Covid-19 in Nigeria

And here we are after 3 weeks of quarantine in our apartment in Lagos. Rob has worked from home since March 20th. At that moment we only had a few cases of Corona in Lagos.

Nevertheless the country took on huge regulations to avoid a catastrophic nightmare in one of the most populated places around the globe. With more than 20 million people in Lagos and around 80 million in the region, this could be spread so easily amongst the people living on top of each other. First the government started with a soft lockdown, meaning that only few people were allowed inside a supermarket, so big lines outside under the hot African sun. Our beer crates were used to measure 1.5m in the waiting line, so simple and typical Nigerian solution. They also measure your temperature everywhere, before you enter a compound, or before you go into a shop, a restaurant or an office.

Everyone was urged to stay at home, which feels unreal since you do not know how life now is on the streets of Nigeria. Everyone from Nigerian Breweries is working from home. Rob is sitting at the dining table, he has his computer and chair from the office here now. After a couple of hours he thought sitting at our pretty comfortable dining table chairs he would have a hernia after day 1. Ali, one of our drivers, was still around so he could collect all the things he needed from the office. Every day I hear all the meetings, sound is on loud, probably so I can hear it too......I'm very proud of Rob how he's managing everything, now I have a peak inside what he's doing all day. The numbers that fly around would give me sleepless nights, billions here and there (1 billion Naira is 2.5m Euro), man that's really too much for me to cope with. Rob keeps calm as always, once I heard a mistake of some zero's, it was not 10.000 but ten million........he laughed.

Nigeria was already checking every citizen, who arrived at Lagos airport their whereabouts and temperature ones you got one foot on the ground. We live at Bella Vista, our guards are also checking everyone's temperature when you come through the gate. If we walk Ayo, or go for a bike ride, they check us too, literally everyone. I came back on March 9th and stayed inside as much as possible, but was still doing my own shopping. We had planned a dinner party at our house and a trip to the beach house, for the weekend of the 14th of March but then it fully escalated here, so these things we cancelled for everyone's safety.

So what do we do; well we try to go for a bike ride over the Banana Island every day. This is 5,3 km. We are making our rounds longer and longer. We also started walking around the Island, but the temperature is the biggest enemy. I taught myself crocheting. I had some yarn from Robin and some leftovers from knitting. I found something simple, like a little blanket with lots of colours. It keeps me occupied. Rob and I do our gym exercises via FaceTime, with our personal trainers, not ideal but it works. Our groceries we get by sending Delis Grocery an WhatsApp and they deliver it to our house. The same for the veggie man Segun, he comes with his brother Banjo to the compound on Fridays and Mondays. Here you see below how difficult it is to keep your distance when it comes to food.

Soon after the soft lockdown we went into total lockdown. This means no traffic on the roads, shops are closed, except for some big supermarkets, the army can stop you and especially when you are an expat or white person they'll ask for your passport to check when you entered the country. You need paperwork to be allowed on the road and a lot of it from the Governor of Lagos State, from the Ministery of the Federation, from other local government organisations and all with sufficient stamps and if you don't have the right papers they'll beat you if your lucky. Don't start a discussion with the local police or army, they are very serious about it. President Buhari is doing this for his people, but what about the majority of the people? 70% lives in poverty. They work all day to have a meal in the evening. They cannot stock up their fridge like rich people can. They live from day to day, this total lockdown is a real nightmare for them. We believe that he numbers of infections are significantly understated. I just checked the number of cases in Nigeria as of today April 11 and it is 305 infected of which 58 recovered and 7 died. These poor families have no means to go to a doctor or to get proper medication. So most likely the numbers are much higher than we think. We also learned that at some point people could get food supplies, but only if you're a member of the APC party. Horrible.

Why do we stay and not return to The Netherlands where healthcare is much more sophisticated? After a few group telephone calls with Heineken Medical Service we've decided to wait till the curve flattens in The Netherlands. Until that time we feel safer here, although everything is relative of course. Today a plane is leaving for Denmark and from there you could fly to Amsterdam, but we still have the feeling we're better of in our tower in Bella Vista. Unfortunately we cannot use the swimming pool, the gym and the squash court since they are all closed. We don't know when a next flight will come, we can only stay away from people as much as possible. Officially flights to Amsterdam with Air France will resume on May 4th and if everything stays as it is we will leave for holiday for a few weeks to The Netherlands.

