run.

Dinner my first night was grilled fish and chips. It was like Nigeria – whole fish – but seasoned instead of sauced, and I liked it better. In Nigeria they give you a bowl of water and you eat the fish with your hands. There was no bowl here, so I proceeded with fork/knife, which is much harder.

I went through a food market that was very local. Lots of stalls of fresh veggies/fruit lying everywhere with hordes of flies. In the inner circles was the meat market. It looked mostly shut for the day, because there were only a few slabs of meat lying out (no ice or anything, many more flies) and there were fish and shrimp heads all over the floor.

Guess what I found?

For lunch on Saturday I popped into a shop to get a schwarma lunch. I changed to a burger since that’s what everyone else was getting, and this was not a traditional American burger. It was on a fluffy dinner roll, with one half mashed in and filled with mayo. The fries were put directly on the burger and lathered in ketchup, and then the meat and a fried egg were added. The guy added extra oil to the griddle halfway through because it obviously wasn’t greasy enough. The bill: $2

As I was driving I saw an imam teaching really young kids under a palm tree. In some places the kids are given to the imam and must beg for their own food. Not sure if that’s what this was, but they weren’t dressed too well.

Goree Island was a highlight. The official attraction is a slave house where a lot of slaves are said by some to have been held before being shipped to the New World. There is a lot of controversy over just how many came through here, and one guy really just pushed hard enough and loud enough to make it a tourist attraction and now it is a UNESCO site. After seeing it, I tend to side with those who think the number was on the small end if for no other reason than the place is really small.

 Life out in the open.

The highlight for me, however, was life on the island. It’s small – maybe 1km long and 0.5 km wide. In most places, people live in one place and work in another, and tourists rarely go into living areas. This island is so small that life is lived in the open (plus the heat probably makes the indoors unbearable). The colors were vibrant: houses painted red and green stood against the blue ocean and sky, dark people contrasted with white sand. Dirt here seemed to enhance the character rather than drown it. I had left my big camera, and this was probably the single place in my journeys where I wanted it most. Kids play in the streets, the whole island turned out for the community soccer game in the square, some teens sat on a corner playing the guitar and singing. Because of the number of tourists who come here, I had “cover” to sit in back alleys or on the side of the soccer field and watch undisturbed, though not unnoticed. I had to fight off two would-be tour guides to gain my peace while there, but I found exactly what I was looking for.

Dakar: the people

This past weekend I headed to Dakar.  Overall it was a great time.  There was just one blight to my time there: the people I encountered.

OK, so some of that is for shock value.  It’s only partially true to begin with, and I don’t impute it to everyone in Senegal because my small sample set consists almost entirely of people targeting me as a tourist.  However, it is mostly true within that sample set.

Soccer in the Goree square.

Let’s get the bad out of the way so that it ends in sunshine.  “Accosted” might be the best word to describe the approach of the Senegalese I met to trying to sell/get something from me, and they are much less straightforward than elsewhere.  Most other places they all perk up when a white guy goes by, but if you tell them “no” they will entreat you a little (“just a look!”) and then lay it to rest.  Not here.  I was physically pulled by people trying to get me into their shops.  I was followed for blocks on multiple occasions.  I was asked why I was being so rude (a guilt trip -- all I was doing was saying “no thanks”).  When one person opened a conversation by saying that I shouldn’t talk to anyone else in the market because “others push, but I don’t push,” I immediately knew I was in trouble.  People start up normal conversations that I’m sure they would have been willing to carry on forever with the sole purpose of asking for money or a sale from their new friend.

There were really two things that aggravated me most about this approach:

1) Their numerous plays to conversation/wanting to be a friend/wanting to learn about you meant that you were very suspicious of any conversation, which poisons things for me because chatting with the locals is the fastest way to get the inside scoop.

2) Their limitless persistence and the unlimited guilt trip ploys made it come across like they believe that the money was theirs and that I was wronging them by not giving it.  (I don’t think they really think that, but that’s what you might think if you had no context.)

 The first instance was going to dinner the first night.  The place I initially aimed for was closed, and a guy met me and offered to take me to another good place.  With a dozen open-air places that all looked the same, I figured that it was at least better than random chance.  I thought he was with the restaurant, but he was actually on his own and sold art.  Basically he directed people there and they let him hawk art to their customers.  Initially I invited him to join me for dinner since he seemed nice enough and I wasn’t going to be talking to anyone else otherwise.  He got a beer, I got dinner, and we did have an interesting conversation.  He worked in that he was an artist and the got his works, and when I told him I wasn’t planning to take anything home he just made one more attempt.  He got up a couple of times to talk to others who came in, but otherwise we talked.  In the end he told me he needed cab money home, and while I didn’t buy that at all, he did end up with a beer and “cab money” in exchange for being a nice conversation partner and answering my questions about Senegal.

