Time Flies......

Viv & Rob Kleinjan
Jun 4, 2020
9 min read

Updated: Jun 8, 2020

Time Flies when you are in lockdown. I have now already started 5 times writing the beginning and restarted over and over, because how do you write about a lockdown? Most of us have been in it, in your own country, own situation, with your own uncertainties, living your own experience. So what is lockdown for us? In the past eleven weeks we have found a new way of living. No more dinners in town, no more parties, no lunches in town, no beach house, no beach, no swimming pool, no tennis, no gym, no dinner parties, no Heineken events, no travelling, no……… But on the other side no traffic jams to the office, no potholes and big bumps in the road, no wasting time with shopping for groceries, no empty bank account at the end of the month (because of not going out), no late home from the office, not being late for meetings, no excuses like traffic was bad, not getting up very early, because there might be a traffic jam and a better view from our house because less air pollution and having breakfast, lunch and dinner together with Viv every day.

It all started surrealistic. The first cases of Covid-19 in Nigeria imported by airplane passengers. The doubt of the unknown, what is Covid-19, how do we recognise this invisible enemy. Should we stay here or should we do what most people do and that is go home? There is and was no good answer to this question for everybody. For us the right answer is to stay in Nigeria. It was for the first instance safer here for Vivienne and we also feel that we belong here. I cannot accept my role and responsibilities for this job and not being there when you are really needed. I am part of a team here and situations like this is what we signed up for.

The whole period has been a rollercoaster. The announcement of the last flights out, colleagues and friends that were leaving, friends that were staying. The uncertainty if this was the right decision. Then when flights were gone, we thought that we would find rest… But next thing were the evacuation flights, and again should we stay, or should we go? Every plane created unrest, every time some colleagues or friends were leaving. One of the typical things that you encounter during lockdown is the idea of the grass is greener at the neighbours. You believe that since you are unable to leave that in the Netherlands, in Austria or wherever it is better and nicer to be there. Very early we agreed that we would not leave until regular flights are back. Because when regular flights are back, we know we can come back to Nigeria.

We found a very nice routine of the week. Monday my workweek starts. These are very intense and long days. Making sure that we are selling, producing and financially in a good shape now but also for the future this is very important, but most important is the health of all, starting with our employees. I believe we made a lot of good decisions. One morning during the second week the doorbell rang, and a nice surprise was being delivered; 8 cupcakes from one of my colleagues of the management team. The ladies in our team made a nice gift box with tea, a pillow with my name on it and other lovely items. I gave each of the team members 5 face masks from Ali’s wife Tope. And from Amsterdam came a nice bottle of red wine. This was all done to support each other and keep the good spirit going. A small gesture can do big things.

On Monday night, Wednesday night and Friday night I have an online session with Ben, my personal trainer. I can recommend him (cben coaching – facebook and cben – Instagram). Ben takes his job very serious and pushes me every day a bit further.

On the other days we would either bike around Banana Island, which is roughly 7 kilometres or walk the Island or play tennis together. After the exercises we would have dinner, play games after dinner and then relax on the sofa and watch some Netflix series. We have watched in the lockdown period: Walhalla Files, Unorthodox, Calafat, Bordertown, Quantico, Ozark, Prison Break, The Last Kingdom season 3 and Broadchurch season 1. It sounds like a lot and now reading it, I have the impression we are television junkies.

During the day Viv has her own routine; she has her own personal trainer Favour from the very beginning we live here, so also Monday, Wednesday, Friday she’s training on-line with him but in the mornings. She has started crocheting, she taught herself with help from YouTube. We found a store in Lagos that did online delivery of wool and cotton. This was great but compared to Dutch prices ridiculously expensive. She has now started her 3rd blanket. She did some painting and is organising our digital pictures. We printed our blog of the last years in hard copy photobooks and had them delivered to the Netherlands. We started making photo yearbooks. Vivienne has some zoom meetings with different group of friends. Her Poland Group, her knitting/crocheting group and with other friends.

Also every day she calls with my parents, especially my mum who loves to chat. Physically we feel great after 11 weeks of training. One of the pictures we will add is my average heartbeat in rest per day development from the beginning of the year to now. You can see when the lockdown started and when I started training. Viv had an interview with a Dutch young lady who lives in Ghana, it was about how she or we experience the lockdown in Nigeria. Barbara van Rijn is her name, she made 11 lockdown interviews with Dutch ladies all over the planet. Barbara also askes Viv to make little videos to spice it up a bit. So with everything she did she made vlogs for a week or so. We have seen the trailer and it looks very impressive already. One of the other things we've done during these long boring weeks is tidying up cupboards, bookshelves, Christmas decoration and Easter decoration. There's not a box, shelf, cupboard what we haven't seen or touched, the house is super decluttered.

During this lockdown period we had of course some nice anecdotes to share. One of the favourite of the lockdown period is the courier service UPS or OOPS. If you wonder what UPS stands for? Probably something between Unilateral Poor Service or Unmatchable Pispoor Service. But it should have been UNS (Ultimately No Service).

