… Was the title of a book I saw in the supermarket the other day. It amused me endlessly so I decided to steal it as the title for this blog post. I would have bought it because I have little doubt I would have loved reading it, but it would have cost me 3 days living allowance so I couldn’t really justify not eating for 3 days to cover the cost of it.
On the subject of books, I was walking home the other night when a man walked past me carrying a stack of Oxford English Dictionaries on his head. He must have been carrying over 20 books, the pile was almost taller than he was and must have weighed a tonne. But what really amused me was that as he walked past me he shouted, “Bakara, firewood for sale – buy some firewood?” Made me chuckle.
I received another parcel last week, thank you Catherine! The process to collect the parcel was somewhat different to what I’m used to at home though. A man walked into my office on Friday morning and handed me a slip of paper telling me to ‘go and collect my treasure’. I was thoroughly confused, as I had no idea who this man was, or what he was talking about. But then I turned the slip of paper over and saw that ‘Calabar Post Office’ had been handwritten on the top of it. I drove my colleagues mad all morning fidgeting and jumping up and down until 12pm came and I could excuse myself for lunch. Once I got to the post office I was led down a very dark and narrow corridor and into an even darker room. I had to get my torch out of my bag just to be able to see my hand in front of my face. Walking into dark rooms with strange men isn’t really something I try to do very often, but I really wanted my parcel so I just hovered by the door and shone the torch at him in the hope it would help speed up the process if he could actually see what he was doing. The room had 4 cages in it, and inside each cage was an ancient looking locked cupboard. He went through all four cupboards and didn’t seem to be getting any closer to locating my parcel. I asked if there was a problem but got told ‘no wahala’ so I tried to be patient for a bit longer. On his second check of all four cupboards he finally found my parcel. But I then had to pay a ‘handling fee’. I said that I didn’t understand why because the sender had paid all the necessary postage to have it delivered to my office. It hadn’t been delivered to my office, I had to come and collect it, and then I had to pay an extra fee on top of that? Yes was the answer. I asked him to put my parcel down and stop ‘handling’ it in the hope it would lower the fee, but no. I’ll take someone with me next time to see if there really is a ‘handling fee’ whenever you collect any parcel, or whether it was just another one of the many ‘you’re foreign and so we’re going to charge you any amount of money we possibly can’ charges that I’ve encountered since arriving here. But none of that mattered, because I had my parcel! I pretty much skipped back to my office.
Then the week got even better because I found a gym I can go to that doesn’t cost extortionate amounts of money. The word ‘gym’ might be a stretch of the imagination, but it does have a running machine AND air conditioning, so that’s enough for me. The room is also so small that there’s a limit to how many people could fit in it at any one time to stare at me. The one down side is that there is a full-length mirror directly in front of the running machine. Not good at the best of times, but especially not here, where I avoid reflective surfaces at all costs. My reflection is terrifying. But if it means I can run in relative peace, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
Then the final highlight of the week was opening the bottle of rose wine I bought when I first got here. Jenny has a rare luxury – a fridge – and so the wine was even cold. It was worth waiting 3 months for.
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