The first bad instance was on the ferry to Goree Island when a guy came up to me and asked me if I had been to Senegal before, saying I looked familiar.  Uh huh.  He wanted to be my guide and I told him I’d prefer to go it alone.  His mistake in asking if I’d been to Senegal before, which I could answer with a declarative no.

The next guy caught me coming off the boat – or more correctly he was the most persistent of the many people who did.  When I told him no, he followed me and asked how I could come to the island and not want a guide for the history.  When I answered that I came specifically to observe alone rather than engage and take a tour, he was not placated.  His mistake was in asking about my internal motivation, something which he can ridicule but cannot question.

The next guy caught me as I was leaving the ferry back on the mainland and was the best of them all.  He was from Freetown and a native English speaker, and started the conversation with a “hey remember me?” but was smart enough to use a generic “back there at the dock, I was talking to the guy in the orange shirt” type answer.  He professed to want to walk and talk to me because he rarely had the chance to talk to other English speakers.  After telling him very politely that no offense but I wanted to be alone, he continued to walk and talk for about another 10 blocks.  At one point he asked what was wrong: “See that point where I told you goodbye?  That was there, this is here, and you’re still with me.”  He kept telling me why he liked talking to people and then skillfully shifted the conversation to “…and I like to get to really know people and then hear their heart, and talk about our situations…” and then in some way that was truly artful threw in a request for money without absolutely destroying the moment he had created.  I had to give him props, even if not money.  His only mistake was his opening line, which made me want to get rid of him as soon as we met.

The final guy was in a market.  A guy followed me and after I repeatedly said I was not going to buy anything, he told me he would take me to where they make everything, so I decided I was willing to watch that and give him a few bucks for it.  When I tried to leave the guy who had repeated a dozen times that he was “not pushy like the others” pushed really hard (despite the money I had already given).  This time it was my mistake: I believed that if I repeatedly and clearly said upfront that I wouldn’t buy anything, they would actually listen and wouldn’t push as hard.  I ended up getting rid of him only when I left the entire market and walked across a boulevard.

With that out of the way, I enjoyed talking with the first art guy at the restaurant and had another great conversation at the end of my Goree Island stay.  I was sitting under a tree in the main plaza just watching everything, and this guy asked if I was OK.  I told him yes and that I was just enjoying it, and we ended up talking.  When he pointed to a shop and said he owned it the defenses came up, but this time we really did just talk – about the economy, politics, and life in Senegal.  Refreshing.

One thing the last guy said was that tourist season didn’t really start until October.  Combined with my own observations that I was the only white guy at the restaurant and in the market, I imagine some of what I experienced was a combination of extra-desperate sellers and no other tourists to share the heat.

A couple other stories:

There is a last story about the art guy from the first night.  I invited him to come sit with me and have a beer and he did order one – a quart beer – but then put it on the ground and hid it behind a piece of his art.  He explained that since Senegal is a mostly Muslim country, it was better for him to drink it discreetly.  Later he took it, went behind a building, and drank the whole thing pretty quickly.  When he returned he started talking with someone else as he took out paper and something else and rolled either a cigarette or a joint.  I was upwind and so I couldn’t tell which, but it’s not like they don’t sell cigarettes on the street.  Either way, I was amused that he had to drink his beer in hiding but could smoke openly.

The guy he was talking to was also my waiter.  He didn’t speak much English (French is the first language there).  He introduced himself as “Ass,” and when I looked surprised he turned around where he pointed confirmed that his name was Ass.  Obviously not the first time someone has been nonplussed by his name.

Power to the People: micro-green and power to the poor

I was reminded of my conversation with the Nigerian professor about how green power makes even more practical sense for developing countries than it does advanced ones:
http://www.economist.com/node/16909923?story_id=16909923

Better late than never

Here are a few odds and ends that were in my mind at one point but never made it to the blog.

