Keke Napep

Always after a few years I get this feeling, I describe it as itchy feet, that I want to see something new again. For many months we know our new destination already, but now we slowly tell our family and friends. However we cannot tell you yet where our next post will be, it's still not official, soon, very soon, and we are thrilled about it!

On May 21st Rob and I went to the art gallery Signature to see work of my painting teacher Wallace Ejoh, Impressions de Novo. A beautiful gallery with lots of art. When we arrived, we saw two (painting)friends, but they were just leaving. We met Wallace's family, which was nice. At a certain moment someone asked me if I would like to do an interview for a news item and I was put directly in front of the camera. She hung a microphone on me and then someone else started to ask all kind of questions. How I met Wallace, what do I feel when I see his work, and more of these questions. It was fun to do.

Rob flew to the Netherlands beginning of June first to see his parents and then on Tuesday he had his annual Global Finance Conference in Madrid. After 3 years having this online now it was time to meet all his colleagues again in Madrid. I joined after a few days so we could spend the weekend together in Madrid. There’s a funny story to tell, everyone, so also Rob, had to introduce themselves. He said he was married had four children and lives in Nigeria and that we adopted a little doggie and gave him a Yoruba name, Ayo, which means happiness or joy. After Rob a Nigerian colleague Ayo (FD Sierra Leone) had his turn and he said that when Rob told him he named his dog Ayo, he felt a bit offended. In Nigeria you don’t give people names to dogs and his name’s Ayo, so he wasn’t pleased, but he travelled a lot to Amsterdam and Europe, and he learned that in Europe it’s more common to give a normal name to a dog or cat or any pet. Afterwards Rob went to Ayo and apologized about this, we never realized this could be an issue. Rob asked him “but please tell me how you call your dog or pet then?” He thought a bit and replied the famous words, “we call them Jack.” So funny!

Elizabeth is our nanny's daughter. She lives with us at Bella Vista. She studies electro engineering in River State, south south in Nigeria. Unfortunately, her university has been on strike since January this year. Glory found her an internship at a construction building right behind our house. She is helping with all the electricity and wires and so on. One day she was talking to her supervisor about something that needed to be done and he said "no let he do it, pointing at a colleague next to her." So, her colleague took the wires and got electrocuted in front of her eyes. The ambulance took him to a hospital, but he already passed away. The construction area was shut down by the authorities to investigate the premises, but after two days they all started working again, also 21-year-old Elizabeth. I do hope they have safety shoes on now, and that there are more rules they must follow to guarantee their safety.

On June 19th we went with a small group to our Beach House. I love that place. Chief Julius came by to say hello and drank a few beers with us. Great memories were made again.

The week after on June 25th we had our leaving party, we are leaving Nigeria after 4 fantastic years.

I need to tell a little about how we ended up having the party at Cilantro, an Indian restaurant with a huge party venue at the back. Friday night 8 days before the party, Patrick came over for dinner. We told him that we were leaving, but that we couldn’t tell where to, because that will be announced on July 28th, this has to do with a few things, like stock listed and so on. Anyway, he expected it already, most people do/did, simply because we are there now for 4 years and that’s normally the time that we change country. He was sad, we were drinking wine and just sitting with the three of us at the dining table when the doorbell rang, 23:30 at night. The maid of our neighbours below us was at the door, she said we were making too much noise. Patrick opened the door, and he let her in, took her to the dining room and told her, look, here are my parents (that's how he calls us) and we are sitting here and having conversations and a few drinks, nothing more, nothing less. Two minutes later her madame was at the door as well. She said we were dancing! We were doing nothing at all. So, here started Patrick his mission to have the party some place else. We first wanted to have our party at the Green House, but Stefano the manager was on holiday, so we decided not to. On Sunday after the beach house we went to see Cilantro.

