I've been absent for a while,
And I have a reason why; I've been BUSY. For 1, I just turned 13 about a week ago; 2, I've been busy taking care of Shep and fixing the computer and editing my novel and....and....hah...hah....lemme take a breather....ok, now I feel better, but instead of focusing on everything that I've been doing these past days in this 1 post, I'll talk about my birthday, which I believe is the most interesting thing to write about, because I had the most unique birthday yet. Do you know why? I had my birthday in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria! But man, was the drive looooooong...it felt like we were never going to reach the city. But surprisingly, I wasn't bored out of my mind at all; actually, the drive was pretty interesting. We live in Ile-Ife, and the climate there is pretty rainforesty, with a whole bunch of dark green foliage growing everywhere. But the closer we got to Abuja, the more the vegetation changed. Around halfway, the trees started becoming less compact, the forests almost began to remind me of the ones in Durham. And there were a whole bunch of mountains and giant rocks, which were really beautiful. There were whole towns perched on the wide curving tops of these giant rocks, with regular streets and shops and everything. My father pointed out that after a while there were no more palm trees growing. He said that this was because that closer we got to Abuja, the dryer it got, and he was right. When we were riding on the highway going to Abuja, the whole landscape started to become savannah. The grass was dying and there were barely any trees in sight. And it was hot. Abuja itself though wasn’t anything like a savannah. You see, Nigerians always call Abuja the jewel of the country, and that it’s the best city; they claimed that the electricity was steady in Abuja, the streets were clean in Abuja, the buildings were beautiful in Abuja. Abuja Abuja Abuja Abuja Abuja. Abuja. So when I got there I had expected a city that was as large as Lagos maybe, except so much cleaner, and so many more commodities and movie theaters and all types of different awesome stuff. In other words, I thought it was going to be one big Victoria Island, one of the better parts of Lagos. I was wrong. If Abuja was a cake, it would be a large modern wedding cake that’s been half baked, and the parts that were cooked were slightly burnt around the edges or lopsided. That’s Abuja for ya! Why is it like this? Well, the half-baked feeling started even before we got into the main city. In political commercials, when they show Abuja, they show hundreds of cars from a distance streaming into the Abuja Gate, a large (NOT) white structure that guards the entrance to the capital. When we got there, I could barely believe my eyes; the media had tricked us by using an optical illusion; YOU CAN’T DRIVE THRU THE GATE!! When the highway split around the gate there was a little sign which said in capitals, THE GATE IS DECORATION. GO AROUND. There was a feeble attempt of shrubbery surrounding the gate, but it made the whole thing look even worse. Welcome to Abuja. Even behind the gate was pretty freaky looking, like there was this rusty miserable looking sign to an amusement park, and a half-constructed bus stop. But, anyway, when we got into the main city, my sister and I kept asking if arrived in the wrong city. The roads were nicely paved, yes, but the place looked like a SimCity game; buildings just seemed half built and out of nowhere. That’s because the city is still under construction even though people live in it. You’ll see a lot of cranes in Abuja lifting huge metal columns and putting them in place. And the myth about constant electricity? In the first few minutes there when we were about to check into our mediocre hotel, the lights went out. Sorry, but I’d take V.I. any day than Abuja. There’s nothing to do either. There’s only like one mall, and that mall barely has anything in it, and the theater in the mall doesn’t have anything of interest in it anyway. Long story short, Abuja is still under construction, and when it’s finished it’ll be really nice, but right now….I’ll be waiting in Lagos, thank you very much.
Signing off,
The Traveler
