The Week of Eid el Kabir

This week is Eid el Kabir (Offerfeest), this is a 2 day national muslim holiday and is linked to the lunar cycle. Up until Friday last week it was not known when it would exactly be. It was either Tuesday and Wednesday or Wednesday and Thursday. It turned out to be the first. For non-Muslims this may sound strange but it is a very important celebration. From a business perspective it is funny to see that since everybody knows that it is coming that the amount of meetings during these days is minimally and the few that are there are directly moved when the official notification comes which days are off. While I was typing this we spoke to Jack and he mentioned to check on the internet ‘Dakha (Bangladesh) Rivers of Blood’ about Id el Kabir. It is not like this here in Lagos, but the images of Dhaka are interesting. We have seen this week a lot of animals being transported into town for this festivities. (see picture below)

We have taken over our fantastic help Glory and the drivers Yinka and Ali. So we have also agreed that we will pay them the same as they had before as well as on the same dates. This Monday it was payday but we do not have a bankaccount yet, so we needed to find a lot of cash at the ATM to pay them. The other limitation is that we due to Eurocurrency restraints can only take 10.000, 20.000 or 40.000 Naira per transaction from the ATM. The challenge is that you do not know in advance what is possible in which machine. It varies per location, per timing on the day as well as per machine. We decided to go to a Zenith Bank location, where there were 3 ATMs next to each other as well as a highly trained security guard on flip flops…. Customer orientation was hilarious. While we were entering the information he was standing in between and was telling us what to do and which buttons to press. Up to the moment of the pincode…. So he got the message that we wanted some privacy. Unfortunately we ended up with 3 ATMs with a max of 20.000 Naira per transaction, so we needed some time to collect the money as well as a big wallet.

We have started playing tennis again with coach Kenny. Unfortunatelly we discovered that our tennisshoes are in the container. We went to the National Stadium because all sport shops of Lagos are there around the Stadium. The main stadium looks not in use any more as you can see in the picture below. Vivienne has size EU 37, however it turned out that playing tennis is not allowed in Nigeria when your feet are smaller than size 41. Nigerians all want to sell you something. When you ask them ‘do you have size 37?’, they all have it, but when you get something to try on, it is always size 41 or bigger. But they all use the convincing text, that these shoes are reallly small for their size…..

Today we went shopping at de SPAR. For Austrians and the Dutch a famous retailer. Viv comes there more often. At every visit there is a power cut and the whole shop blacks out.

At de SPAR it takes relatively long to switch on the ‘generators’ so most people switch to their mobile phones torch function. It is a really funny sight buying your groceries this way.