Nevertheless Rob wanted to do it at home, but Patrick kept on pushing, “no, you have an awful neighbour, don’t do it at home”. We found this venue way to big, with 40-50 people it’s not 'cozy'. Then we turned around and there was a little area with a roof, like a veranda, very handy during rain-season, it had graffiti on the wall and artificial grass on the floor, Rob was convinced and as a matter of fact very pleased. Ir was just a perfect place for a leaving party and so it happened that we held our leaving party at Cilantro. We had a famous Nigerian DJ called DJ Preppy, this was his real name. He played African music but also European music. Alex from Nigerian Breweries organised someone for cocktails and the beer and we had lots of delicious Indian food.

There was a small panic, at least from my side, when we arrived at Cilantro, half an hour before starting time, there was at the big square another party going on. The gouvenor’s son turned 4 and therefore he invited 500 people, not joking! A drone was flying over, it had a Jurrasic Park theme, and an enormous amount of people where there. Luckily it all went smooth, they disappeared around 7pm (kids have to go to bed, also a Gouverneur’s son) and our party could start.

What can I say about our party, just one word, AWESOME!!!! Wallace came with his wife and daughter Faith. Wallace had a beautiful painting for us, every day we look at it, it makes us smile and think back of the good time we had in Lagos.

Marc and Patrick were in charge, they kicked us out of the app group, I wondered why, well believe me the biggest surprise was about to come. After nice speeches of Marc and Patrick, they revealed the present, a keke napep, a tricycle!! I was blown away by this generous gift and so was Rob of course. We once said this, that whenever we leave Lagos we’d like to take one with us to Austria and make a bar out of it or a flower station. Patrick sang his Schlagersänger’s music, we did the polonaise, we danced, we drank, we sang, we made lots of photos and above all we made lots of memories. I had too much ‘sex on the beach’(= cocktail), which you always regret the next morning. On Sunday Marc and Patrick popped in (we are neighbours) and we sat down together reviewing the whole party. We will never forget our time in Lagos, I’m so grateful we had the chance to live here and meet so many wonderful people and make new friendships for life.

Straight after this leaving party, with my head still buzzing we left for a pre-visit to the-country-I-cannot-mention-yet. We wanted to look at a new accommodation but most likely we needed to find a temporarily accommodation due to the fact that our container needs a few months to arrive there.

The week before our leaving party I had my very last painting class with Wallace and his assistant, his daughter Faith. We almost always have class at Shell 2, here lives one of the two Dutch Mickey’s, on a side note; one you write with an ‘e’ and one without an ‘e’.

Mickey prepared prosecco with fresh orange juice, the other ladies took little snacks and so around 11 am we had nice break and a little farewell moment for me. I got some special gifts, it’s all very dear to me. I’m gonna miss this class so much. I’ve done painting class since January 2019, with a huge break during Covid. Wallace is a great teacher and let everyone explore his own style. I’m not a patient painter, I learned over the years. I love colours and funny paintings, my last creation is a monkey with his fingers in his mouth.

Of course we also said goodbye to our Saturday morning tennis group with our tennis coach Kenny and his ball boy. This group is only consisting of men and me.

Monday morning I play tennis with an international ladies group. A Belgian friend and player is also leaving and so we made some nice group photos and Micky made quickly a card of it, very thoughtful of her. We also said goodbye to our colleague friend Isabelle Spronken, she goes back with her children to The Netherlands and Martin her husband stays another year at Nigerian Breweries in Lagos.

And last but definitely not least, I said goodbye to my friend from South Africa, Corlie Rolvink. We have made many great memories together in a relatively short time.