Religion:
I went to the Abuja national church to take a look inside. The most prominent interior feature is also the most interesting: it is long and narrow, but rather than having the pulpit/stage at one end, it is smack dab in the middle. Between the organ and choir stand on one side and the media overlook on the other (not kidding), this means that the congregation’s seating is split in two. While the preaching may be just as good from the back as from the front, no one wants the wrong side of that view for an entire service. The solution? The center stage rotates, just like a big rotating concert stage at a Super Bowl performance.

I also found out that, unlike the mosque, there is no full-time pastor. This means the national church is really like a conference center – nothing happens unless someone comes to town or rents it out.

There is a new Nigerian working with me. Last week as we were talking some and getting to know each other he told me incredulously that he had met an American who was not a Christian. An American who isn’t a Christian? How could this be?

For context, remember that Nigeria, at least the southern half, is highly and very openly Christian. I am continually amazed at the number of churches (usually with really long and uplifting names), the death announcements that include notices of multiple church events in the burial ceremonies, the number of people who go around reading devotionals, the Christian columns in newspapers, and the political talk laced with the appropriate references to God.

Corruption:
I have been happily surprised that I have never been explicitly shaken down for money, though there have been plenty of oblique references. Airport workers have seen things in my bag (namely South African Airways biz-class packets that are World Cup themed) and joke about me bringing it for them. I’m sure the answer they want is “sure,” but I haven’t given anything up yet. A lady at a screening post asked me if I brought her any foreign coins. Immigration is always slow, but I haven’t had anyone hassle me to the point where I thought they were holding me up just for money.

At one airport screening the lady wanted to take away my razor blades. They are normal safety blades and I have flow in/out for 2 months with them. I knew it was made up and I’m sure she did, too, so I just argued for about 30 seconds and she relented. I definitely think she was hoping I would pay her to let me keep them.

That hasn’t been the case for everyone, though. When my project manager first arrived a guy was helping him through the airport and told him it was time to pay the “protocol tax” of ~$20, which doesn’t exist. The PM, suspicious but not knowing how to argue against it, insisted on getting a receipt. When the guy took the money but didn’t give a receipt, my PM made a fuss and two guards came over, at which point the other man was very apologetic and claimed there had been a miscommunication.

Culture:
One thing I dislike about this place is that everyone wants to sell you something/do a service for a tip. Props to them for aggressively trying to make money rather than begging, but I don’t want any of it and so I automatically say no when people start approaching me.

Yesterday as I arrived in Senegal a porter tried to take my bags for me. I wouldn’t let go. (My immediate reason: I had no CFA francs, was not going to tip the guy in big USD, and didn’t figure he would have any use for Nigerian naira.) We had an actual tug of war for a second of two before he gave up. Later there was a lady in line ahead of me about to put her bags through an x-ray machine while talking on a cell. Since she only had one hand free the guy came and grabbed her other bag. She was obviously peeved and was telling the guy off, but he stood there with a steel grip, shuffled two feet, and put the bag on the belt for her. Valiant effort, but no tip.

People here are also much more direct. The first day I was here someone was joking with me and said that if I ate too much of something I would “end up like her,” referring to a rotund lady also in the office. The other day an airport screener said she “liked my nose” out of the blue, and this was the same day someone in the office asked where the other McKinsey guy, “the fat one,” was this week.

They also openly talk about stereotypes of the different ethnicities.   For example: how do you know if a Igbo is really dead?  Wave a coin over his nose and see if he still doesn't move.

I commented once before on the newspapers and their contents, but I’ll also comment on how ubiquitous they are. Since internet is much less common and because Nigerian news isn’t exactly the focus of Yahoo.com, newspapers thrive here.

Comms:
I communicate here using a Nigerian cell phone and a Nigerian 3G data card for my computer. It is usually faster than hotel land connections. A 3GB/1 month computer plan costs 10,000 NGN, which is about $66. Not cheap.

Bad comms are a real pain. The internet seems to frequently slow way down between 7-10pm, perhaps because lots of people get on. This means, for example, that I frequently can’t call back to the U.S. using a VOIP number unless I’m plugged into a landline on the weekend. This week there was a day when there was no data service at all – on the bberry or the computer. I have never had a connection anywhere outside of SA, landline or other, that approximates the speeds we take for granted in the U.S.

The rest:
Sometimes I want locals to take a picture for me, and I have learned to very carefully explain how to use the camera. Cell phones are ubiquitous, but people here are frequently intrigued – and stymied – by a digital camera.

