Two ladies exploring Lagos

Three days ago it was a hot humid Tuesday, October 23rd of October. The sun was out, most of the days start here with cloudy weather or with rain as it is rain season. Mathilde and I went to the school in Lekki to work with little children. We do all kind of art work with them. This is a luxury they don’t have any money for. This time we went with Mathilde’s driver to school. We didn’t work together in a class which was a petty. I worked with an Indian lady. Theme of the day; "manners". First we had to tell the children what manners are. See if they knew a few manners; things like respect, listening, polite form, thank you and sorry, greetings etc. My partner made a long exercise of it, all that the children wanted was do the art work. Stick petals on a circle and write one of the manners in the circle and then we would stick it on a red board, very lovely. They’ve put a lot of effort in it, some are bit slow, we needed to support them. At the end the result was brilliant. We wanted to have a little photo session but by that time they totally forgot what manners were! They were climbing on the tables, crawling over each other, even hitting each other, they all wanted a good spot for the photo. It was such a hot day, I was sweating on every inch of my body. This work is very fulfilling. I cherish the moments I spend with these lovely children.

After working at school we drove to "the Palms", this is a shopping mall not too far from the school. We went to "The Investiture Ceremony of NOC (Nigerian Olympic Committee) Patrons”.

Therefore I invited Mathilde as a stand in for Rob, he was of course busy with work. The venue was the Oba Elegushi Palace in Lekki. Our host was His Royal Majesty Oba S.A. Elegushi Kunsela III. I had to send a reply to prince Henry, this is probably the Nigerian equivalent of Prince Harry. Unfortunately I had lots of troubles with my phone and internet this week, therefore  the message was never received at Prince Henry’s phone. Mathilde and I had a quick snack at the mall and changed our outfits in one of Mango’s changing rooms. Out we came in nice dresses, ready for the big event, if they would let us in. The driver brought us to a palace, but this turned out to be the wrong palace. The right palace was miles away in another direction. Ten minutes late we arrived at the venue, but this is Africa, many guests came one to two hours late. With my card, one card only, we walked to the entrance, there we learned the invitation was for one person only. Shoot, that I didn’t know, so we looked a bit sad, gave our friendliest smile and I told them that I was so sorry that I’ve misunderstood Nike (from Nike art Gallery). The man and lady at the door were busy negotiating what to do with these two white ladies in white dresses.They gave us green light, we could come in, they gave champagne in our hands and leaded us to a table in front of the stage. It looked so official, many photographers and journalists where walking around, chandeliers were hanging at the ceiling of this huge white tent. Round tables could seat 10 people, many glasses and huge fake flower bouquets on each table made the whole picture complete. For a long time we were the only ones at our table. At a certain moment the table next to us merged wit us, this was nicer for all of us. The speaker on stage thought we were French, don’t know why, but he tried to speak a bit of French to us, he said "bon soir", someone in the audience corrected him with "it is bon jour!” We loudly replied “no we’re from the Netherlands, we’re here on behalf of Nigerian Breweries, which wasn’t totally true, but at the back side of the program booklet I saw that NB is a partner sponsor of the NOC. I thought it couldn’t do any harm to tell them we’re from NB. We could see ourselves on the huge screen behind the speaker, very funny. The lady on my left is the VP of the International Women's Society of Nigeria. She was very friendly, here name's Nkoli and we had a good time together. She could explain what was going on. Obviously there were so many celebrities, but when you're new in a country you simply have no clue. Kanu and another ex Ajax player where present as well. The King and his wife were sitting on the left with their bodyguards on the floor in front of them. One of my questions to my new friend was that I never realised Nigeria is participating in the winter games. If you look closely at the photo with the speaker, you can see the Olympic Rings with in each ring a winter sport, you can see snowboarding, ice skating, ice hockey, bob sledging and skiing. She was very annoyed by the fact they made such a silly mistake. The last thing I wanted to do is upset her. We also met the sister in law of the king, her name is Aiki. She was very present as she was one of the organisers. On our way out Nike introduced us to Aiki and she spontaneously suggested we could have a tour through the palace. All of a sudden we were standing in the King's chambers, high carpet, every 2 metres you could see his logo under your feet. He's sitting on a throne, of course not when we were there and the rest of the family sits on the side on big velvet sofas.

We exchanged phone numbers and we've already had contact via what app to go for a lunch together soon. Mathilde and I climbed in our car and headed home, our heads still spinning of all the new impressions. Lagos, I think we are good match, I love it here.