Oh Nigeria, if only you hadn't got off to such a bad start. Charging me £280 for the visa (with a premium rate phone line if I wanted any follow up information), and then in my first hour in the country being asked for 'presents' more often than a dementia ward Santa Claus did not endear you to me. It is a shame, as
with an area larger than Germany, Italy and the UK combined and a population pushing 190m there is a lot going on, but blinded by my own rage (partly corruption induced, partly hunger induced) I was struggling to find them. What I did find: insane driving, surly service and short changing, endless requests for money, people shouting 'hey white man'/'where are you going', and compared to the other countries in West Africa, very few smiles. However, the roads were good and the petrol was cheap...
My attempt to do Benin in two days meant that I arrived at the border quite late, and by the time I got to the outskirts of Lagos (along a road consisting entirely of petrol stations and road blocks) it was dark. If New York is the city that never sleeps, Lagos is the city that is constantly off its face on amphetamines. Even on the outskirts, at night, the streets were thronged with people, shops and restaurants packed, and traffic all over the shop paying no attention to any recognisable rules. Still 10km outside the centre, I gave up and found a hotel.
Due to the huge influx of oil money, Lagos is not a cheap place to stay and without anything in particular I wanted to see I just took a drive around to get a feel for the place. There is a real mix of rich and poor, with fancy cars and shiny new buildings bumping up against street hawkers and run down shacks, and the number of people is unbelievable - at 25m people it is bigger than London and New York combined. It wasn't enough to soften my hardened heart to Nigeria though, and I quickly rode through the country, first to Benin City and then to Calabar. The strange thing is that, despite the roads being better than a lot of the preceding countries, the number of trucks and cars that I saw that had literally fallen off the road was incredible. And don't even get me started on the number of people who just drive the wrong way down the road...
By the time I got to Calabar, I had relaxed a bit (and eaten properly), and I slowed down for a couple of days. I fixed a couple of niggling issues with my bike, and got chatting to some of the staff at the hotel I was at. Riding through Africa, where the sun is always shining and people smile a lot, you can sometimes forget how hard life can be for people here, but some of the conversations brought that into sharp relief. One girl told me that her brother recently had an accident at school and needed medical treatment; the treatment cost 30,000 Naira (about £70) but the family could only afford 5000 so the doctor insisted that the boy stay with him until they could pay (he is still there). She also wanted to go to university but despite fees only being around 20,000 Naira per semester she wasn't able to save up enough from her monthly salary of 12,000 from the hotel. And this is in a country where the politicians treat the country finances and natural resources as their own piggy bank, to be thoroughly abused so that they can then splash out on extravagant cars, clothes and houses ostensibly to rub in the faces of those who have less. Of the billions in revenue generated from the sale of oil, the general population seems to have hardly benefited at all.
Before I disappeared to Cameroon I decided I had to do at least one thing in Nigeria: Drill Ranch, a sanctuary and breeding program for Drill monkeys (and also some chimpanzees) in the Cross River National Park. Set up nearly 30 years ago by an American couple, the charity behind the ranch has been fighting against illegal logging and hunting to protect the endangered Drill species, which is only found in this part of the world (Eastern Nigeria and Western Cameroon). Drills are a cuddly looking bunch with extravagantly colourful genitals, and the breeding programme has been so successful that the initial 5 animals have spawned a colony of 600. The charity want to release them to the wild, but with limited government support against logging and hunting (the new governor is in on the logging, allegedly), it is proving difficult.
The sanctuary also has a troop of about 30 chimpanzees (Ellioti, a subspecies specific to this part of the world) that is primarily made up of animals that were raised by humans and then abandoned or rescued. As in Tai, it is fascinating to see just how smart these animals are, but as cute as they look they have a dark side. Two of the sub-dominants (males just below the alpha) took a disliking to another very friendly and popular chimp. One night they sharpened sticks and stabbed this unfortunate individual to death, before throwing the sticks on his body. PG Tips Family this ain't (or maybe it is - who knows what went on once the tea ran out...)