This also ties in to something else: a lady at work told me that one of her friends wanted to take a picture with me, and would I agree. I couldn’t really say no, but I just had bad visions of what would happen with the photos. It was an even bigger deal when they brought in someone else with a real camera and external flash to take the picture. Then I realized that it was an old Leica film camera. I was mightily relieved to know that the pictures, though bland, weren’t promptly going all over Nigerian Facebook.

Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and crime

After chatting with some Zimbabwean colleagues, I may take a road trip through there. Americans always hear about Zimbabwe during discussions of inflation or race-based land grabs. However, these two said that “Bob” as they call him did make a couple of crucial right moves initially. He invested a lot in education, and Zimbabwe consequently has one of the highest literacy rates on the continent. When I asked about the wisdom of a white American driving around Zimbabwe, they said that the thing to remember in Zim is that murders are targeted and by the government. There is crime, of course, but the general crime rate is significantly lower than in Johannesburg.

I think this is similar to Nigeria. I’ve decided that while Nigeria certainly has its dangers, they are more targeted and less random. The Niger Delta is certainly dangerous for an expat oil worker with a regular schedule, but even there the violence has died down significantly in the past two years. We no longer drive around with a guard with an AK-47 in Benin City, and I would feel safer walking around the Benin City or Abuja streets (in a smart manner) than in a lot of Joburg. (Side note: this was not always the case. See the first section of the Wikipedia write up on the Lagos international airport for a sense. Note also that the article is uncited, so I don’t know the veracity, but it makes for a great story.)

Part of the reason I feel safe in Benin City is that as a white guy I’m very rare. That might sound odd, because I certainly stick out and would be juicy to anyone looking for a white guy to kidnap, but since there aren’t a lot of us in Benin City I am also banking on the fact that the experienced criminals on the hunt are in Lagos or Abuja where the pickings (and the wealth) is better or in the Niger where the community as a whole is somewhat hostile. Most people I see are probably too surprised to jump into action and rob me, so they stare or say “hey whitey.” OK, so I don’t want to test that hypothesis, but I would like to think that is usually the case.

Think about three types of criminals:
1. The disgruntled group making a political statement
2. The individual who sees it as an easy way to make money
3. The professionals

1. This is the Niger delta kidnapper. I wouldn’t want to be in his hands, because you are a pawn to make a statement. He probably can’t be fully satisfied by cash, and the people who can give him what he wants (the government) is slow, highly political, and not something I would want to count on.

2. This guy is also dangerous. He needs some cash, but he may well get nervous and shoot you. This is most of the Joburg criminals I think.

3. These guys might be the hardest to avoid, but you probably have the best chance of coming out unscathed but with empty pockets. They’re after money and know that they don’t get money without a live person. (They are not yet brutal like in Latin America.) This is what you worry about in Lagos or Abuja.

The partner on my project, who has worked here for six years or so, had two more things to add. First, Nigerian criminals know that touching a white guy raises the stakes (and the investigative forces brought to bear) a lot, so it’s a deterrent. Second, as only a consultant would say, the Nigerian professionals “understand the concept of client lifetime value” and would prefer to let you go and rob you another day than kill the cash cow.

One other note on Kenya on the topic of crime: apparently it is the weapons smuggling hub for E Africa. This sort of makes sense because there is a lot of legitimate business in which to hide it, and its proximity to Somalia and the Middle East make it a good crossroads.

The Zims also provided another perspective on xenophobia in South Africa. South Africa has problems with local blacks committing violent crimes against immigrants from other countries. One guy said that when he serves South African clients, there is usually some tension when interacting with black South Africans.

Moving on from Animal Plant…

With the “wow, animals” out of the way, a couple of other things deserve some space.

Kenyan immigration was refreshing. It moved quickly, their equipment all worked, etc. Nairobi and Kenya as a whole were much calmer than Nigeria. Traffic lanes mean something. Ad hoc shops aren’t built out to the very edge of roads. Traffic is generally better. There is still trash on the streets, but not on the same scale. Going out on a limb, I would guess this is partially due to a better government, but also reflects three factors. 1) Kenya has a much lower population density, 2) Nairobi has grown rapidly, but not in the explosive manner of Lagos, 3) there is a deeper British influence that left more order, better infrastructure, and brought foreign direct investment sooner.

Do a balloon safari if you ever go. I was a little skeptical – sounds like an expensive tourist junket for those “roughing it” in $1000/night safari lodges. However, it was amazing. Completely smooth ride, mostly silent, and we did everything from go way up to skim 10 ft above scattering wildebeest. Great way to watch the sunrise. There was a touch of the extravagant afterward: we got a champagne breakfast in the bush before heading back. I wouldn’t do it over and over, but now I realize how they get some of those Discovery channel shots panning over all the animals.