When lockdown kicked in and it became clear that we would be here for quite some time, we ordered online in the Netherlands some missing essentials: Grooming Set for Ayo, the Dog. His hair was growing wildly and Vivienne did his hair the first time with my shaving set, which

did not feel good to me. An enormous amount of wool to crochet blankets for Viv, Espresso coffee beans and our favourite game “Keer op Keer/Encore” notepads. Thomas our friend and colleague would send it from Helmond to Lagos with UPS. You know how this works. You drop it of at the UPS and you get a tracking number. Departure from Helmond was April 10th and the same day it made it already to Cologne. So next day it was still there, no movement. Then after 3 days we got an update. It moved…. to the warehouse. “Due to unexpected circumstances outside the responsibility of UPS the trip needed to be re-planned.” Next day same message. After a week a miracle happened it had moved to Frankfurt and the package would be delivered at our house on Banana Island on April 23. It was really a miracle since it was still in Frankfurt and it would be here within 3 days. So April 23 came and then April 24. The good thing was that on April 24 the package would still be delivered on April 23…… although it never arrived, but it could have arrived but it didn’t. One week later the package arrived at Lagos airport! We were so happy. One week later we were still happy, but still no package. You should try to get somebody on the phone at UPS, just impossible. It is now still Covid 19 crisis so if you want to be entertained for a day, give it a try! Thomas in the meantime also got fed up with it and posted it on his Facebook wall. You would expect that UPS would pick up on bad publicity. After a few days he did not get any response, so he solved it by posting directly on the Facebook page of UPS. Really suddenly there are really living people in this company. The other good news was, we got an update from UPS! Our package had ended in an unexpected delay and this time they even offered a solution: It would be delivered one working day later…… One day later no package. In the end we gave up and used our company contact person to look into it. The package was delivered the same day. Then we found out we never ordered our favourite game notepads, we had ordered a wrong game.

Noa managed to get a Canadian driver's licence and just before she received it, she left all of a sudden Canada. Her friend sent it per post, and guess what; it took nearly 6 weeks to get to the Netherlands. We were already afraid it got lost somewhere.

On the day we celebrated Patrick's birthday we had a leakage in our master bathroom. The whole ceiling had to be removed and a new boiler installed.

Tope, Ali’s wife, he’s one of our drivers, made some face masks for us from Ankara fabric (African print). The funny thing is that almost all these fabrics here in Nigeria are made in the Netherlands at a company called Vlisco. Prices are low and fabrics are really nice in typical African print.

We asked her to make 100 for us, which we managed to transport to the Netherlands with our friends who were leaving. We sold them for 5 Euro a piece. One of our friends even paid double the price just to support Tope and Ali. We had bought them for 60 cents apiece. In total we have now sold 150 face masks. This way we made Ali’s wife very happy when we transferred the full profit to her.

We've just had 2 Sunday afternoons at the swimming pool of hotel XXX (I can not use the name. For those who want to know why you can call us). Lying in the swimming pool, drinking cocktails it was like paradise or like Viv says Heaven. It was really a break from the usual somewhat boring lockdown days. We have as part of our weekly schedule that during the weekend we would meet with some friends. So we had some dinners with Sil, Patrick, our 2nd floor neighbours Carmen and Mario, coffees with Marian and Arjen from KLM, Graeme and Jacky our Scottish Friends, Arezoo from Iran and we had a great pool party since Patrick turned 47. But all with taking respect of 1.5m social distancing and outside. Although it was with a lot of limitations these were really highlights of the weeks. Every week we had at least one game night with the children in Zoeterwoude and Bad Gleichenberg. Using Facetime, we played together Qwixx. This is a lot of fun, except that Noa is always winning….

Due to the lockdown Vivienne and I missed some great events. Viv was selected as delegation host at the Eurovision for the country Austria, but the event has been postponed to 2021. We would go to the 1st Grand Prix in Zandvoort, the Netherlands, but also this is postponed by a year. Also our family trip to the graduation of Noa in Kamloops, Canada and on the way back stay some days in Iceland is postponed by a year. Having real graduations for Noa (BA), Hugo (BA), Jack (MA) and Ailsa (MA) is not taking place and this is something you cannot exactly postpone. It is a shame, but also this applies for a lot of other students in this same situation. Noa wanted to find a job in hotel business but as we all can see, there’s no work at the moment, all the hotels are empty, people are not traveling. She came up with plan B; a master’s in Hospitality and Event management at a hotel management school in Luzern, Switzerland. It’s called the IMI, International Management Institute. The location is stunning at a lake surrounded by mountains. Noa will start this September. In the meantime she and the boys too sport with Rob’s trainer online in the Netherlands and she signed up for a Spanish course at Leiden University. Hugo just handed in his thesis and has his last exams next week. He has been accepted at Maastricht University and Leiden University for a master study in International Relations or European Studies. He will go to Leiden University but is still waiting for his first choice course. Jack and Ailsa are finishing their master’s with writing their theses. They also are looking for jobs, this is going to be hard. They are ready to shake off their student lives and move on to the next step in life.Yesterday Loes had a surprise for Noa. It was actually her graduation day, so without passing it quietly Loes came with cake, flowers, drinks and a fancy hat.