Not-so-bad Nigeria: part 2

Posted on 16 February 2009

If one thing was ever going to kill you in Nigeria, believe me it’s not the kidnappers or the possible outbreak of religious faction fighting.

No sir, in fact what we have come to believe is the main source of death in Nigeria is in fact the driving. I’m pretty convinced that Nigerians get up in the morning and have a strong cup of crazy before they get behind their wheel and head out on the road. Make that huge man sized cup. They are by far, and I’m emphasizing this because it was just unbelievable, THE WORST drivers I have ever come across. I will henceforth never complain about traffic and taxi drivers from back home, in fact I plan to hug a few when we get back, just so they know how much I love them not being Nigerian drivers. (apparently India is going to be just as fun, but cross that bridge when we get there)

As we left Enugu for the push to Lagos we actually managed to drive onto what we thought was a wonderful double lane highway, bliss and easy driving for us for at least a few hours we thought. But just as we were happily chugging along, and about to overtake a big truck (were in double lanes now we can do this easily we assumed) a massive amount of bigger trucks along with a stream of cars hurtled themselves towards us, in our lane, across the highway! The drivers, for whatever reason, had decided that their stretch of double lanes were in fact not good enough to drive on, and that our side would be much better, so they just cut across any gap in a barrier , and hooters and lights blaring, headed down the wrong side.

Overtaking got a whole lot more fun. The problem with this was when the inevitable pothole appeared, there would be massive traffic congestion as three lanes, one of which is facing the wrong way, would now have to maneuverer one car at a time, though these holes, and man everybody’s got to be first in line. Hesitate and you’ll be staring at a irate taxi drivers nose as he waves you down after he’s ramped a curb and launched himself in front of you and into that non existent gap between you and the next car. One of you has to stop to avoid a collision and man it sure won’t be him.

This is made even more depressing by the fact that there are now no cars on the other side of the road, because no one can now cross the barrier and everyone is jammed onto your side.

We also realised that this is a common thing here, because what we affectionately dubbed as ” pot-hole people” had developed permanent lodgings next the holes, selling water, nuts or just begging from the bottle necked vehicles. At least they had water, that was quite a clever business gap if ever I saw one. Cars would simply blare their hooters if they wanted to overtake you , then ride so close (often swerving around irritably behind you like some mad, deranged bee)and overtake with the teeniest of gaps at 200km/hour, while oncoming and surprise oncoming traffic hurdles themselves towards you, with no chance of anyone slowing down but you.

We lost count of how many times the Marine Expedition nearly became a foot powered expedition.

Often you would just get stuck for hours, and when the traffic eventually started moving the cause of the jam mysteriously never shows itself, leaving you felling a little crazy to say the least. If you make it though the country side ,car and mind intact, Lagos will zap all the last of remains of your energy, as it is a total assault on all the senses. One can definitely tell on first sight that this is a place that is living in every sense of the word. Pretty much everything from the bricks and the buildings, to the piles of rubbish, to the massive flyover bridges and fishing boats, all feel as if they have a pulse. It can be quite jarring at first, but at least they have painted lines here and cars generally stick in lanes, albeit driving like Lewis Hamilton on speed and half a bottle of rum. All I can say is thank goodness we had our GPS (we’ve taken to kissing it goodnight it has become so loved), as we managed to weave our way around the maize of Lagos central and be deposited right in front of our oasis, Protea Hotel Oakwood park. That was not before we collected a motorbike on the back of our car and dragged it across an offramp and up onto a flyover.

Apparently as we stopped to turn off the highway a motorbike driver decided that would be the opportune time to overtake us, missed his gap and drove starlight into the back or our car. Our car being a heavy set lady in the rear, we didn’t feel squat, and as we drove off , mike’s nice handmade basket at the back had become entangled with the bikes one handlebar and we were non the wiser. As we were driving we noticed allot of people yelling and waving, and as we are quite a circus we have become quite used to shouts of “stop, stop” “hey” “you, you, you”, so when lots of people started doing it we just adopted our normal stance and waved along like idiots. It was only when I glanced in my mirror and saw the back end of a motorbike swing out from behind the car that my heart stopped. My first thought was, oh great, Nigeria, Lagos central and I’ve gone and run over some gimp on a bike. I’m bloody dead.

Thank god the man on the bike came storming up to us while a crowd of people gathered around the back of the car. I’m not sure if it was the fact that we were so knackered ,or the horrible driving we had to go through the whole day, but we had just reached our last little straw from a big pile of pain straw stacks. While I sat in the car deciding what the new title of my memoirs from jail would be, Mike behaved like an absolute champ. He leaped out in front of the rather large crowd that had enveloped our rear end, promptly disconnected the bike from the car and leaped back into the car all the while telling the bike driver who rear ended us where he could shove his “why you run me over”crisis. He was not hurt and the bike surprisingly was not damaged, and well we were not in the wrong as he had driven into the back of us, but we were not going to stay and debate the merits of this case. We drove off before anyone could start arguing with us. Welcome to Lagos.






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