I should get paid for this kind of advertising.

If you are a balloon pilot in Kenya, your day looks something like this: leave at 5:30am to get ready, take tourists up at 7:30am, land about 9am, have a crazy champagne brunch that finishes about 10am while local labor packs up your balloon, go back and assume a couple of hours of maintenance/checkups, and your day is over by noon.

Ballooning has to be done early in order to avoid the buildup of thermals and winds. A balloon is powerless to move out of a thermal, so if it hits one it can just go up up up. Gusty winds can also be problematic, particularly on landing. The balloon is also more efficient in the cold mornings since the basic principle is the difference in temperature (and thus density) of the air inside vs. outside.

Plastic is ruinous for the bush. Our camp was near a Masai village. In the village there was trash strewn everywhere, 90% of which was plastic. They have an incinerator that can handle plastic, but it’s noxious. Like many other places I’ve visited outside the city, there isn’t a great way to dispose of trash and there is plenty of space, so it gets dumped wherever. Plastic doesn’t go away. Quite sobering.

A bit of the Masai village.  Most of the inhabitants still live in mud-spackled homes set in a circle with a fence of tightly-growing brush around them.

Animals are big tourism money, and high stakes mean people game the system. The reserve I visited sits on the Tanzania/Kenya border. When wildebeest are in the area and waffling on where to go, each side will set controlled burns. As soon as a rain hits the cleared and fertile ground, fresh grass pops up and the wildebeest start wandering that way. The other side then does the same, etc. Also, we were told that Masai Mara manages the park to inflate the lion population; this person told us there was a time when wardens shot three wildebeest all together to be food for the lions who were having trouble finding game. The tourists all thought they had a great find – three lion kills right next to each other! – but it was really more like zoo feeding time.

Somewhere here there's a bad pun about our ground-level drives being punctuated by an aerial overview.

A girl who has been doing research there on and off for a couple of years gave some good insights on the locals. Cash comes from tourism, but – like many other places I have seen – doesn’t get saved. She talked about a guy who made cash during the tourist season, used it on a motorcycle that wasn’t really necessary and worked for 6 months, and then needed cash when his kid got sick.

Her research was into vultures, and she said that as they look at flight patters of vultures they appear to know exactly where park boundaries are. They will fly around in a park, then gain altitude before zipping over to another park area and flying around there.

London (again)

This weekend it was back to London. I met a number of old friends, a couple new ones, and had a great weekend overall. This time I ended up staying down the street from where the Dutch government in exile set up shop during WWII.

I am obviously getting something right, because two people stopped me to ask me for directions. Encouraging, even if it is very obvious to me that I don’t look like a Brit.

On Saturday I hit Borough Market in the morning with two others. It’s a big farmers market with high-quality stuff and, most importantly, lots of samples. Somehow our request for a sample of a guy’s sangria was taken as a request for full glasses, so we accidentally ended up with (and paying for) plastic cups of so-so sangria at 11am.

That evening was Last Night of BBC Proms. Proms is a summer concert series with a concert almost every night for several months. You can buy seated tickets, but the real draw is the 5 pound standing tickets that you can get at the door. “Promming” is a proper part of the London vocabulary – and you can ask multiple people to go with you to the Prom without creating a scandal. Last Night is a big event that culminates in the playing of “Rule, Britannia” and the crowds waving flags. It is shown in satellite locations around the country. It’s close to the equivalent of the Washington, D.C. July 4th concert. Tickets for Last Night are first given out to people who have been to at least 5 other concerts, so getting a ticket would have required getting in line 8 hrs or so before the doors opened. I opted instead to picnic in the park just outside the venue where we could hear but not see what was going on, and it was just about perfect.

I find it a bit difficult to “read” a London neighborhood quickly or figure out when I am leaving one and entering another. I think this is because in most other places the architecture/street feel will change as the neighborhood shifts, but in inner London most everything has a similar stone façade.

I also noticed that you don’t see people walking around with Bluetooth headsets like you see a lot in the U.S. For a business town like London this sort of surprises me.

Why watch it on TV when you can experience it?

I usually do my research before I travel to new places in order to get the most out of it – understand the basics of the history, people, geography, and some about what the sights are and what to expect. I haven’t done that on my weekends here, and for my weekend in Kenya that might have been a net positive.

