I had a great reminder of how direct people here are recently.
We were in a shop at Wuse Market, the main market in Abuja. I wasn’t looking to
buy anything, I was with two new volunteers who wanted to pick up a couple of
things. But the guy who owned the shop couldn’t handle me standing there and
not wanting to buy anything. So he kept bringing things over to me to try and
tempt me to change my mind. Unfortunately I don’t think he’s quite perfected
his sales pitch. He started off with skin whitening cream. I asked him how
white he wanted me to be, so in noticing the error of his ways, he went off to
find something else that I just wouldn’t be able to resist buying: breast
cream. That’s what it said on the box. He handed it to me with a pointed look
at my chest area. I asked a friend here, she said it’s meant to make your boobs
bigger. Oh good, thanks Mister Market Man. Needless to say I left his shop
without buying anything. Later on in the day we were sat in the park at the
Designer Marketplace thing that I mentioned a couple of months ago, and someone
came round to give us some flyers. For padded pants. That’s right, pants to
make your ass bigger. See the photo of said flyer below. They only cost 1,000
N. The same amount as the cocktails that we were drinking at the time. Bargain.
And now I’ve got one week left. There are parts of life out
here that I love and that I will really miss – the noise, the music, the
laughter. And there are parts of living in Nigeria I definitely will not miss.
We went to a popular “sit out” place to get fish and chips a
few weeks ago. We had a really nice afternoon, until we left to go out to the
main road and flag down a cab. There was a no parking area on the side of the
road, and so we walked past that area (we had thought) and a cab came and
stopped by us. We were negotiating the fare when one of the military men who
guard the entrance to the carpark came over, and before we knew it, he had used
a knife attached to his rifle to slice not one, but TWO of the cabs tyres. He
then took the car keys off the driver and went back to his station. I was
literally speechless, I couldn’t believe he did it. There was no warning,
nothing. And so an act that was supposed to punish the cab driver for stopping
on that particular part of the road then left him unable to move anyway. They
said it was because of terrorist threats.
I was interested to hear how rendering cars motionless would reduce the
risk of bombs going off. I’d much prefer a car with a bomb in it to be able to
move than have it stationary in such a crowded public area. The next car that
came to stop in that area then paid the officer, so he was able to stop there.
It’s that level of corruption and abuse of power that makes me sick. Replacing
those tyres will have cost the cab driver god knows how much. And he must be so
used to that sort of treatment, because he didn’t even try to argue. Until
someone stands up to people, nothing will change, but at the moment with things
the way they are, if you dare to stand up to them you end up paying dearly for
it.
So leaving here will be bittersweet.