I finished my time with a scramble up Kelly's Breast (the name of a nearby hill, sadly) and was quickly reminded that sitting on a motorbike for hours every day does not count as cardiovascular exercise. In my defence the climb was hard - there were no trails, the climb was steep (at least 60%, with dead branches and piles of leaves making foot and handholds treacherous), but it was the climb down that was so much harder. Neither the guide nor I had a machete, and I was constantly getting caught by vines or by thorns. By the time I finished my clothes were ripped (including a huge hole in the arse of my trousers), my arms were scratched, I was utterly exhausted and suffering a serious sense of humour failure. Exercise is henceforth being given a higher priority on this trip.
with an area larger than Germany, Italy and the UK combined and a population pushing 190m there is a lot going on, but blinded by my own rage (partly corruption induced, partly hunger induced) I was struggling to find them. What I did find: insane driving, surly service and short changing, endless requests for money, people shouting 'hey white man'/'where are you going', and compared to the other countries in West Africa, very few smiles. However, the roads were good and the petrol was cheap...
My attempt to do Benin in two days meant that I arrived at the border quite late, and by the time I got to the outskirts of Lagos (along a road consisting entirely of petrol stations and road blocks) it was dark. If New York is the city that never sleeps, Lagos is the city that is constantly off its face on amphetamines. Even on the outskirts, at night, the streets were thronged with people, shops and restaurants packed, and traffic all over the shop paying no attention to any recognisable rules. Still 10km outside the centre, I gave up and found a hotel.
Due to the huge influx of oil money, Lagos is not a cheap place to stay and without anything in particular I wanted to see I just took a drive around to get a feel for the place. There is a real mix of rich and poor, with fancy cars and shiny new buildings bumping up against street hawkers and run down shacks, and the number of people is unbelievable - at 25m people it is bigger than London and New York combined. It wasn't enough to soften my hardened heart to Nigeria though, and I quickly rode through the country, first to Benin City and then to Calabar. The strange thing is that, despite the roads being better than a lot of the preceding countries, the number of trucks and cars that I saw that had literally fallen off the road was incredible. And don't even get me started on the number of people who just drive the wrong way down the road...
By the time I got to Calabar, I had relaxed a bit (and eaten properly), and I slowed down for a couple of days. I fixed a couple of niggling issues with my bike, and got chatting to some of the staff at the hotel I was at. Riding through Africa, where the sun is always shining and people smile a lot, you can sometimes forget how hard life can be for people here, but some of the conversations brought that into sharp relief. One girl told me that her brother recently had an accident at school and needed medical treatment; the treatment cost 30,000 Naira (about £70) but the family could only afford 5000 so the doctor insisted that the boy stay with him until they could pay (he is still there). She also wanted to go to university but despite fees only being around 20,000 Naira per semester she wasn't able to save up enough from her monthly salary of 12,000 from the hotel. And this is in a country where the politicians treat the country finances and natural resources as their own piggy bank, to be thoroughly abused so that they can then splash out on extravagant cars, clothes and houses ostensibly to rub in the faces of those who have less. Of the billions in revenue generated from the sale of oil, the general population seems to have hardly benefited at all.
Before I disappeared to Cameroon I decided I had to do at least one thing in Nigeria: Drill Ranch, a sanctuary and breeding program for Drill monkeys (and also some chimpanzees) in the Cross River National Park. Set up nearly 30 years ago by an American couple, the charity behind the ranch has been fighting against illegal logging and hunting to protect the endangered Drill species, which is only found in this part of the world (Eastern Nigeria and Western Cameroon). Drills are a cuddly looking bunch with extravagantly colourful genitals, and the breeding programme has been so successful that the initial 5 animals have spawned a colony of 600. The charity want to release them to the wild, but with limited government support against logging and hunting (the new governor is in on the logging, allegedly), it is proving difficult.
The sanctuary also has a troop of about 30 chimpanzees (Ellioti, a subspecies specific to this part of the world) that is primarily made up of animals that were raised by humans and then abandoned or rescued. As in Tai, it is fascinating to see just how smart these animals are, but as cute as they look they have a dark side. Two of the sub-dominants (males just below the alpha) took a disliking to another very friendly and popular chimp. One night they sharpened sticks and stabbed this unfortunate individual to death, before throwing the sticks on his body. PG Tips Family this ain't (or maybe it is - who knows what went on once the tea ran out...)
I finished my time with a scramble up Kelly's Breast (the name of a nearby hill, sadly) and was quickly reminded that sitting on a motorbike for hours every day does not count as cardiovascular exercise. In my defence the climb was hard - there were no trails, the climb was steep (at least 60%, with dead branches and piles of leaves making foot and handholds treacherous), but it was the climb down that was so much harder. Neither the guide nor I had a machete, and I was constantly getting caught by vines or by thorns. By the time I finished my clothes were ripped (including a huge hole in the arse of my trousers), my arms were scratched, I was utterly exhausted and suffering a serious sense of humour failure. Exercise is henceforth being given a higher priority on this trip.
