Mini, Birthdays and Lagos traffic.

Before we went on holiday we had bought a new car. We were at the garage after changing to winter tyres for our BMW 1. While we were waiting we toured the showroom and saw this beautiful Mini Countryman from 2012. I asked the price and also what we would get back for our car. When I heard the net price I immediately said yes. But Vivienne stopped me. She said we needed to sleep a night about it. So next morning we went back and bought the Mini. So the day after returning from skiing we went to the showroom to pick up the car. We had a good relation with our BMW. Vivienne was very attached to it, but by now she is in love with the Mini.

On Sunday January  5th I flew back to Lagos. As Finance Director I need to be there for the year end close. On Friday Viv arrived. She came back 2 days earlier, since we were invited by one of my teammembers, Omome, for our first Nigerian Wedding. And wow! This was an impressive experience. We have now been to local weddings of friends in Greece, Spain, England, Germany and Poland. And all are special and impressive, also because they are different than in the Netherlands. And Nigeria was beautiful as well. Viv had used the opportunity to go shopping for an appropriate dress at de Bijenkorf and had succeeded. We started at 11 am in the Church and all Nigerians were beautifully dressed. The ceremony took close to 2 hours and we were never bored. Continuously action and fantastic things like everybody coming dancing through the aile to the couple and parents to congratulate them. After this we went to another venue for the Gala/Party. This place fitted roughly 1000 people and it was packed with invitees. It was beautifully decorated, band with great saxophone player. It took the weddingcouple some time to arrive,(more than 3 hours later) but when they did come the roof went off. All different groups were coming in dancing and everybody followed. The family of the Bride, the family of the groom, friends, Best (wo)man and the bride and groom themselves. Very special experience was that the family was throwing money at the couple. This is seen as sign of wealth and prosperity. It is also good that coins do not exist in this country… We left early evening but we were told the party continued for quite some time.

I also had the ‘thank you’ dinner for the FLT (Finance Leadership Team). We went to a very nice restaurant, Vanilla Moon, with tapas style food. We agreed that 2 members would order the first round of small bites and than the next 2 members, etc. So Graeme, my purchase director, picked French Style Snails. French Snails are seriously different than Nigeria Snail. I will not start to describe Nigerian Snails, you might lose your appetite…. My Nigerian teammembers had never eaten French Snails, (none of them liked it!) but from than on the discussion deteriorated. We ended up discussing all kind of special local delicacies. It did not grow my appetite. As you know I am a very difficult eater. During our wedding almost 30 years ago, we were treated the song, "that if you get Viv and me for dinner, do not make something fancy, focus on the facts that you need to have (enough) wine and ketchup and you will have a great evening".  So when some of my Nigerian Teammembers started to explain that when they were young, they were catching termites, took of the wings and ate them raw, and that they made nice crunching sounds……..

On January 15th is the big day of the year since it is Viv's birthday. It is the moment that I feel very young again. I gave her one of her long term wishes, Andre Rieu at de Vrijthof in Maastricht. From the children and Loes she got a fantastic projection-clock which is very useful in a country where 2 hours too late is considered almost on time. We went out on her birthday with Maaike and Marco. Viv and Dana have their birthday in the same week. They decided to celebrate this together at the Backyard with a small group of close friends. It was a great evening with lots of drinks, music and fun.

While travelling every day to the office and having a lot of slow moving traffic and bad roads you see often unusual situations.Close to our headoffice and Lagos Brewery there is a railway crossing. I have heard the train regularly from my office. Somewhere in November they had started renovating the railway. So they were replacing the railway track but also heightening it. Looking at it I felt it already coming but I kept on hoping that I was wrong. The increase in height was so much that it would be impossible for truck filled with beer to cross it. So when finally the railway in the road was replaced from Sundaynight to Monday morning …… it was simply too high. But with the usual optimism all trucks and cars started crossing. And it seemed to work. But when I went home in the afternoon there was this huge trafficjam. And yes of course one of the trucks got stuck and broke on the railway track. While they were managing the trafficjam, some of the construction workers started to help arranging traffic. There was only one lane available and we were waiting on our turn. From the other side the construction workers that were managing the traffic by pointing shovels, axes, anything to cars to have them stop or not. One of the cars coming from the other side did not want to wait and pushed through. So one of the traffic’managers’ exploded and started smashing the front, frontwindow, roof and back of the car with a shovel. I could see the damage, saw the window brake and expected the carowner to get out of his car…. But when he was passing us going in the opposite direction he was laughing and waving. I haven't made photos of it, but can share a few other images of street life in Lagos. Lagos is called City of Excellence.

We have a new collegue here in Nigeria, Thomas. He is here with Babette and their 4 months old daughter Julie. It is their first expat posting and doing this with Julie is a big step, which I really admire. Thomas is running a start-up for Heineken. We agreed that this start-up for several reasons would be better to be run from a separate office. So Thomas rented the 2nd floor of a 7 storey high new office building. Mid December he comes to me and tells me that during the previous day his office building started ‘moving’. One side of the building slowly moved downwards. When I came back in the office in January I asked him how this had developed. He told me that the moving had stopped but that now the floors were not totally horizontal anymore. He had been informed that it happens regularly that building in Nigeria need to ‘settle’. But hearing something like this is different than experiencing so I went to his office. And to be frank, I was scared. It is like walking upwards when you are in the building. You can see from outside that the building is not completely straight. When you let go on an office chair it will hit in a few seconds the lower end of the floor. Total height difference from one side of the officefloor to the other side is 23 centimeters. They are now installing additional pillars under the building. The construction company even claimed that they will bring the building straight again….., by removing a layer out of the fundament. Welcome to Nigeria.

At this moment Viv is in the Netherlands. She has applied as volunteer for the Eurovision Songcontest in Rotterdam in May. Duncan won last year's Contest and the winning country organises this year's Contest. Viv had worked in Vienna at the Eurovision when Conchita had won the Songcontest and she really enjoyed this. We are both proud that the Netherlands won and she would like to help making it a success. I hope she will be selected and that she will have a great time. To be continued....