From Painting to Polo

We have been quiet for a few weeks now. The reason is not that there's nothing to do here in Lagos. It is more the opposite. We are so busy with having fun (and working hard, very hard). Vivienne is now in a nice rhythm. She has a hidden talent as painter of very colourful happy paintings. She is really good at this. She has painting lessons together with Mathilde and some other ladies and every few weeks I am confronted with new art in our house. Also silk painting is really great. We are building our collection of silk scarfs regularly which is very helpful when the average temperature is > 30 degrees Celsius.

We also do a lot of sport. Viv is playing tennis 2 times per week at 07.30 in the morning with other ladies. Then we have 2x a week together tennistraining with Coach Kenny and his ball boy. Also 2x a week we have our Personal Trainer Favour (Viv sometimes even more) and then she is doing aqua gym when it fits in her schedule with the other sports. And still she has time to go for lunch with friends, and do the grocery shopping.

Banks in Nigeria are pretty sophisticated. The moment you spend money with any Nigerian Bank Card I am informed via SMS within a minute. Also when you transfer via telephone to another person at another bank it is there within a minute. You both receive an SMS that the money has been transferred. This is more advanced than our last countries we have lived. On the other hand most of the times the maximum that you can get from a cash dispenser ATM is 20.000 Naira. This is approx. 48 Euro. On a good day you will receive than 20 banknotes of 1000 Naira, this is the biggest banknote in Nigeria (2,40 Euro). On a not so good day you receive this in 500 Naira notes. So if you want to have some cash at hand for the coming days and you want to withdraw 200 Euro in Naira, you might end up with 160 banknotes of 500 Naira……

From a business perspective life is going pretty good. A few new Heineken expats have arrived at Nigerian Breweries. Most of them without partner, or the partner comes later. It's now turning out to be a nice mixture of Nationalities: we have 5 Dutch, 1 Spanish, 2 Mexicans, 1 Scot, 1 Armenian, 1 Burundi and 1 Brazilian guy. We invited a few weeks ago all the bachelors for a dinner at our place. On the other side growing fat as Finance director is not so difficult in Nigeria. Almost every week we have Heineken visitors to support us and we have to take them out for dinner. Next to that I have a continuous stream of invitations for Gala Dinners from Banks (weekly) and consultants and advisors as well. I have limited this for business out of home eating to max 1 night a week. The good thing is that you get a nice list of good (and bad) restaurants.

Most people know roughly what the job of Finance Director contains. However in Nigeria this is more fluid. One of my more exotic jobs as Finance Director is the role of “Rob the Builder”. I have daily oversight of our biggest building projects, this is the Heineken House together with Graeme our Scottish Purchasing Manager and the beach house. Since progress in the past was ‘unclear’ and it turned out that we miss the (real estate) construction capability in Nigerian Brewery.  I decided to visit the construction site on a daily basis on my way home. On Saturday morning the constructors meeting is hold on site and we follow up every day that all that has been agreed is finalised in the upcoming week. It needs to be ready before the Champions League Final early June. Since the blog is public I have to rephrane from giving too much information and becoming subjective. However the minimum that I can state about the Heineken House that nothing surprises me anymore…….

Next to that I also have now the Beachhouse of Nigerian Breweries under my responsibilities which is being renovated as we speak.  It is a lot of fun doing these kind of tasks, but that can only be if you have a good team.

As fun events for the last weeks we had some nice outings: the first one was our visit to the St Patricks Day at the Irish Council. This was at the Residence and they flew in an Irish Band in a very nice ambience. We spoke to two nice men, one is living 8 weeks in Lagos and two weeks in Austria. When we asked which company they were working for, it turned out that they are Robin's colleagues from ILF!! One colleague wrote her an email the very next morning telling that he saw us on this party. We also went to an event at the German Council on a trade fair which drew a completely different audience.

The highlight of last month was the International Polo Finals at Ikoyi Polo Club. The invitation was from Veuve Cliqot and stated that the matches would start at 12 noon. Since this is Nigeria you have to be flexible. So we decided to go at 13.30. Guess what; we were the first to arrive!! There was absolutely nobody. The vip-area was really beautiful and drinking champagne while waiting to see the horses, players and the other guests arrive was very amusing. We were probably the only “oyibo” (oyibo/oyinbo means white people) at the event and some of the Lagosian have clearly spend serious time dressing up for the event. The Polo was also nice to watch, but the audience was great as well.

We also spent some Sundays at the Beachhouse with a big group of mainly Dutch and Heineken People. This is very relaxing and really breaks away from the noise and stress in Lagos. Our last visit was very memorable, but before we left we celebrated Ali, our driver's birthday, with a cake at home. We were with 23 people with 2 boats leaving from the Lagos Motor Boat Club at 10 am. One boat from another company was already there at the meeting point but not the Heineken boat. Not at 10 am, not at 10.15 and not at 10.30. The weather was not great but it was almost dry. The other boat went to check the location where the Heineken Boat was. And it was still lying on shore! The captain had not even let it in the water. At that moment I finally reached the captain but he claimed that he would be with us in 5 minutes…… This turned out to be at least 30 minutes and by that time it was like the rain season has started. We all stripped into our swim shorts and boarded the open boat. We were soaked in a minute. When we arrived the weather slowly improved and in the afternoon it was dry. We had a great day with lots of fun.

We have made a cooking group and called this "Naked Chef of Nigeria". We are with 5 couples and the male part is cooking at his own house. This time it was at Dennis' turn. He did a great job (with some support of Mathilde), fantastic Indonesian food, his mum would have been very proud. Dennis never cooks, so he earned some respect from all of us.

As final closing of last month we had a nice dinner with friends at Casper & Gambini a nice restaurant on Victoria Island. There was a Jazz Band, "Lagos Blues Train" and Dennis and I both know somebody in this band. It was very good music. At the same time there was the Launch of the Star Brand Ambassador not so far away in a park from 18pm onwards. The brand team had asked me several times that I should come by since I was the coach of the Shine Shine Bobo Star Football Team. I will write about this in the next blog about the Heineken Champions Trophy Tour to Nigeria. So after dinner we decided to go there. When we arrived (11ish) at the park it looked still very active but we were not allowed inside anymore by the security guards since the event had finished. Vivienne and Mathilde already wanted to leave and then I said that I was the Finance Director of the company. All doors opened immediately and when we were inside I see some of my Management Team Collegues walking onto the Stage to take pictures with our Brand Ambassador Tiwa Savage. They called me over and before I knew it we were faced by a huge amount of photographers shooting pictures of us.