Epe Canoe Trip

It’s early Saturday morning when we leave Bella Vista with Herman and Rob to go on a canoe trip. Herman, Rob's friend from 1st grade, has arrived on Wednesday night and had two nights with us celebration the UEFA Champions Trophy Tour. Rob needs cash, this can be difficult here, often the ATM machines aren’t working.  So off we go to the nearest ATM here on Banana Island, and indeed it's not working. Therefore we arrive a bit later than planned at Esther and Steven’s house in Lekki.

They offer us first coffee before we're heading to Epe. But first Rob stops again at an ATM and also this one is not cooperative……… then to the other side of the road. Steven has told us there aren’t any cash machines on the road to Epe and he knows, he drives there every day. Hallelujah, how difficult can it be? Apparently it can. The road to Epe is sort of a endless long straight road. In Europe you drive on the right side of the road, at least the slowest vehicles do. Here they drive wherever they want to drive. You see a lot of Kekenapips, these little yellow three wheel taxis, like you see in Bangkok. They merge with a low speed on to this road, and that makes this road even more dangerous. Plus you have many potholes, you really have to avoid these!

We stop 5 minutes before the destination at a petrol station for a sanitary stop. The toilet is awful, smelly and dirty, mud on the floor and the flush was a huge bucket next to the toilet. But look on the bright side of life, we can empty our bladders and that’s all that matters sometimes. We arrive at the destination at 10am. There're so many kids who welcome us and want to see us "whities". Especially Herman who sits down on his knees under a big tree, he is popular. He's giving the kids high fives. A few are shy, but curiosity wins it in this case. At a certain moment I can hardly see Herman, he's surrounded by young kids. Fantastic to see, from both sides. 

As we walk through this little village, you see the poverty, but on the other hand, people give a happy impression. I suppose they make the best out of their lives. You see laundry drying everywhere and kids playing. Men in little groups chatting and the women busy with cooking on charcoal fires. When we walk to the canoes, we're followed by young boys between 6 and 12 years. One's wearing a French alpino hat, very cute. We're told to walk on a small concrete border and not step aside in the grass, I don’t want to know why. The only thing I’d like to know is if there're crocodiles, the answer was no, not sure how reliable this answer is. No Walhalla they say here, no worries. The boats are made out of a tree, they make it hollow and therefore you sit just a few inches above the surface of the water. Costs of a boat nowadays is 150.000 Naira. (370 euro, 416 dollars or 321 pounds.) You can imagine this is a lot of money for the locals here

We're with 7 people in three boats. Also the chief of the village is joining us and the kid with the alpine hat joins him in the big boss' boat, there're in total 4 boats. It's hard work for the drivers/captains of the boats. When Esther asked us to go on this canoe trip I saw myself canoeing on a lake or something, but here, in Lagos, we do nothing, not even opening your own car door, so also not canoeing unfortunately. However this kind of boat is harder to drive, it’s heavy and sometimes you really go literally over the reeds, the water is very shallow!

Rob and I are together in a boat and we're quiet, taking it all in, the beauty of this nature, the birds we spot and flowers, the Chrirsantum, growing on the surface of the water. Half way during the tour we are stopping at an island, where also a little village is. We look around and see women drying the cassava, some are peeling it and again the children are walking and playing around us. The chief shows us a new build school, donated by the German community.  One of the girls, maybe 12,13 years old, her name's Mary, she asked Herman if he will choose her and take her with him……….shocking!

We see little children with a hug pole and at the end of the pole is a plastic bottle cut in half. Every time this little boy put the pole up and pushes the end in the tree, you could see a lot of flies or beetles flying away when he's doing this. Then he took the pole down to the ground, emptied the flies he caught and a little girl was waiting with an empty cola bottle and put the flies in her bottle and keeps her hand on top of the bottle so they can't escape. We ask a few older men what the kids are doing. They explain that after they have caught the flies, they will put a string around the flies and then use them as a kite! This is something so different than children do in Europe or US with watching tv or playing on their i-Pad.

After the visit to this village we headed back to the boats again to go to the place where we've started. The chief explains that the children have prepared a little dance for us. We sit down and watch these beautiful young children singing and dancing.We are struggling with the humidity today, but with a little cloth I can wipe my face now and then.

As it is Easter tomorrow also the locals celebrate this with a few masquerade persons dancing through the village. After all these festivities we drive back to the city with new memories. It's been a new experience, absolutely a fabulous day. Thank you Steven and Esther.