I’d like to tell our experience of our tuberculosis test (x-ray) for our immigration to-the-country-I-cannot-mention-yet. They told us we needed at least 6 hours to for this little thing. We thought it can’t be so bad, can it? Well yes it can! We arrived around 10am on a rainy Friday. We had to sign in and in this book, we saw people’s arrival time at 06.00 am and they were still there, not very promising. We noticed that we were the only 'white noses' moving to this certain country from Nigeria. This gave us a bit of a positive discrimination; it looked like at least. We didn’t have to wait outside under a tent, but we were directed inside, to the vip lounge. First then we had to registration office, a photo was taken of us, and they checked if we had paid the bill. Green light for the x-ray, we moved to another waiting room and after a half an hour we were asked to come to a small corridor, here chairs were standing right after each other because there was no space in this narrow corridor. You start at the back of the line, and every time someone is ready you move to the chair in front of you. Half way the corridor they ask you to put on a operation dress. I was guided to a toilet where 4 other women were changing themselves to get dressed or undressed. There were a few lockers, but on the square meter it was interesting to see how we managed. Apparently, men need more privacy, Rob had to wait in front of a toilet where a man was getting (un)dressed. So, we came back to our chairs with our new outfit on, and slowly we moved chair after chair forward. Then it was first my turn then Rob’s turn for the x rays. When this was finished we had to see a doctor. I thought he would examine us, but no, it was only paperwork. When we started our adventure abroad in 2001, we had to do the Mantoux test and mine was positive, I had the not contagious form of tuberculosis. For 6 month I had to take strong antibiotics and that was it. So this doctor only did some paperwork, don’t really remember what he asked. We went back to the reception and asked what the next step was going to be. The lady behind the counter said that we had to be back at 2pm to pick up our certificates. We had 1,5 hours time to kill so we asked Ali to bring us to the Sheraton Hotel nearby this place. I know this hotel a bit as I’ve been there to see my flying friends Ellen and Frank. We had a good lunch and at 14:15 we were back at the second address to pick up our certificates, not difficult right? I had a good book with me, but Rob was walking around and around. Every hour two men bring a pile of certificates to a table and starts announcing names. We learned that day that many Nigerian names start with an A! I am Vivienne Van Deventer, in The Netherlands I’m under the D, abroad I’m under the V(an), this was going to take a long long time! We were listening to all the names starting with A, like Adoyola, Adeyinka etc. Suddenly I noticed a message on my phone that I had to go back to the first address, because my X-rays were not good. We could come till 4pm, and we saw that we ad 20 minutes left! We quickly called Ali and drove as fast as he could to the other address two streets farther away from the last address. The first address was still filled with hundreds of people, but with our white faces I could come in and be the first in the famous small corridor we knew now so well. So, with my funny operation suit on I walked in the X-ray room. Apparently, they saw something on my longs. I had to stand in the strangest positions, I think they took 8 more photos! All these radiations are not healthy at all. When this was done, we rushed back to the other place to wait for our certificates. Rob heard that people who had taken an x-ray after 3pm would get their certificate the very next day! That was not what we wanted. So, we came back close to the table where it all happened and waited and waited. This was a master class in being patient, believe me! At 6pm they announced the last certificates of the day and if you were not part of that pile you needed to come back the next day... At 6pm, yes we were still there and they were finished with the names. A lady of the organisation looked at Rob who was still standing very close to the table, she looked at him, said something to her colleague next to her and then she turned around and said “Mr Rob?” “Yes, said Rob, I’m Rob”. “O Sir, you don’t have to be here, your certificate is upstairs.” Seriously, no-one could tell us earlier?We went upstairs and there they said we had to go to another place, so at the end we came to a counter and hallelujah they had Rob‘s certificate!

One down, one to go. One of the people behind the counter looked at me and said he had seen my face when he printed the new piles of certificates. He left and came back with it, but now they were looking for a doctor to sign, they didn’t know if he was still there, it was almost 6:30pm! In the meantime, Rob had Grace from the office on the phone and as we were on mainland in Ikeja, and soon it would be dark, we needed a mo-pol to get us back home safe and sound.

Just after 6:30 we left the place where we started very optimistic around 10 in the morning.

We came home at 7:15pm and where exhausted with doing nothing all day long, but this part is ready, we are approved to move to the-country-I-cannot-mention.

We are grateful we lived in Lagos for four years.

You can take us out of Nigeria but you cannot take Nigeria out of us!

Forever in our hearts. We're going to miss you!

And a few more photos of impressions of Lagos and the view from our apartment at Bella Vista.