Wildebeest converging on a river crossing.

I went to Kenya two weekends ago and it was mind-blowing. One of the guys I work with is Kenyan and was going back to visit his family, and he helped me and some of the others on the team set up a safari in Masai Mara. We flew in to Nairobi and then transferred to a bush plane to go out about an hour to an airstrip. It was definitely a dirt strip, but when we left on Sunday the place looked like the Heathrow of the Savannah – it was crowded, and you had to be aware lest you get a cloud of dust in your face from prop wash.

Posing for me.

I was imagining coming in and driving around looking for critters, like driving around the ranch and hoping to find something. However, we caught the end of the wildebeest migration, and the place was chock full of everything. Thousands upon thousands of wildebeest stretching over the landscape, sometimes grazing, sometimes making their trek in single file. From the air you could see the black dots go for miles, and at river crossings they looked like black particles of sand going through the neck of an hourglass. It gives “cattle on 10,000 hills” a new meaning.

On the way from the airstrip to our lodge we saw just about every big animal, to the point where our driver was trying to pull us away so we could get to the lodge.

The family.

I’m still pretty incredulous. We saw everything except a leopard, meaning we saw a very rare black rhino. Lions were everywhere; we saw them on every drive, sometimes multiple times. We saw them attempt to hunt twice, saw them eating two kills, and lots of sleeping. We saw so many, from so close, and doing so much sleeping (or playing around), that you have to remind yourself that they could make mincemeat of you if they decided to take an interest.

I had trouble taking a nap one day because some monkeys were having fun throwing fruits out of the tree next to my tent and making a racket, and banded mongoose liked to use my porch as a thoroughfare.

We had a great guide, meaning he was a fun guy. He was a local Masai, and it was interesting to hear his practical, local knowledge of the animals. However, he wasn’t a naturalist, and that was a big hole in the experience.

Peekaboo.

I clarified “great guide,” because if I heard that I would assume the guy was very good at finding animals. Now, we did see lots of just about everything, but you quickly realize that most animals can be spotted just by driving around because they are everywhere. The best strategy for finding those “must see” animals like lions? Go looking for other vehicles. Seriously. No tracking involved, just look for two or three stopped vehicles and you know you’ve hit something. Lots of people staying outside and driving in do so in the ubiquitous white Toyota vans which are particularly easy to spot.

Hippos are some stinky, nasty animals. We saw several pits where hippos just sat in the muddy water all day. They do everything – everything – in the stagnant water, so you know when you are near hippos by smell rather than by sight. However, they look like they are enjoying wallowing in it so much that you are tempted to join them. Besides, “wallowing” is such a great word.

As you drive around Masai Mara you will see a good number of trees all by themselves, with nothing other than grass for 1/4-1/2 km. Other places they are in strips or clumps. I’m not sure how this happens, though I would assume it has a lot to do with water. Regardless, for some reason I was captivated by the lone tree, and consider it a sort of motif for the trip.

Obama in Africa

I’m not in the States, but it sounds like Obama is slipping in the polls. If you took a poll over here in Africa I don’t think you would find the same thing. There is a prominent poster as you leave the Abuja airport declaring a presidential candidate to be “the Nigerian Obama.” (There's no big health system to revise, so what exactly would that mean? He would get an Igbo and a Hausa to have a beer together with him?) In Kenya I saw people wearing Obama t-shirts, and you could buy Obama curios in a Nairobi market – though the latter may say more about U.S. tourist shopping predilections than Kenyan political leanings.

Impulse shopping from the car window

There are always people walking between cars and selling things at intersections or congested points where traffic slows down.  It's a pretty nifty system because you can buy a lot of key things on the road, and even some not-so-commonplace items.  The common items include starch balls (fufu, semivola, etc. which are mostly varieties of pounded yam), crackers, CDs/DVDs, plantains, cell phone accessories, sunglasses, juices and shelf milk.  This morning there was a particularly good selection, including Merriam Webster dictionaries, fire extinguishers, and steering wheel covers.

(Almost) everything I've learned about Nigeria in one story

This was forwarded to me today (by a Nigerian) and the governance part/cultural commentary is funny because it is so true.  The only difference is that in real life there would be more tribal politics. 


