Lagos Bound

This is an late entry. Sorry for the delay, but you will understand once you read below adventures.

Day One in Lagos starts off by us missing our plane thanks to my brother in law. We were grateful to make the following flight which was a hour later. The domestic Virgin airlines flight lands at the international airport, and this was what I wanted to avoid. All the stories you heard about this airport are so true. The airport policy is that no pictures taken were allowed. Once we walked out from baggage claim, we were approach by a massive amount of airport porters and people asking to help carry our bags or for money because I looked american. I was happy to see my mother in law and friends waiting for us. We got an airport transportation escort us to the cars and our driver was Isaac an army officer. The first eye opening experience was with the bathrooms. I planned to go to the airport bathroom , but could not find one. We instead had to stop at a near by gas station. Most of the toilets here do not have lids/seats. Why??? I am still trying to get an answer.

The visions going to our friends home consisted of many vendors selling their goods on the streets and in Nigeria you can see vendors all throughout the streets and highways. This reminded of our Laredo boarder, but 20 times more overwhelming. The drive from airport to Lekki outside Victoria Island without traffic should be a 20 minutes drive, but in traffic that we had the drive took 2 ½ hours. Once we past the mainland of Lagos towards Lekki hwy you start to see signs of large business buildings, modern hotels, homes and apartment. It was like day and night throughout the drive because one side of the street you will see large beautiful large homes/ Mansions, the other sides consisted of shacks wood structures.

The gas prices are about the same in America. To fill up our Jeep Cherokee cost about 6000 naira = $50 US. We arrived at our destination. The 20 minutes drive took about 2 hours due to traffic. As you can see in the picture, the house was a two story home. Very modern with gated entrance with security. Very close to the chevron corporation and located on chevron drive go figure. Every home and business are dependent on a generator or their source of electricity. Yes, there is electricity, but goes out daily. The black outs are frequent in every neighborhood. The electric company NEPA can not provide for all due to selling it to surrounding states and poor outdated technology. Esther Rose adapted well and I am giving all thanks to God and the three year old little girl name Tori who played the entire Lagos trip. We wanted to go to the beach, but time did not allow due to many meetings. We did go swimming at a club house called VGC (Victoria Gardens Clubhouse). Very nice!!! It has guest gym, pool, local stores, park, eating establishments and yes cleaned bathrooms with toilets and lids. and the houses in this gated community where ridiculous imagine the dominion in san antonio, then multiply the luxury and sizes by 3. The houses all rival Kimora simmons house, and every home could be featured on cribs. On the Island there is Lekki, Takwa Bay (private resort beach), and Victoria. The locals roads were paved, but mainly dirt roads. Lets talk about driving in Lagos. In a word CHAOTIC! Two lanes will turn into 4 lanes. There are no traffic lights, but traffic cops that should be directing the traffic, but instead standing around causing more problems. The car accidents are numerous. There is really not an EMT/Ambulance structure. The towing service is also limited. Here are a couple of pictures. Once a car accident occurs you can anticipate traffic to be very long. The most common form of transportation is the motorcycle ( called Okada) and from afar they look like locust decending on you. They are known as okada and are one of the reasons there are a lot of traffic.
The police role: We got stopped a couple of times by police they did not asked for money, but I also think because we had a military driver and Jacob our hispanic friend here doing business with my brother in law. It was the same experience landing in the airport. Watching the police in action with their own people was very opposite. During one car accident, the police was there, but you can see exchange of money. My brother in law says, this is may be to prevent court actions to happen.