We repatriated our two youngest children, Noa and Hugo. Jack was supposed to come on March 19th to Lagos, but this was cancelled of course. Noa's friends all left to their families in Canada. University was closed, so then we decided she could go to our house in Zoeterwoude. Hugo was fed up with his tiny room in the attic in Brighton, so he put himself on a flight to Amsterdam as well. Hugo arrived on a Sunday and Noa on Monday. Noa flew from Kamloops to Calgary in an empty plane! She was the one and only passenger. This was a very special experience for her. Still she did not make it into business class. The four of them are now together, Jack and Ailsa, Noa and Hugo. They stayed inside for two weeks. Jack was the one who's doing the shopping and Ailsa was babysitting full days now instead of three afternoons. She takes the bus to Oegstgeest and on the bus you have to take the back entrance, for safety for the bus drivers. There are not many people on the bus, so plenty of social distance between everyone. That goes well. Jack took their dog Zara to the boys and Ailsa in Oegstgeest, they loved it. Zara is now always pulling when she's near the bus stop. She loves driving on the bus.

Robin had to be in February in Innsbruck for work, but this was a very infected area, so she needed to be in quarantine for two weeks at home in Bad Gleichenberg. Luckily her in-laws live around the corner and they were so kind to help with shopping and meals. One Sunday morning Robin woke up with a shaking house, she could feel the earthquake from Zagreb half of March. But due to the Corona virus the newspapers didn't spend a lot of attention to this. In all this mess Robin's car broke down and it was too expensive to repair, so she gave herself a "new secondhand" car. She was practising with Armin driving and reversing with a trailer behind her car. Practising as a good Dutch girl knows how to drive with a caravan.

In big contrast with our lives nowadays we had a great day half of February at the horse track. We went again to a polo match at Ikoyi Polo Club. This time instead of Dana, Sil took Patrick and we took Arezoo with us. She's new here in Lagos, works for Nigerian Breweries and comes from Iran. We had a totally different experience than last year where we didn't spend a penny, but this time around we had to buy our drinks and the place where we were sitting was meant to be do drink champagne only..........the funny thing was that Rob forgot his money and they didn't accept a card, so basically Sil and Patrick were paying. We had a blast, total bar bill was several hundred thousands of Naira. At the very end a few photos were taken of Patrick and a lady in yellow, she looked like a huge lemon. The next day at the office Rob showed a few photos to his colleagues and apparently this bright yellow lemon lady was a Nigerian celebrity. Patrick was joking to her and asked if she wanted to marry him, she said "yes", well he replied "luckily I brought my family today, this is my father, pointing at Rob and my mum, that was me, and here are my brother and sister". Hilarious, never a dull moment with Patrick.

At the end of the day we drove back home, but just like last year it was tough to get the car out.This time, and it's been the first time, we had a couple of big guys from the streets hanging at our car, they were standing on the side step of the car. When Ali drove close to other cars they had to let go.

I like to take photos of many little things. I'll give a few explanations of the photos above.

1* You might think what the heck is this?! This is very inventive, what you do is you pick a toothpick and push the button of the elevator after usage you throw it in the little cup. Smart thinking right? The only thing that came in my mind was, hopefully the person who put these toothpicks in it, washed his hands first.............

2* Lots of laundry downstairs, that's quiet a bit, isn't it.

3* A red head lizard, you see them everywhere, they're very scared of us, so the move very fast. I like the colours.

4* A few photos of nature outside here on Banana Island. The palm trees are blossoming and this is where palm oil comes from.

5* Glory keeps herself busy, cleaning our sport shoes.

6* Sanneke visited the children in Zoeterwoude and took a few very funny photos. (Kleinjan's in Lockdown)

7* We bumped into Glory when we were walking, she's carrying 15 kg of beer on her head, very impressive. The shuttle busses aren't driving around the island anymore, therefore she had to walk far.

8* Ayo needed to be groomed; I used Rob's beard trimmer, it did not work out like I wanted, it's more a polka dot doggie now.

9* last photo is me crocheting a blanket with left over yarn, thanks to Robin and Esther who brought some more yarn.

I had surgery end February in Vienna to have my port-a-cat removed. This was done successfully and although the wound did not heal smoothly, everything looked fine. But since a week it started to turn red and itchy and very warm. I contacted the surgeon in Vienna and he subscribed me antibiotics and inflammatory medication. We called the NB doctor and asked if he could get it for us, which he did. Yesterday the head nurse (Samuel), who is a man, but head nurse is his official title, arrived with an ambulance to deliver the medication. It created big unrest in Bella Vista because having an ambulance at this period of Covid-19 at the gate was maybe not so smart.........

#staysafe