Once upon a time, when Baba (Obasanjo) was in office as the president, he got an invitation from the Queen to come for a visit to England. After all the banquets and carriage rides and what not, Baba finally got the quiet moment he had craved all day in order to have a one on one chat with her majesty. After the usual small talk, Baba quickly popped the question. He asked her what the secret to her success was. You know Nigerians, we think everything is a secret…the President’s health status is a secret, his whereabouts is a secret, reports of the various panels of enquiry set up by govt to investigate the causes of different crises around the country are kept secret, we even have secret registries in every government agency in d country. Maybe we are a secretive people, we love secrets.

Anyway, back to our story. So Baba asked for the SECRET to the Queens’s success and she told him that she relies on her people a lot and therefore she makes certain that only the intelligent get to positions of authority.

She decided to show him exactly what she meant and so she phoned Tony Blair. "Now listen carefully, Mr. Obasanjo. I'm going to ask Mr. Blair a question to determine his intelligence.”

Queen: "Hello Mr. Blair, I have a question for you: your mother has a child, and your father has a child. This child is not your brother and is not your sister. Who is he?"

Tony Blair replied instantly, "It's ME Your Majesty!"

Queen: "Correct! Thank you and goodbye"

"You see Mr. Obasanjo?" said the Queen.

"Yes”, he replied “and thanks a lot, I'll definitely be using that!"

Once back in Nigeria, he decided that he had doubts about Mantu’s level of intelligence and he decided to test him. He arranged a meeting with him and asked him:

"Mantu, I have a question for you; your mother and father have a child. The child is not your brother and is not your sister, who is he?."

Mantu thinks...... and thinks………and thinks, and finally says, "Em, Mr. President, you must give me more time to think about it."

And Mr. Obasanjo gave him 2 weeks to come up with an answer. That afternoon, Mantu called a meeting of all his aides, advisers and assistants to discuss the question, but NOBODY knew the answer. So he decided to take it to the floor of the Senate. After a heated debate the Senate President thought it wise to clear out the gallery and go into a closed session as he believed the revelations that might result could be damaging to the family and reputation of the distinguished Senator Mantu.

After about two hours of deliberations, the house decided to set up an ad hoc committee to look into the matter and report back to it in ten days. The committee was given the following terms of reference:

1. To come up with a complete family tree of the entire Mantu clan
2. To pay a courtesy call to the traditional ruler of Mantu’s village and the State Governor
3. To interview all living relatives of Senator Mantu
4. To determine if Sen. Mantu’s dad had any extramarital affairs
5. To determine the DNA composition of Sen. Mantu (in Germany of course or Saudi)

On completion of its assignment, the committee was to submit its report to the Senate which would then pass it on to the Senate committee on special duties. This committee would then review the report of the ad hoc committee and come up with a draft “white paper” (whatever that means). This draft “white paper” would then be brought back to the Senate and on approval would be passed on to the President through Senator Mantu.

The Ad-hoc committee then submitted its budget which, of course, was kept SECRET, but included funds for;

a) The immediate purchase of Land Cruiser jeeps for each of the 12 members of the committee. The jeeps would be used to travel to Mantu’s village because, as you know, Nigerian roads are bad and Mantu’s village is remote.
b) Air tickets (first class of course) and hotel accommodation in Jos for committee members and their numerous aides. They’d stay at the Hill-station hotel and drive to Mantu’s village in the morning.
c) Air tickets (again first class) to Germany and back, and hotel accommodation (five star) for everybody.
d) Estacodes and hazard allowances
e) Logistics
f) Miscellaneous

Even though the budget was kept secret, you can easily come up with the figure by taking the actual estimate of the above list and multiply by ten. You’ll only run into problems when you get to the final two items (logistics & miscellaneous) , as these are usually added to cover for all the people that need to be “settled” in order to ensure that everything goes smoothly. Therefore the figures have the tendency of varying widely and so it can’t really be predicted.

Anyway, the money was released and the committee started its assignment in earnest. They finished within the time frame that was stipulated in their terms of reference and they prepared a voluminous report which was to be presented at the senate at plenary. But on the d-day when the chairman of the committee was about to make the presentation, a distinguished senator from the Southern part of the country raised a “point of order”. He argued that the committee was illegal because its composition was lopsided in favor of a certain region in the country. He pointed out that of the 12 members; seven were from the North and only five from the South. Not to be outdone, another senator, this time from the North, raised a “point of order” on the “point of order” that was raised by the senator from the South. He argued that since the committee’s assignment was primarily to investigate the lineage of Senator Mantu (who was from the North), they needed
senators who knew the terrain, who understood the culture of the people and their language.

