Hey, what happened?

I had high hopes of writing a couple of blog posts during my initial stay in Lagos. Unfortunately it did not happen.

The title for this blog comes from the "Zap-it in the Zibby" advert from my youth.

I started writing my first blog (Boer in Casablanca) during my stay of 9 months in Morocco. I just saw and experienced so much and even though some of my experiences were spiritually depressing, the overall picture I have of Morocco is still very positive.

When Regina and I went to Namibia we knew from the outset that the experience will be positive and therefore I started with this blog when we left Cape Town en route to Namibia.

Our Namibian excursion lived up to all our expectations as I trust you would have gathered from earlier posts. It was however cut short when the opportunity to work in Lagos, Nigeria came up.

My expectations of Lagos was not very high and when I arrived I saw things that were really disturbing. I expected that I would have a lot to write about, but for a number of reasons I never managed to put it in this blog.

One of the main reasons why I could not write about Lagos was the fact that my previous blogs were the result of mostly positive experiences and memories about the places that I visited. In Lagos there is in my mind not much positive to write about. Most of the experiences I had in Lagos were in some way clouded by something negative.

For example, we stayed and worked in one of the best suburbs of Lagos, but travelling the less than one kilometer to work was stressful because everybody drive like maniacs. Also, the road between the apartment and office was so bad, that even in this upmarket suburb eight cars got stuck in the potholes in the street.

I also felt that it would not be courteous to my Nigerian colleagues to relay these negative experiences in a public blog.

Then my stay in Lagos was cut short due to contractual problems between the company I work for and the operator in Lagos. When I left Lagos just before Christmas I was expecting to be back in three weeks for another three months stint. It took more than four months before I eventually returned.

Having been away from Lagos for four months gave me time to reflect on the time I had here and I actually managed to find some positive points. For example, this is one of the few places where I have been where I do not have chest problems. Not much but something positive.

A lot has happened to the Bunduboere in the months since the last post in October. I will try to relate some of these experiences in the next posts.

Hope to be back soon.