No Spocks here

Nigerians are very animated people. It can take you aback at first, particularly when compounded by the sheer number of people and the fact that there is less personal space here. Everywhere you go there are a lot of people, all talking loudly and with big gestures. They also argue easily, almost like it’s a pastime, but rarely is it violent – usually when it gets violent it’s a mob deal and people die, it seems. I saw lots of arguments where guys were up in each others’ face, yelling away and waving there arms. If you saw this in the U.S. you would wait, expecting one person to throw a punch, but instead they just keep arguing until someone blinks.

This also means that checking in for a flight at an airport sometimes feels like doing battle, particularly at the Arik domestic terminal in Lagos. It can start orderly, but inevitably people get agitated as flight time nears – even though the flights are inevitably late – and then things get interesting. People start trying to cut, and they get yelled at, to which they just yell back, and then people start muscling this way and that. You end up with a crowd around the desk, with 10 people reaching over/around others to wave their tickets in the face of the check in guy, with everyone yelling at everyone else – including the check in guy yelling back at the customers who are yelling at him. The volume sometimes seems like it is somewhere between “rock concert” and “shuttle launch.”

Boxing out in basketball is great practice for Arik check-in counters, and I learned to always stand with my rolling suitcase about arm’s length to one side so as to maximize my “blocking area.”

A story that combines arguing and flying: a co-worker was on a flight that was delayed on the taxiway. A guy pulls out his phone and starts talking, and the flight attendant asks him to turn it off. He starts shouting at her that he should be able to use it, then the people around him shout at him to shut it off so they can take off. In the back of the flight, one guy asked another what the commotion was, and then they got in an argument over whether the guy in the front should or shouldn’t be allowed to use his phone. Most of the plane got involved in a heated and vocal argument, directly or indirectly, over this guy’s phone.