More points of order followed and after a while the Senate President decided to put a stop to it by subjecting it to a voice vote.

And thus he announced, “All those in favor of the committee being considered legal and thus go ahead to present its report say “AYE””. And the house responded accordingly.

And then he asked again, “All those not in favor of the committee being considered legal and thus should not go ahead to present its report say “NAY””. And the house responded accordingly.

Unfortunately for Mantu, the “NAYs had it” and thus the report was never presented. Now Mantu had a really big problem, because the President was waiting for an answer and he had run out of time. So in one last effort, he decided to phone his very good friend Jerry Rawlings who had always sounded intelligent to Mantu and thus might have the answer to this really difficult question.
"Jerry, your mother and father have a child. The child is not your brother and is not your sister, who is he?."

Jerry answered immediately. "Hey, Mantu, It's me of course, you dumb Nigerian!"
Mantu couldn’t believe his luck and so he rushed to Aso Rock Villa, his motorcade of five cars moving at top speed with sirens blaring. Ordinary Nigerians going about their normal businesses scampered out of the way. When they finally arrived their destination, Mantu literarily ran all the way to the President's office.

"Mr. President, Mr. President”, he called out, breathing heavily. “I know who he is.”
Obasanjo: “Good, so tell me”
Mantu: “It’s Jerry Rawlings Sir! In fact, when he revealed the SECRET to me, I started to see the resemblance between us"

Obasanjo: "Jerry Rawlings ko, Jerry Gana ni. You are such a stupid senator. Olodo rakpata! I'll make sure you don’t return to office after this term. Stupid man, the correct answer is TONY BLAIR!"

And that’s how Mantu never returned to the Senate even though he supported the President’s third term agenda.
This is how Africa is governed.

How do you know I'm not a Londoner?

My shirt and pants aren't dark enough, my shoes aren't pointy enough,
my hair isn't long enough or coiffed enough, my tie isn't narrow
enough, and I'm not wearing a sweater or utility jacket.

Despite that, someone who is obviously even less of a Londoner asked
me for directions.

Wads of bills are still the way to go

If the possibility of getting your credit card info stolen isn’t motivation enough not to use it, the hassle of attempting to do so should be.

Nigeria is almost solely a cash society, and I’m willing to accept that. I used my corporate Amex at a restaurant in the Hilton (one of two locations I’ve found that take credit at all) and it took 15 minutes. They ran my card, took it to the front to call and verify it wasn’t fraudulent and be sure I could pay, ran it there and had me sign, walked back to the restaurant to close the bill there, and on and on. I walked with my card the whole time because I wasn’t going to let it run off without me. Next time I fork over the cash.

Debt collecting at scale

Arik and Aero, the top two airlines in Nigeria, were grounded by the
airport authority yesterday for failing to pay airport fees. The same
thing happened for a day in June.

They were back flying today, though with some big delays. I'm glad
they resolved it, because otherwise I would not have been able to get
to Lagos to connect to Kenya this weekend. We got to the airport and
saw the plane, which usually doesn't even arrive until the scheduled
departure time. When we got into the terminal they were already
boarding, so we hurredly got our boarding passes and followed. The
security guard who saw me hurry said I "benefitted from the delay,"
and coupled with the pilot's apology I realized that we had boarded
what was supposed to have been the 1pm flight. It was delayed 4 hrs
and coincided with our flight's scheduled departure time. Either the
check-in people didn't notice or didn't care, but I'm thankful either
way.

The airport "strike" was quickly resolved -- I would guess through
political intervention, not through full payment -- but it highlights
a big deal here: payments. Getting paid late and paying late both
seem to be corporate norms from what I can tell.

Well, their national color is already green...

Nigeria going green? Maybe. I got into a conversation with a professor at a local university whose focus is green power. He said there is a lot going on in Nigeria with solar and wind power because they bring some energy stability (as opposed to the spotty grid). Diesel generator power is expensive, and one barrier to multinationals entering the country is the spotty power service.

In the U.S., the motivation to go green is “warm fuzzies” at a minimum and the prospect of a 5-10 year cost breakeven period at best. In Nigeria, you have the same motivations except a) the return period is shorter because the cost of power is more expensive when considering the high cost of diesel generation, and b) there is the very practical motivation of a dependable power source. It may make more sense for a Nigerian manufacturer to have rooftop solar than a U.S. household.